Back in the Saddle

Firstly, I was really sad to hear about Carrie's cycle. She and I have a lot in common on the IF/miscarriage front (among other things), and it would do my heart good to see success for her - for her sake, and to give me some hope it might work for me too.

We are unexpectedly back to treatment again. We were waiting for news on our donor cycle - we're near the top of the list but there's been a bit of a lull in donors/egg-sharers. So we decided to revert to the plan we had before we knew we were near the top of the DE list and go for an IUI cycle.

Having looked at the IUI thread on my favourite IF message board, I feel like this may be insanity. Those girls are mostly just starting out on their IF journey and I couldn't see a miscarriage listed in their sigs at all. It makes sense for them because IUI is what you do when you're in the early stages. But for someone with five years of trying, six months of Clomid, a failed IVF, endless IF/miscarriage testing and 6 early losses behind them . . .

However, we've established (due to the 6 pregnancies, no matter how short they were) that we can conceive without IVF. My AMH levels (hormone that indicates ovarian reserve) suggests that there's still some eggs in there. CM has some sperm issues, so the wash and scrub-up they'll get before their journey might do some good. Plus, the lovely clinic will let me have clexane with the IUI cycle to take account of my clotting issues and will also give me an HCG booster a week after insemination, which MIGHT help. Given my HCG levels have been abysmally low on the 3 pregnancies for which I had a blood test, it's possible that I have corpus luteum problems. Maybe, might, possibly - you can tell I'm not letting myself get too hopeful. 

That, and my hypochondriac nature is giving me panic attacks that the baseline scan (my first proper one in more than a year - apart from a quickie for the AMH level when they couldn't find my left ovary!!!) will show something nasty in there like endometrial or ovarian cancer. Oh, and the consultant I spoke to on the phone wondered who had told us to do a donor egg cycle as my losses were unlikely to be genetic and more likely to be "me". Yikes! Once I was able to talk again, I pointed out I was doing the DE cycle at HIS clinic and that all the losses were around 6 weeks AND I'd had every conventional miscarriage test and then some and, apart from some controversial immune issues that they wouldn't treat anyway, there's nothing amiss that some aspirin and clexane shouldn't fix. He then said that such early losses were pretty much a mystery to the medics and that just about anything I did from hereon in should be considered "suck it and see" thing. I felt miserable after this, but actually - he's right! I knew all this already - it's just hard to hear it from someone else. 

But, if anyone out there is reading this and knows anything at all about early pregnancy loss and donor eggs - is he right on that? Because 3 other IF/miscarriage folk have told me it was "the next thing to try" and everything I've read about very early losses suggests that genetic issues are the main cause. Hmmm!