The Sob Story

I have been continuously debating over the last week since my procedure about whether or not to post about it. I'm nothing if not a big blabber mouth about my whole life. I'm not the private type AT ALL. But for some reason I've felt hesitance about this one. Because I don't want pity? Because I don't yet have answers? Because the implications might just be too overwhelming for to me to talk about??? Is that possible? Well, I guess not, because here I am posting about it. But I'm still not 100% sure I'm doing the right thing. (Don't you love how I have built this up so that now you're all wondering if I have terminal cancer or something??) (I don't.)

Ok, so the back story--I suffered from unexplained infertility when trying to conceive (TTC) my first child. We had every test under the sun done and tried all kinds of medical intervention. There was nothing wrong with either of us, yet nothing seemed to work. Eventually, after 17 LONG months of negative pregnancy tests and one miscarriage, I got pregnant and it stuck. Viola, Daphne. I nursed Daphne for 6 months, and days after I finished, I got pregnant again. This was a total surprised to me since I had no idea I could get pregnant easily. That pregnancy ended up in an ectopic with emergency surgery. They were able to save the tube, but not the pregnancy. Yet 3 weeks later, I got pregnant again and, voila, Beck.

So after one eternally long attempt at TTC and three quick pregnancies, I thought my infertility days were long gone.

But after two kids, back to back (18 months apart), I felt like I needed a break. That break turned into a longer break than originally anticipated because I wasn't ready when I thought I would be, and finally, early this summer, we decided we were ready for another baby. Well, here we are in January--no baby.

So I made a trip to the doc, just to rule out any problems. (I thought I might have endometriosis on my ovaries because of 6-8 days of killer pain when I ovulate that couldn't be explained any other way.) The doctor suggested several options: we could get an HSG (a procedure where they look at you under x-ray and shoot contrast dye through your tubes to make sure they're open) or go straight for a laproscopy, which would diagnose and clean off any endometriosis. He also did some hormone testing to make sure I was ovulating (which I was). After I left his office, I thought I really wasn't prepared to do either thing. Both are expensive. Neither are very fun. And I figured since I had gotten pregnant before, I'm sure I could again. I was probably just being too impatient.

Then I had brunch with a girlfriend who had had a similar situation, ended up having major endo removed, and got pregnant lickity split. After our talk, I decided maybe I should go ahead and get the laproscopy done after all and see if it was endo. I told me doc and we set up the surgery. The doc planned on doing a chromotubation at the same time (like an HSG, to test the tubes).

Now we're up to date.

I had the surgery last week, and the results are in! No endo! (Cheer!) However, both my tubes are blocked. (Boo! Hiss!) How the heck that happened, we don't know. Well, we do know that the right tube was damaged from the ectopic. But ironically, that tube did let just a touch of dye through. It's the good (left) tube that's completely blocked. He couldn't figure out what the blockage was, for some reason. But he did say that while pregnancy had a very slim possibility of occurring after ovulating on the right side, it would probably end ectopic as well.

SO....now the big questions. Are more kids possible? Do I want to spend a fortune on IVF, which is my only option if nothing changes with the tubes? Is there surgery that can fix this? Will it cause more damage? Should I go the homeopathic route and try herbs and fertility massage first? Do I really want to pay out thousands of dollars to try to get pregnant? Should I just pray and wait? OR...Am I done with kids? See? Deep thoughts.

Anyway, there you have it. The story of the barren wasteland that is my womb. In case you wondered.