Did you find your way here from ICLW?
Is this your first visit to the blog?
If so– Yay!
Oh. Also, let me give you the rundown…
My name is Tracy. I’m thirty(ish), married to my best friend, and live in the Michigan suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, where I work in recruiting. I’m a West Michigan transplant to the Metro Detroit area, and an even more recent transplant to the Toledo area. We are not nomads, I swear.
I have far too many pets, unexplained infertility, and have been TTC for almost five years. I blog about my uterus, my life, my feelings about the bitch that is infertility, my recent miscarriage, and I have a penchant for run-on sentences and ellipses.
I’m also a snarky little thing, but I try to keep it in check.
Sometimes I don’t try hard enough…
You can check out my history here, and a little more about my life here.
As for recent events, let me ‘splain.
…No. There is too much. Let me sum up:
After a year of seeing a fertility-minded Ob-Gyn and still having no luck getting pregnant, I was shuffled off to an RE. We did blood work, a semen analysis on the husband, an HSG procedure for me, and we tried a couple rounds of Clomid before we moved on to Femara/Ovidrel/traditional intercourse cycles.
We had lots of those cycles, none of which were successful, and just after our move from the Detroit suburbs to the Toledo suburbs, I was accepted into a national research study for unexplained infertility called AMIGOS. I took blind meds (either Femara or Clomid – they don’t tell you which!) for four cycles, had four IUIs, and four BFNs.
I am now officially out of the study and have been seeing a new RE here in Toledo-land. I only met the man once before he found an issue with my FSH levels that had heretofore gone unnoticed. He started me on Femara and Menopur in July, and I finally got that blessed BFP in August!
Sadly, our miracle baby was growing slowly, and had stopped completely by eight weeks. On September 23rd, 2012, I miscarried. We are now preparing to heal physically and emotionally, and our plan was to start all over as soon as we were able.
Since then, I have switched doctors, gained a soft diagnosis of lean PCOS, made a whole lot of lifestyle changes, and had several more failed cycles. I finally have a laparascopic surgery scheduled for August of 2013, and am hopeful that it will turn up some further answers.
I’m so happy you found your way here, and hope you’ll check back in with me soon! Please feel free to comment away, and if you have questions or advice or nuggets of wisdom, send them my way!
Happy ICLW!
P.S. I’m a nerd. See below.
I stopped reading at “let me ‘splain.…No. There is too much. Let me sum up:” so that I could come down here and comment luv all over the TPB reference…and almost missed the video.
Holy awesomeness, Batman.
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Hi Tracy. I just wanted to share my own pregnancy experiences with you as I think I may be of some help. I never had infertility issues, just lots of other issues! My first baby I bled through the entire trimester and at 26 weeks my water broke. I delivered my first son at 28 weeks and he had a long hospital stay before he was strong enough to come home. He is now six and VERY healthy. My next pregnancy was blighted ovums, two gestational sacs, one with two yolk sacs and one with nothing. I hope I can give you hope when I say mine did absolutely NOTHING! So your progress gives e GREAT hope! My docs waited till 14 weeks, and again at 14 weeks everything looked just as it did at 5 weeks… nothing. My third pregnancy I again bled all through the first trimester, at 20 weeks had an emergency cerclage placed and was put on strict bed rest and water broke and delivered our second son at 32 weeks. He is now 3 and also VERY healthy! Our fourth pregnancy (again) I bled ALL through the first trimester, only this time, on one horrible night at ten weeks pregnant I had hours and hours of massive bleeding and passing clots… I delivered this little miracle very much alive and VERY healthy at 38 weeks and he is now 16 months! I believe our mutual friend Lisa told you a lot of this, and all I hope this brings you is HOPE! If you want to hear more let me know!
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And one other quick thing… with my blighted ovums my HCG levels were completely normal, perfect in fact. So, again, hopefully you can take some comfort in knowing that levels lie as well. So just bc yours aren’t absolutely perfect, this just may be the way your pregnancy will be and hopefully you too will deliver a completely healthy baby!
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Thank you so much for sharing your story… Of course I know that there are so many ways in which women can struggle with pregnancy, whether it’s conceiving or hanging onto their pregnancies or keeping the babies inside for long enough, and none of those situations are easy.
It does give me some hope that there was growth at the last ultrasound, and I am praying every day that there is a heartbeat at tomorrow’s follow-up. I know the odds are getting lower every day that this will be a successful pregnancy, but it definitely gives me hope that despite two blighted ova, you were able to have three healthy, beautiful boys. 🙂
Thank you again, so much!
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Hi there.
Juste discovered your blog – I’m a 27 yr old married woman (a baby, in the infertility world), and we discovered our infertility 6 months ago, while preparing to move to Canada from France. We stopped the expatriation to stay here and do our rounds of IVFs IMSI. One negative round later, we’re on our second try, and thinking of doing the plunge (ie. expatriate) and adopt a dog in the near future if this round doens’t work either. I don’t know the medical word in English but my husband has weirdos in his sperm: they have a diformed head, when they have one! Oh, and we’re both mega geeks 😉
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Hi Tracy, I have just discovered your blog, congratulations on your recent delivery. I feel like I have just spent the last two hours reading about your life and feel at last someone has accurately described my experience. I also love the humour, first site that has done that!
I am 42 been TTC for 2 years, but we were not really giving it a proper go. Then in August discovered that I was actually pregnant. Amazed, astounded and loved every wonderful minute of it. Unfortunately I miscarried at 10 weeks and am still devastated. I am on a mission to try every alternative out there to IVF and am starting Mayan Abdominal massage next week. Good luck with wonderful Clara, I hope you continue to blog, but understand if you don’t.
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