The road we took

The path to having our children was a very long one. It was filled with ups and downs, triumphs and tragedy but most of all it was really, really, really long. We started our journey to have children when we had been married a little less than 5 years. We never though that infertility would touch our lives, in fact we never gave that one minute of thought. After about 4 months of trying to conceive on our own I started to chart my cycles. It became clear that although we were doing what we needed to do to get pregnant it wasn't working. After about 10 months of trying to conceive (TTC) we made an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist (RE). We couldn't see him until we had been TTC for 12 months so it was a LONG couple of months.

We saw our first RE in early 2005 (it is a little bit of a blur at this point). The next couple of months were filled with tests, ultrasounds, monitoring, sperm analysis, a painful HSG, etc. While our doctor compiled this body of information about what was at the root of our infertility we waited some more. Finally we started to get some answers. I had PCOS and after one of the worst weekends of my life (see the post here) we found out that Brian was not completely sterile but had very low morph, motility and count. That is when the battle begun.

That RE told us that we would need to do three IUI's (which would likely be unsuccessful due to our combined infertility) before trying an IVF cycle. At this clinic it cost $1,000 to do one cycle of IUI's. I got online and realized that this price was on the higher end so we set out to find a new clinic.

The next day I got a call from my sister (mysterious ways indeed) saying that she had found a flyer at her school (she was training to be a Physicians Assistant) for a clinical trial for IVF. I called right away. That is when I met Eileen, the amazing coordinator at what became "our clinic".

More tomorrow...