My Trip to the OB/GYN
Lord have mercy - the yearly visit to the lady doctor. Could I have some humiliation with a side of embarrassment and discomfort please? After the duck-lips and KY jelly and the ritual scraping, I did not want to return to work. I did - I am a trooper! But I am blogging instead of working. Tell you anything?Well, I'm now on pre-natal vitamins, and I'm not pregnant. Seems that new research on women trying to conceive says that pre-natal vitamins are a must, even up to a year before conception. Wowzers. So, I'll be taking a new vitamin just released in March - OptiNate. Apparently, it has this new omega-3 DHA stuff in it. I'd better be getting darn healthy for all this effort.
Seems the Glucophage has helped with my PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome). I now have menstrual cycles almost-regularly, and apparently am ovulating also almost-regularly. This is better than nothing. At the very least, it decreases my risk of endometrial cancer and diabetes. It will also decrease my risk of miscarriage should I become pregnant.
So, what if my husband and I decide to work things out between us and "go for it" in terms of trying to conceive? Well, if he goes through his own fertility testing and everything checks out OK on his end, we have a variety of options.
We may do a uterine dye test procedure that will cost me about $400-$600 but tell if there is anything wrong with my uterus and/or fallopian tubes. The wonders of technology. As I understand it, they would inject dye into my uterus and fallopian tubes to check for any abnormalities. The process hurts, and requires antibiotics, and costs about $400-$600 according to the doctor, but insurance may cover some of it. If that shows abnormalities, the key is then to treat those. If nothing, and hubby's fertility is good, then we go to phase 2.
Phase 2 would be me taking Clomiphene to get me to ovulate more/more regularly.
If that didn't do anything on its own, we could do "insemination" - not to be confused with invitro-fertilization. Insemination involves me taking the Clomiphene, then HCG injections to force me to ovulate. At that point, we drag my husband in, do "semen washing" and give it a little go-juice booster, and "turkey-baste" me (essentially). Wowzers. That procedure, with insurance, will still run about $1000. Of course, most folks have to do several rounds of turkey-basting for it to take. We could try the insemination several times (most couples have to try several times).
Since I am at greater risk of miscarriage, should we decide to do this (should being the operative word here), I would stay on the Metformin (glucophage) for the first trimester and use a progesterone cream. Sounds wonderful, right? Also, I would have a good chance of developing gestational diabetes, which is at least treatable.
The last resort is invitro, which does the Petri-dish fertilization and implantation  that is upwards of $10,000 per shot.
How long we want to wait before we do anything else is up to us.
So, I guess the real question is for us to figure out how long we have been "trying" and how long we want to continue to "try". She said at our age she would not recommend waiting longer than 1 year of trying before moving on to the other options since they will also take a year at least to get through. So, we have to ask ourselves whether we think we have been trying or not, and for how long we think we have been trying. This is an odd question. I just know we have to be on the same page before we do anything else.
She does not think it would be wise for me, with PCOS, to try to have any children after 40 - too much risk of miscarriage, or ovarian issues, and birth defects. So, she sent me on my way to "talk to my husband". Yippie! At the very least, we are not a boring couple.
All this is exhausting - mentally, which leads to physically.
This would be so much easier if I could just make myself not want to have a family. Wonder if there is some switch they can just shut off? You'd think all the screaming kids at the ballpark this weekend would have changed my mind. Nah. Just made me wonder how much of those dads actually wanted to be dads, and how many of them were just faking it. I also wondered how many of those men could just walk away from their kids because they never really wanted them in the first place. (Oh, I need to stop - I am jaded. I'll blame it on the pap.)
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 7/05/2005 04:05:00 PM
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