Welcome!

I've gone back and forth on whether or not I wanted to blog about this whole process and my/our experience. I obviously decided to write about it. This whole process is very stressful and sometimes overwhelming, so it is helpful to me to have a place to document everything and share my feelings. I have come across a lot of IVF blogs since I first started researching IVF and I have learned so much from other women, complete strangers. So maybe no one but me will read this, and that's okay too, but hopefully someone will get something out of it. I will try not to be too graphic, but I plan to document the process as best as I can.

So first, a little background. John and I first started to try to conceive (TTC) in March 2011. We were living in MA and decided to move back to UT later that year so that we would be around family again when we had our baby. We first started testing at the 9 month mark, just to check all my hormones and make sure we were good to go and John also did some basic testing. At the one year mark I had a procedure called a hysterosalpingogram to make sure my tubes were open, and they were. From there we started treatment with Clomid. I did 3 months of that with no success so then we moved on to Clomid plus FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) injections and IUI (intra-uterine insemination) and we did 2 cycle of that last fall, again with no success. At that time I had some blood work repeated and they re-tested my AMH (anti mullerian hormone), which basically measures the hormone produced by your resting follicles (immature eggs) and can give you an idea of the quantity of eggs you have left. Mine came back low for my age (.70) so my doctor in UT recommended we move on to IVF and gave me the "time isn't really on your side" talk.

John and I had already decided that if we moved forward with IVF that we would move back to MA. While we were living there, we found out we had really great infertility insurance coverage. What we didn't realize, is that we only had that coverage because we lived in MA and not just because we had awesome insurance. So we lost that great coverage when we moved back to UT so we paid for all our treatment in UT out-of-pocket. IVF is significantly more expensive, so in our opinion, worth the move back to MA so we could have the coverage.

We are so lucky to have such supportive and helpful family. My sister and her husband our living in our house while we are gone and taking care of our cats. And it's not really our house, it is John's parent's house. We are renting it from them and helping them do some improvements while they are traveling and enjoying their retirement so the house will be ready to sell once they are done traveling. So everyone has come together to help us put some things on hold while we pursue our dream of starting a family.

We moved to MA at the new year and started over with a new doctor. We had to do repeat blood work and testing. My new doctor is more thorough than my old doctor and she was able to catch that my glucose levels were a little off and I started treatment for pre-diabetes. Everything is good now, but I had to meet with a high-risk doctor and an endocrinologist to talk about potential risks during pregnancy.  We had further delays when we found our insurance required 3 failed IUI cycles before approving IVF, so we had to do one more cycle of injections and IUI. Since that still didn't work, they finally put in the order for IVF and the cycle got approved.

We are very lucky to have the coverage we do, but it is not free and is still costing us a lot of money just to be living here. We are grateful for the opportunity to be able to try IVF and we are excited to finally get started. I posted a couple of links with info about infertility and ways to be supportive (and things that are not helpful) as well as a link to our clinic's website if anyone is interested in learning more about IVF or infertility in general. I am obviously very open about all of this and will answer any questions.

All my meds ready to go!