Next Steps In the Fight for our Family

December 31, 2013

My Christmas break has been filled with several phone calls, meetings with doctors, discussion, and thought.

After meeting with our RE at OHSU (who was sure this whole thing was a fluke and wanted me to try again), we met with our maternal fetal specialist who took care of us while losing J and B. 

He doesn't think this was a fluke at all.  Although there is no "crystal ball" his best assumption is that I have some form of an incompetent cervix.  This diagnosis shocked me as I thought IC was when your cervix shortens super quick, dilates, and you deliver within hours.  He explained that I might have like a "twitching" cervix-that perhaps it open and closed just enough to let an infection get in...which eventually broke Brinly's sac, which lead to her falling out and things being REALLY open, which let more infection get in that eventually spread to Jude's placenta.  AH. 

None of the doctor's are saying "don't try again" but he was the only one that brought up surrogacy as something to consider, simply because its taking my body out of the factor.  He also warned against ever transferring 2 embryos since we know my body didn't respond well with twins-however, he doesn't think the twins caused the pPROM since it was still so early in the game.  This creates somewhat of a complex because although I don't want to get pregnant with twins again, transferring just 1 embryo seems insane since only 2 out of my SEVEN actually made it past the 12 week mark.  For those that have done IVF you know it's draining and long and emotional and the idea of plopping in 1 little embryo at a time sounds awful.  Anyway...

All this to say, IF I EVER manage to get pregnant on my own, they will give me a cerclage at 12 weeks (stitch my cervix closed) in hopes of keeping out infection/it opening randomly and then give my progesterone shots weekly throughout pregnancy.  That plan supposedly reduces my chances of this happening again.  Scary, I'm not going to lie. 

As of now, Darren and I are thinking for the next few months we might try the "old fashion way" with a twist (drum roll please).  Ok, fine, the twist is basically we try on our own but with both of us on medicine.  All my life I knew I didn't ovulate so when the time came to try to get pregnant, we jumped into IUI's immediately.  For those that have been following awhile, although we did IUIs Darren was never on meds himself to help with his counts-several of the IUIs were wasted because I wasn't monitored, the counts were low, I had gotten a false ovulation surge, etc. 

After we gave up on IUIs Dar got a second opinion and they put him on oral tablets and within a couple months they say improvements-at this point we had already paid for IVF and I wasn't going to stop going after those.  Currently we feel like it might be a good idea to let my body chill out a bit (I've delivered 2 babies in the last 6 and 8 weeks), and IN THEORY, I ovulate on femera, his clomid pulls his counts into the normal range-we might be able to conceive kind of normally.  I'm sure that if a few months pass and it looks like we are headed to the land of nowhere, we will consider other options.  Sigh.

I hate the fact that J and B could have been most likely saved if we had known my lame cervix was crappy, but there is really no way of knowing till after the fact.  I'm thankful there is some explanation other than "it was random, it's a freak thing" because there really is no "plan" for a future random/freak thing.  One day at a time. 

All I know is our desire to have a child has only increased.  The fights not over.  We are moving forward.