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Oh Babybump - I am wishing you all the strength in the world to get through the next few months. I hope your husband has caught this early and has the best of outcomes. There are so many options with assisted reproductive technology and they can be so incredible in your circumstances and have heard of many having success with frozen sperm. I totally understand that it must be scary to just start this process and being told that you might have to jump straight to IUI or IVF (to be honest, I am half expecting to hear it myself when we get the final results of my investigative cycles).

I feel very blessed to have you ladies and also a close friend who has gone through the entire infertility process and is a wealth of knowledge and has been so incredibley open with me and given me so much support over the past few months. Know that we are here - to vent, to ask questions, whatever you need!

Huge hugs, you and your DH can do this!!!!

Well lots to update on! Still a lot of appointments and questions to be answered about hubs, but yesterday we went to the fertility clinic. We did another semen analysis, and his count has MORE than doubled!! They said its still on the lower end of average, but there are definitely enough here to a) get pregnant, and b) freeze. So we froze our first batch yesterday. This clinic was extremely nice, the nurses were all "nice to meet you! We hug here." and were just so pleasant. They actually close early on Fridays, but because of our special circumstances they stayed open and worked with us for 2 hours so we were the only patients in the building. They're completely booked up for a couple of weeks, so they went ahead and turned it into an initial IUI appt and took all of our information for that, then made me an appointment for next week to start my kind of "cycle watching" to get my time frame down. They said they put me with someone else's appointment even though they never do that because they know we're on a time crunch, meanwhile hubs is going every 3 days to make another "deposit"

They said next week will be to get all of my base information and talk about the possible scope test that needs to happen (they freaked out when I said I had an HSG appt and told me to cancel it immediately. Said it was unnecessary and painful and you can view the same things with a scope without shooting the dye and causing all of that). So then in November I go in 3-5 days after AF ends and they will track that 1 full cycle to make sure everything is right (ovulation, length, etc) then in December when AF starts I will go on letrozole (like clomid) and then we will do the IUI for my December cycle. So the process has started and we have lots of good answers!

It's a lot to overlap on top of whats already happening, but we've worked so hard to make this happen we don't want to wait so it may be difficult at first, but still going for it.

Shew. How about everyone else? I'll stop unloading after this! lol

Baby bump- sounds like you definitely have a good plan. I'm glad you have answers and are able to freeze hubbys sperm. Continued prayers for you and your family.

Babybump - it sounds like you are in the right place! I hope they just do the SHG (saline ultrasound) - it's not nearly as invasive as and HSG and gives you most of the information you will need. I really am glad you have found a clinic that is so awesome and that your DH is doing so well (way to go on doubling the sperm count)!
Keep us posted and my fingers are crossed that Dec is your month for a BFP!!!

Hi All,
How is everyone doing?

Babybump - I hope things are going well and you two are not too overwhelmed!

So I am officially back in the tww. I was cycle monitoring this month with the hopes that we would do the post coital test and then the RE would sit down with me about my results and my hubby was going to wait until he was completely quit smoking before he got his sperm checked. Things haven't gone exactly as planned.

First I got a call last week from the nurse saying that I tested positive for ureaplasma, a bacterial infection that I had never heard of before, but apparently 50% of all sexually active people have it and it can cause recurrent early pregnant loss, and a lot of problems with baby if we were to have gotten pregnant and the infection went undetected. So happy we figured that out, but are on tetracycline (a class D drug), yet we were still encouraged to ttc- not really sure about that, but I trust the clinic knows what to do.

We were still supposed to do the post coital test on Monday and when I woke up DH to do the deed before getting checked out he was really unhappy. He just isn't in the same place yet and is super afraid that as soon as we complete the testing we will be on the infertility treatment train that has no stops and until you hit IVFville.

