Today's post is mainly therapeutic for me. Maybe it will also help someone else; I don't know. Trying for another baby after a loss is extremely challenging, but this time seems so much harder. I was aware that using fertility medication carried its own risks, but I believed that the risks were lower than the risk of getting pregnant on our own. Now I am unsure.
Doctors have said, "You are a mystery. " or "I don't know how that
happened to you, " or "at that point in pregnancy your chances of
miscarrying should have dropped to 2%." My mom and I joke that I am in the 2% club. I have learned that statistics don't mean a whole lot when you are in that 2% multiple times.
After losing Wyatt at 27weeks and 2 days, I felt certain that I never wanted to try for another child again. Over time, those feelings changed from, "I want to get pregnant as soon as possible!" to "Maybe we can try again." We decided to wait 6 months. We planned to just meet with our fertility specialist and make a decision then.
At that appointment, we planned to just talk and ask questions, but by the end of it, we were scheduling an ultrasound for the next week to see if I could start back on Clomid. I asked for more clarification as to why we needed Clomid since I ovulate on my own and can get pregnant on my own. The first time it made sense to me because my cycle was as mess and my hormone tests came back a mess.He explained that even though my hormone levels were coming back normal, my abnormal cycle put a future pregnancy at risk. He said Clomid will help make sure I am getting pregnant at the right time. We left that appointment excited and nervous.
Our first round of Clomid worked, but I only produced eggs on my right side (no tube there anymore.) This got me worried about all this medication again. The tubal pregnancy that occurred simultaneously with Wyatt's pregnancy is one of the extremely rare situations, but when using fertility medications, it isn't quite as rare. The tubal most likely would not have happened if I hadn't been on Clomid. That tubal pregnancy was missed by 2 different doctors and continued to grow almost to the point of rupture!
I was so disappointed that we couldn't try that month, but I also had a small sense of relief because it all seemed to be happening so fast. The next month I came for my first ultrasound and they said that my lining was extremely thin, and I had 2 large cysts on my right ovary. So they put me back on birth control. :( I was then told that they would have to switch medications because I had a few of those RARE side effects from Clomid.
Today I sit and wonder if the medications I took to get pregnant with Wyatt might have played a role in his demise? They say his loss was caused by an early blood clot that bled into my placenta causing him to not be able to grow properly. I keep going back to the question, "What caused that blood clot?" They say the tests all come back normal, so it was just "bad luck." I wonder though if having at least 3 mature eggs released by the HCG shot had something to do with that bad luck. So one became Wyatt, one got stuck in my tube, what happened to the other egg? I have read that in RARE situations an egg can become unattached and cause a bleed. So maybe those rare risks were not lower than the risk of trying this with out the meds?
My doctor feels that my cycle is too messed up to safely do this on our own. It has been soooo long since I have not been pregnant, nursing, or on birth control/other medications. I have no clue what my cycle is like. We had decided to take a break from all this and just enjoy the summer. I am reading books about fertility and charting my temps etc. I was very excited about this plan until today.
I am supposed to go in for that initial ultrasound, but instead, we are going to wait. Everything seems different when planning for the future till that point in time comes. I don't know what I want now. I don't know what we should do. If we try on our own and miscarry, I don't know how I will react. If we take the medications and have birth defects or other complications, I will question myself for ever.
So I sit, phone in hand, waiting for the doctor to call........
