My OB put me on birth control since my pituitary gland was no longer producing estrogen or progesterone. I wasn't thrilled with the idea but I was also having menopause symptoms, so this seemed to help in that regard.
In November we met with a reproductive endocrinologist to see what she recommended for us when we were ready to start trying for another kid. She was confident that as long as all of our testing came back normal (which it did-yay!), we should be able to get pregnant with hormone injections and intrauterine insemination (IUI). The actual IUI part wasn't 100 percent necessary, but she and my endocrinologist at Duke agreed that it would be worth it since the injections are so costly. She recommended doing no more than three IUIs, as apparently the success rates drop significantly after the third attempt.
I started injections in February (2018). The first time I had to give myself a shot in the stomach, I was TERRIFIED! Despite being a human pin cushion for the last two years, I hate needles and dreaded the thought of having to give myself a shot. After some deep breathing and a few nervous tears, I sucked it up and got it done. Even more painful than giving myself the shots was paying for them. Fertility injections are insanely expensive and our insurance doesn't cover any of it.
When you are doing injections, you have to have blood work and ultrasounds done every few days to measure your estrogen levels and check for follicles. I had several appointments with estrogen levels that were undetectable (ie: teenage boys were producing more estrogen than I was). My menopause symptoms were returning and fatigue from low estrogen was starting to drain my energy. I was frustrated that the medicines weren't working and could tell our doctor was as well. After a few weeks with no results, she told me to stop the injections so that she could speak to the other doctors in the practice and see what they recommended.
Within a day, she was calling me back and telling me to get back on my medicine immediately. The other doctors told her that because I had hypopituitarism (from the LH), it would take a long time for my ovaries to stimulate. They steadily increased my dosages and we waited. And waited.... and waited some more.
Finally in May, after over two months of twice a day injections, my estrogen levels started to rise and we were able to do our first IUI. Unfortunately, it ended with a negative pregnancy test.
Our second IUI went faster but ended the same, although mother nature was kind enough to save me the hassle of taking a pregnancy test.
I was nervous to start our third round because I knew it would be our last attempt at getting pregnant with IUI. By this point we had already invested thousands of dollars in injections and appointments, and the thought of wasting more money just to get a negative result made me sick to my stomach.
Luckily, the third round was our fastest and by the end of July, I was in another dreaded two week wait. Before doing each IUI, I had to take what's called a "trigger shot" to trigger my body to ovulate. The shot is HCG, which is the hormone that is detected on pregnancy tests. Therefore, if you test too early, you could have a false positive if the HCG from the shot is still in your system.
I cheated and tested after 12 days on a Saturday. To my surprise, I got two pink lines instead of one. I tried not to get excited, knowing it could be from the trigger shot. The next day I tested again and the lines were darker. I knew this meant that my numbers must be rising. Still, I tried to contain my excitement in case it was a false positive. Monday, the day I was actually supposed to test, I took a test and the lines were both clearly darker. I finally allowed myself to feel some excitement. Hunter and I took Sawyer and our dog on a walk that morning. We tried talking about anything else we could think of but it was clear that those positive tests were the only thing on our minds.
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| Positive tests before our miscarriage-referred to as a "chemical pregnancy" |
Miscarriage and infertility has a way of making you feel guilty for feeling the joy you should feel when you become pregnant. Instead of saying things like, "When the baby is born..." you say, "If this even ends up lasting..." or "Not to jump ahead but if we are still pregnant next month..." It really sucks. I'd say it's one of the worst parts of everything we've been through... knowing that even if we are lucky enough to get pregnant, we won't be able to truly celebrate until there is a healthy baby in our arms.
I headed to my doctor with Sawyer after our walk to get blood work done. Our nurse was so excited for us and had already texted some of the other nurses there. She gave me the go ahead to workout as normal so we headed to the gym.
When we got home from the gym, I called Hunter to let him know I hadn't gotten the blood work results yet but would keep him posted. Within minutes, I was calling him back to tell him that I had already started miscarrying. He came home from work and I spent the rest of the day crying. Sad for another baby we lost, mad that I had allowed myself to get excited so quickly. I had already thought of my "third time was a charm" lines that I would be using as we told everyone the big news. Now we would have to tell everyone that our final round of IUI wasn't successful. Even worse, we would have to discuss the three letters that felt more like a four letter word to us: IVF.
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