We were taken right away to Dr. Mitchell's office and was told that she would be with us in a moment as she was finishing up a procedure with another patient. While we waited, I looked through a three ring binder full of statistics on infertility, treatments, and statistics on outcomes of the different types of treatments. Nick played on his Ipad (;
When Dr. Mitchell came in, she started by going over this last pregnancy with me and confirming different aspects, "How long did it last this time," and so on. Basically my pregnancies have been 9 weeks, 6 weeks, 6 weeks. She talked about all of the testing I had done thus far and that everything came back negative which in normal world would be great! Unfortunately, in fertility world this is not so good. It leaves the specialist a bit puzzled as to where to go next. The first thing she did mention though as we were going over tests is that my insulin was 16% (whatever that means) and that she wanted me to go on Glucophage which is a medication that stabilized your insulin levels. Your insulin levels do not cause miscarriage, but they do keep you from getting pregnant and she just wants to cover all basis.
A couple things about Glucophage:
1. I will lose weight! Yay! She said one of her most recent patients that she put on the medicine lost 30 pounds in one month!
2. I can't have any sugar or carbs. No bread. No pasta. Not much fruit. No more orange juice (which I love). No more mexican food really. No more italian food really. No icecream, cake, or anything sweet. She basically told me to follow the Sugar Busters diet or the first phase of Atkins. Thrive Weightloss, here I come!
3. If I cheat, the medicine will cause me to have
4. I will start tomorrow by taking one pill with dinner and do this for a week. The next week I will take one pill at breakfast and one at dinner. Then the next week I will take a pill three times a day with each meal. No. Cheating.
5. When I reach my goal, she will put me on Metformin which will help me to maintain my weight.
So after the Glucophage conversation, she went right into what she thinks is happening with my pregnancies. She talked about how young I was and how my tests were so inconclusive. So bottom line?
She believes it is something genetic that is causing my miscarriages.
What does this mean? Well, she explained that the reason we have not heard a heartbeat with our past pregnancies has probably been because of a chromosonal defect. She fears as though this will be a continual battle for us to fight. She did encourage us by saying she feels as though there is plenty of hope for us. Apparently there is a new type of IVF where they can extract my eggs and perform a test that shows the viability of the chromosonal makeup within the egg. This is brand new technology and she told us that if we came to her a year ago, she wouldn't have been able to do.
Here is the example she gave us: Let's say they extract 20 eggs and only 4 eggs have the correct chromosonal makeup. She will be able to discuss with us our options for pregnancy. We can decide at that time to carry one child or two. The rest of the eggs will be frozen for later use.
She made it very clear that she does not want me to miscarry again, meaning we shouldn't get pregnant right now. They took my blood for karyotype testing (genetic testing) and that will be back in three weeks. After three weeks, we will meet with her again to decide if we want to try IVF. I wasn't expecting to hear "IVF" so soon, but man when you talk with this lady, you just know she knows exactly what she is talking about. She was extremely confident in the fact that this would work for us.
We have been praying that the Lord would direct her path in choosing how to get us a healthy baby. I guess now we just pray and see if this is truly what He wants for us.
After our conversation with her (which was honestly quite long with many questions from both of us to her filled with information about splitting chromosomes and such that I didn't understand all of) she took us into another room to meet with an IVF counselor. Basically, she went through the total cost of the process and exactly what I would go through. Bottom line...gonna cost us around $20,000 for ONE cycle.
She did give us a couple of financing options which made us feel not as sick to our stomachs, but it was so much to take in. What if it doesn't work? Would we try another cycle? What if that one doesn't work?? Honestly, Nick and I both need some time to think this through. I can't keep having these miscarriages. It is not good for me physically or emotionally. We will try to have a child of our own, whatever the cost. How could we put a price on the life of our child? Can't handle that. If IVF is what we feel lead to doing, we will try it. If it fails, we know that was indeed God's plan. Money is just money. We can't take it with us when we're gone.
We are not sure if this is the end all be all of us successfully having a child, but know for sure that we are confident in our doctor and that this process of us getting pregnant (and staying pregnant) is being prayed over by SO many. God WILL lead us in the direction we are to go. He IS in every part of this. He IS so faithful and will provide us the strength to get through it. He KNOWS our desire to have a child and if it is His will, indeed it will happen.
Please continue to pray for God direct this path. Pray that we make informed decisions. Pray that with the stress of life in general, we can handle it all. Is adoption off of the table? No. But we are certainly not giving up on having our own too.
Info on IVF here via Reproductive Biology Associates (our fertility specialist)
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