My husband and I stopped trying to NOT get pregnant around January of 2014. We weren't trying to get pregnant but we weren't trying to not get pregnant either. I was always hopeful every month that we would get pregnant though! We found out in February of '14 that I had hashimotos, and that's when everything started falling apart!
In August of '14 I started having 4+ month cycles...a.k.a I was going 160 days without a period. Not Good. When I saw my old OB/Gyn in December '14, he told me that my long periods were from my thyroid and I likely had PCOS and to go home and google it. I fired him.
I started seeing Dr. P in January of '15. He also suspected I had PCOS and put me on the list to see a Creighton Fertility Instructor to teach me how to chart my cycles. I started meeting with her in April or May of 2015.
Between August of 2014 and June of 2015 I had a total of 4 periods, that last of which was a force start with progesterone. The next 3 cycles I supplements with Progesterone for 10 days starting 3 days post peak (post ovulation).
In September of '15 I started a Hormone Profile that spanned over the course of a month. And let me tell you what, they took a BUNCH of blood.
I finally saw Dr. P to go over my lab results last Thursday (10/29/15). Where I had a minor meltdown.
This was my Instagram post from that experience:
"When you're at the Doctor's office to find out why are aren't getting pregnant...
And you are surrounded by pregnant women...
Then you finally get back to a room, and you can hear the Doppler in the room right next door,
And you hear that Precious little heart beat.
And then the tearsstart to fall.
I just want to hear that heart beat for myself, so badly.
And I know that God has a plan,
And I believe He is going to give me babies,
But the fear creeps in.
I see women on fertility support gourps that have been trying for 5 and more years.
They use the same Creighton method that I am using.
There are women all over the world that are not able to get pregnant.
And those are scary thought.
And baby heartbeats make me cry.
And I'm okay with that.
Because this is real life."
Dr. P came in at the end of my meltdown, who knows what He was thinking. He did end up telling me that I was the third person to cry that day, so maybe He is used to tears.
We went back to his office and he compared my charts against my labs. Basically I have zero progesterone.
Just a little hormone lesson. At the beginning of your cycle your ovaries produce estrogen. As your body prepares to ovulate your estrogen spikes. When you ovulate your estrogen levels decrease and your progesterone starts to rise. My Estrogen did great. My Progesterone didn't get above 2.9. It's suppose to get to around 18, which is a sign that I am probably not ovulating, just going to an ovulatory phase.
So, we are scheduling surgery for sometime in January. My cycles will decide when. I could have done it in December. But if I'm going to meet a deductible, I would rather it be in 2016 where I'll have the whole year to enjoy having a deductible met :)
Surgery!?!?! It sounds kind of extreme. I know. He will go in and check out my fallopian tubes and make sure that nothing is blocked. He'll look at my uterus and make sure there isn't any endometriosis going on. Then he'll look at my ovaries, and since I have PCOS he is 99% sure that he is going to find Polycystic Ovaries.
So what does that even mean. Basically the outer tissue of the ovaries gets really thick so that the eggs can't release, and the cyst that releases the egg can't do it's job properly to be making progesterone. So He will preform an Ovarian Wedge Resection and cut my ovaries to a normal size.
Yes. He's cutting out part of my ovaries. You know the thing that stores all my eggs and future babies. Yikes. Thankfully there are two parts to the ovary (I'm sure there is more to it than this, but I'm just making it simple here!), the core and the outer tissue. The core holds all the eggs. That part gets left alone. All he does is cut away some of the thick outer tissue so that my ovaries can work like they are suppose to!
The question has been asked, "what about clomid?". In women with PCOS, clomid only has a 15% success rate of ovulation and a pregnancy. This surgery will give me an 85% success rate of ovulation and normal cycles. If I am one of the 15% where the surgery doesn't fix it, then the Clomid success rate skyrockets because I don't have all that excess tissue in there. Plus, the ovarian wedge resection actually fixes the problem, so it's a long term solution, and my health should improve!
So yea...that's about the gist of it! Here's to hoping for a baby in 2016!!!!
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