HOPE

Yesterday, we went to see a new fertility doctor, Dr. Miller. He was recommended to me by a good friend, who had success with him (and is now the proud mother of twins!). He's based in Naperville, about a 40 minute drive from St. Charles (which is why we didn't go see him before--we wanted to stay a little closer to home...now we don't care how far we go). We had a 4pm appt and showed up a bit early so they could make copies of some of my records.

On a side note, they had to copy records because I paid to have the first set sent to me, instead of to the doctor. I like having them in my control. I tried to get them from the second place, but the nurse very nicely informed me that it probably wouldn't be worth me paying the $25 for a mere 7 pages of history. She said I'd be better off having them sent directly to the doctor(s) and saving my money. So I did.

Anyway, we were taken back to the office, stopping for a weigh-in, temp, and blood pressure (for me, not Paul). I was a bit taken aback by this--I thought we were only there for a consultation, but I was ok with giving my health info. We sat in his office, waiting.......35 minutes later, Dr. Miller came in. Now, one might be normally annoyed at having to wait that long, but we were told he'd be reviewing our records right before coming into the room. The 7 above-mentioned pages were probably easy to get through, but the 30+ pages from our first attempt were what took longer. ☺ SO...he started off by saying that if we were going to attempt a third try, he would like to do a test to see if my ovaries are even responding to drugs. This entails me going on a 4-5 of Clomid, a pretty good fertility drug used to stimulate the ovaries into making eggs. Many people have used this as an only source of getting pregnant, and usually it results in those stories you hear of people having 4-6 babies at once. We won't be doing that, just using it to see if my ovaries are in working order.

Another side note, I did mention to him that if we were going to be on the Clomid and thereby stimulating the hell out of my ovaries, we're not going to waste it! If you know what I mean...

In a nutshell, if the test shows positive results, we'll go ahead with a third IVF try. If not, my only hope of carrying a child is by an egg donor. Most people know how we feel about that (if you don't, basically I'm all for it, Paul's not so much in favor).

The best info I heard from Dr. Miller was that he doesn't have the same limits on the stimulation drug. On our second attempt, I was taking 600 units of Gonal per day. They told me I was maxxed out, and stupidly, I believed them. Dr. Miller said he'd try 750 and, in the toughest cases, he's actually gone to 1200. To put this into perspective, during my first attempt at IVF, I started off at 300 units per day. He said every clinic has their own limits, based on past performances. I'm glad his is a lot higher! We joked afterwards about calling around, asking all the doctors what their limit is. ☺

We do have another appt tomorrow morning with another doctor (Dr. Jacobs). Even though we'll likely go with whatever Dr. Miller has set up for us, we do want to hear another doctor's opinion. We won't mention having seen Dr. Miller.

Then, after all these appointments, this weekend is our big family weekend at Waynee World!!! YAY! I can't wait! Hopefully, this won't be our last visit up there this year (we're going to shoot for the fourth weekend in August). I'm not sure how the weather will be, but it never seems to matter--we always have such a great time!

Hope everyone is doing well. I'll update again after our appt on Wednesday (if I can do the update that day, I will, otherwise it'll be next week!).