Infertility Sucks!

Like the title says, Infertility sucks.  One of the worst things in this world is to feel like your body has betrayed you.  As a woman, I know that my body has the ability to create, carry, and deliver a baby. As a woman, it's my right and privilege to bear children, yet my body has decided to boycott.  It's gone on strike and refuses to be a party to my wants.  I know that I have as little control over this as I do over the temperature outside, but for someone like me who is a perfectionist and tries to be great or succeed at every endeavor that I undertake, the idea of not being able to have a baby is somewhat devastating.

Steve and I have tried to have a baby for over eight years and it's been a fruitless endeavor.  When we were told by the clinic at Magee's that IVF was pretty much our only option, we knew then that we would have to put our dreams of a family on hold for awhile.  We simply lacked the financial ability to put make our dreams a reality.  But after a year or more of waiting, we decided that we needed to have a second opinion.  Right around the time we decided we wanted a second opinion, the doctor who pioneered the technology for IVF, Robert Edwards, was being given the Nobel Prize.  As a result of the Nobel prize, the local paper did an article about the clinics in the area.  They focused on the success rates of three of the area clinics.  This article is what lead us to choose our new clinic, Reproductive Health Specialists in Penn Hills, PA. 

There are several reasons I was drawn to RHS.  One, the drive to the clinic was much shorter than the one I had been driving to Magee's.  When I was going to the clinic at Magee's, I would have to get up between 4:30 and 5:00 am in the morning to be in Pittsburgh for a 6:30 appointment.  I needed to leave the house no later than 5:40 am in order to avoid rush hour traffic going into the city.  I would be at my appointment for up to half an hour (an appointment usually consisted of blood work and then an ultrasound).  I would leave the city around 7:00 am and make it to work by 8:00 am.  I would work my normal shift of 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, make the half hour drive home and usually get up the next morning or the day after that and do it all again.  It's an exhausting process.  So the fact that I could avoid rush hour traffic and shorten my drive time was a major positive.  The second reason I was excited about our change in clinics is that the doctors in the office were female.  I just feel that much more of a connection with a female doctor than a male doctor.  And as it turns out, the only male who appears to work there is the embryologist.  Or at least that's the only male I've ever come in contact with at the clinic.  And the third reason was their success rates.  In 2007 RHS's IVF success rate was around 60% compared to 45-50% for the clinic at Magee's.

We went for our initial consult with RHS in October 2010. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that the doctor didn't want us to jump into IVF right away.  She felt that because we had never been monitored on the Clomid previously, that we should try a few cycles of Clomid and IUI.  The first 3 cycles we weren't able to do the IUI's because of Steve's work schedule, but I was able to visit him and we tried on our own.  In Febuary and March we were able to do the Clomid and IUI, but both cycles were unsuccessful. Finally we decided that IVF was the way to go and in May 2011 we began our IVF journey.