Learning While Waiting

While we are waiting to see if this IUI worked or not I am spending my time learning all I can about IUI, fertility treatment, and the like. It helps when others go before you and have lots and lots of babies. It also helps to read blogs of moms of multiples.

I am learning that a woman is more likely to get pregnant with multiples using IUI combined with fertility drugs than IVF. I am also learning that competent doctors and clinics should actually manage each case and cancel the cycle if more than one follicle appears. It seems that many doctors and clinics consider anything other than a singleton a failure. This should make me breathe easier but it doesn’t. While I have stated emphatically to everyone at my clinic that we will try this without drugs to start and will NOT go to injectables, no one has ever come back to me to say, “Oh, don’t worry. We manage each cycle to ensure that the likelihood of multiples is reduced and if more than one or two follicles are produces, we won’t proceed with the treatment.” I would feel much more at ease if something like that had been said. I do know that at my particular clinic (with four locations to serve you) only triplets have been born. There are many twins but mostly singletons and just a couple of triplets. I know this not from brochure or stat sheet but only by the number of baby photos and Christmas cards posted on the hallway bulletin boards. (Oh! One of my nurse practitioners did mention that triplets is the most they’ve delivered so I did get that information passed on to me.)

Given that, I am coming up with questions you can/should ask the people at your clinic. Maybe this will help you if you are just starting out and feel like a teeny tiny fish in the giant ocean that is reproductive endocrinology.
1.) Please explain to me the process I will have to go through during IUI (visual aids would be helpful).
2.) Can I try a cycle or two without drugs if I am ovulating properly?
3.) If I need to use drugs to help me, what kinds of drugs are available?
a. What are the side effects of each drug?
b. What are the chances of producing multiples while on each drug?
c. How is each drug administered?
4.) If I produce more than one follicle (egg), do we continue the cycle or cancel?
5.) Would you like to know my stance/beliefs on selective reduction now so as to save time in case I conceive multiples?
These are the questions I have come up with so far. I am not very far along in my reproductive journey so I will probably have more. If you have any to add, please post them in the comments section.

It’s funny that I don’t know if I’m pregnant for sure or not. I mean emotionally, I feel pregnant. In my head/mind I am pregnant. I want to tell people. I want to explain that I’m tired/bloated/peeing a lot/hungry because I’m pregnant. I see pregnant women and want to say, “Hey! Me too!” Mostly, I just want to be pregnant. Last night (after stopping at Target to buy latex gloves) I told Bob that I keep thinking we are due in May. For that to be the case, I would not be pregnant now but would get pregnant in August. I said I wish I knew right now if we were so we would just know. (Which reminds me of my eldest nephew. When he was about 3 or 4 he used to like to have everything explained to and laid out before him. Once my mom and I were watching him and his younger brother and since it was a nice day, we were just driving around after eating dinner out. He was so annoyed because we didn’t have a particular destination in mind and we kept telling him we were just driving around enjoying the day and didn’t have a destination in mind so hush. Finally, he got so fed up with our evasive answers that he sobbed, “If you would just tell me, then I would know!” Heh.) Anyway, Bob said we are going to end up paying a fortune in home pregnancy test kits. I said not necessarily since my period is due the 25th and if I get it, we will know for sure we aren’t pregnant. It’s God’s way of telling you if you are expecting or not. Then he started to tell me that if I’m not pregnant I can’t be sad about it. I stopped him before he even finished that sentence and told him he can’t tell me I can’t be sad. He said he just did want to see me hurt. I said I KNOW it’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when and I can be sad until it does. He ultimately agreed though I think if I am sad away from him, it might go better for us both.