So we cancelled the PCT and I had my last check up today to confirm I ovulated yesterday (cd 14) and had a 17mm follicle on my check up Sunday, so a decent size and we still BD'd Friday, Sat and Monday, so the Dr. was pleased and said to get one more day in today but that would be it. So I can go back in a couple of weeks for a beta (Oct 23) unless AF shows up before then. So far, besides the infection and my thyroid levels, I am checking out ok, I ovulate decent size follicles, no word on my FSH or LH levels being out of whack (also an indicator of dimished ovarian reserve, however, still no word on my AMH levels), I have a 13 day luteal phase, and no word on my progestrone. So all in all, things are looking good for me. Maybe it was my B12 or perhaps my thyroid, otherwise we are likley looking at male factor.

Anyways, we are on pause until DH is ready to do his part of the testing. I am ok with that - I really feel we need to be on the same page before moving forward in the infertility treatment world. In the meantime, we will are still trying and hopefully we will make it to needing a beta this month!

Tww- that sounds like a good plan. I just finished an IVF cycle and had a negative beta yesterday and it is devastating so you definitely want to make sure your ready, I thought I was but not handling the negative very well. Good luck during this tww and I hope and pray you get that BFP this month :-)

Oh luckykap - I am so sorry to hear that, I can not imagine how you must feel- I have noticed with the meds and all the appointments it's overwhelming and harder to accept when you get a negative. When we were just trying, there were lots of reasons that I could point to as to why it might not have worked out that month, but when you are cycle monitoring, or medicated cycles or doing IUI's or IVF, you know for sure that sperm and egg are in the right place at the right time, so you get your hopes up. You are doing everything you possibly can to build your family- take the time to feel sad and take care of yourself. HUGS!!!

luckykap I'm sorry to hear that! I can't imagine having that much hope invested and then getting that result, definitely not what you want.

We met with the fertility doctor today and setup my appointments to do the scope test (send a little camera through my tubes) to make sure I'm all good to go. Hubs had surgery yesterday and will be starting chemo in 2 weeks or less, so far we have frozen 5 vials of sperm that we will be using for the iui starting in December. The fertility dr said as long as everything is fine for me, he believes there is a 45% chance I will be pregnant by February. We've also decided to have hubs next "deposit" be split into 4 different frozen vials for a possible IVF. They said IVF does not need as much sperm as an IUI and if we decide to do that then it would be like wasting a whole frozen sample per try so we're going ahead and planning for a possible IVF if the IUIs don't work. Its a lot to process, but we're 100% in at this point and I never thought we would be going this route, but it looks like a test tube baby is in our future and I'm fine with that.

They also said since we have been having unprotected intercourse for at least 5 years prior to actively ttc (only method being pull out) they are counting us as ttc 5years+ and say we have only a 1% chance each month of it happening which was a big old punch in the gut to hear. So maybe that has been our issue all along? Statistics just working against us.

Baby bump- good luck to you and DH. Glad to hear everything is working out for you. I pray your BFP comes in December:-)

I second luckykap! I really hope that you get your BFP in dec! It sounds like you would have had to go the IVF route eventually and all of these circumstances have just made all the decisions for you and allowed you to move through the infertility clinic journey very quickly! Keep us posted as you start your investigations and I hope you and DH are doing well!

I have been busy at work which helps the tww go a little quicker. I am due for my beta Oct 23 (Sunday - CD 28). I was going to wait until the Monday however, since my clinic has a number of locations and the one close to me isn't open on the weekends, so I would have to drive 45min each way for the beta. I am going to take a FRER on Friday morning as I am meeting up with a couple of close girlfriends for the night and just want to have an idea if I can have a glass of wine or two or if I should stick to mocktails! I am usually a 27 day cycle so it would only be the day before AF would be due, so I would think that an FRER would be pretty accurate at that point. For some reason, I am not all that hopeful this month. I think part of it is just a guard I have up because I feel like it's never going to happen for us and I think because DH is not ready yet, I might as well just cool my jets and not stress about it for a couple of months and talk about it again in the new year.