Hi Momma Kath,
I am a lurker,
but i always read the success stories,
looking for pregnancy symptoms that I might be having :)
and every story has been encouraging to me.
I recently found out I was pregnant after trying for more than a year.
But I lost it to a miscarriage about a week and a half after
I got the good news. Although this story ends with a miscarriage,
but it has it's happy moments too.
We've been TTC#1 for 15 cycles. (starting in April 2002).
Before that we had put off TTC because I'd lost my job
and was unemployed for about a year.
At the beginning of 2003, DH promised
[we could start testing to find out if anything was wrong.
I had been charting since summer 2002, and my charts
showed i was ovulating and our timing was good.
Begged DH to take supplements starting in Autumn of 2002,
but he is more of a pharmaceutical kind of guy than a
holistic kind of guy and we argued about it and I gave up.
DH got two SAs,
one at the beginning of February and one six weeks later.
The first SA showed a 29 mil count
with low to ok parameters for the
rest of the stuff (motility, morphology, etc).
The second one had a 2 mil count with
super low numbers for the rest of the stuff.
His urologist gave him a list of the supplements he recommended,
and DH agreed to take them.
He is on 90 mg zinc, two of the little Es, and a folic acid.
In addition, the urologist recommended Proxeed.
Initially, this messed up DH's digestive system,
giving him bad diarehha.
It's difficult to feel sexy when that happens,
and without BDing, it wouldn't matter what his count was like :)
Also, he said the flavor was bitter
(it comes in a powder form and you are supposed to mix it with water or juice).
So I went to a health food store around here and picked up
empty pill capsules and put the powder in those.
A full dose was 12 pills, and you are supposed to have two doses a day.
We started him again at 4 pills a dose, and gradually built it up.
We eventually got him up to 10 pills a dose.
Because we'd been TTC for so long, and because of our ages --
I am 38 and DH is 39 --
DH's urologist thought we should go to see an RE.
I got an HSG and that turned out fine.
We went to the RE and decided to do a Clomid Challenge Cycle.
This would give us one cycle of fertility drugs with IUI,
plus it would give us the additional info of a third SA for DH
(everyone wanted to see this because of the enormous difference in his two previous SAs.)
And it would give us a sense of the biological age of my eggs
and if they were deteriorating.
(The REs thought we may decide to go straight to IVF
after we got this information, so we didn't plan anything
beyond the Clomid Challenge Cycle.)
So I went in for the physical exam about a week before my period was
due and got a mountain of paperwork. I got forms to get bloodwork done on
day 3 of my next cycle, plus instructions to call on day 1 so they could
schedule me for a pre-clomid check on day 3. I got sample collection
containers for DH so he could be tested for communicable diseases.
(I don't know if it's a california law or a federal one in the U.S.,
but DH is considered a "donor" once you move to IUI).
And that's just the beginning of the paperwork for both testing
and cycle instructions that i got that day.
I was thinking I would probably ovulate mid-June
because I got my LMP on May 6, 2003.
Ovulated (according to OPK, temps and CM) and BDed on May 18.
This was our 15th cycle of TTC #1.
Then, to get ready for the Clomid Challenge Cycle
I had the physical exam about 5 or 6 days before AF was due.
(very painful breast exam, let me tell you!)
I had felt a little crampy about a week after Ovulation.
I also noticed i was very gassy. I got a few extra zits on my face.
I thought, maybe, maybe, something good is happening.
Three days before AF was due I had some pink CM
and thought AF was on the way and started to calculate
in my head when i would go in for my blood test and pre-clomid check.
Two days later we were to leave for a business trip to Reno
that happened to fall on our 7th wedding anniversary.
On the morning of the anniversary when we were about to
drive to Reno I noticed the faintest shadow of a line on an HPT.
I know there are no false positives,
but i was really paranoid about it because the line was so light --
if you could even call it a line --
and i was 13 dpo and would have expected a darker line.
I took another test the next day.
The line was still super faint.
I called the RE on Monday morning and they told me
to come in for a beta test Tuesday morning.
(We drove back home from Reno on Monday night )
Beta was at 24 at 16 dpo.
I was pregnant.
We did more blood on Thursday to make sure it was rising.
Beta was 59 at 18 dpo.
Also on Thursday Ovusoft software gave me
a positive result for pregnancy.
We scheduled a vaginal ultrasound for June 16 --
the first day it would have been possible to see a heartbeat.
I was so so happy and so so excited.
My breasts were sore and had blue veins.
My chin was breaking out all over the place.
I was hot all the time. I craved protein and water constantly.
Then, the following Wednesday, June 11,
I noticed some dark brown spotting.
I called RE and they said it was possible that it was ok.
About a third of women spot during their pregnancies with no problems.
It was good that the blood was dark -- that means "old blood".
The RE said there was nothing to do but wait until Monday
when we could do the ultrasound.
The spotting was gone the next day and I was so relieved.
But late the afternoon of Friday, June 13
(Friday the 13th and a full moon!),
some pink spotting started. Right before
I went to bed I went to the bathroom and had two big red drops.
My breasts had stopped feeling sore and
my chin had started to clear up.
When I took my temperature on Saturday morning
it had dropped to 97.9, the coverline.
By then i was actively bleeding and passing clots and stuff.
I knew it was over.
Of course we are very very sad. I have done nothing
but cry and read miscarriage message boards all weekend.
DH has been wonderful.
I am usually the strong one and he usually falls apart.
But this time the roles are reversed and
he has been just amazing.
I think we are much closer after this experience together.
Today is Father's Day and I sent him an eCard
and he was very touched.
But the positive message from this is that WE GOT PREGNANT.
We did it before the fertility drugs and before the IUI.
So we know it's possible.
Maybe the Proxeed and supplements for DH really helped.
When I call the RE tomorrow
(the day we were supposed to have the ultrasound)
to tell them the news and find out what we need to do next,
I will also ask for the results of DH's most recent SA.
I don't know how soon they will let us do the
Clomid Challenge Cycle and IUI after my miscarriage.
But we want to go again as soon as possible.
DH had been lukewarm about TTC when we started.
But now he is pushing for the next step and
really desperately wants a baby as much as i do.
This loss has brought us closer together and we are more committed
than ever to having a healthy baby.
My words of wisdom to everyone:
even though can seem like those little pregnancy test sticks are all broken,
keep trying. I thought I would never get a second line,
but I did!
thanks :)
Jessica