BBTs and Fertility Drugs

BBT
For those of you who don't know, this stands for basal body temperature. Kind of on a whim, when I wasn't allowed to start trying yet in February, I decided to start measuring my basal body temperature. This is your temperature immediately upon waking after at least 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I borrowed a book from a friend and did some reading about it. I hoped "temping", as I've come to lovingly refer to it, might give me some information to help in our baby quest. Temping really tells you one main thing, when you ovulated. Your temp is down (mine is around 97.7) before you ovulate and then it magically rises the day after you ovulate (mine goes to around 98.3). Not a huge difference, but if you graph it every day, it's certainly a big enough spike that there's an obvious difference. I knew I ovulated, but I wanted to know more about my cycle. One of my main theories was that I had a luteal phase defect. This means the time between ovulation and the start of menstruation isn't long enough. An average luteal phase is 14 days, a "sufficient" luteal phase is 10-11, sources vary. Anything less than 10 is very unlikely to produce a successful pregnancy. Well, I knew I had a short cycle, 25 days on average instead of 28 like most people, but I wasn't sure if those three days were shaved off the pre-ovulatory phase or the luteal phase. So, I started temping.
This was very inconvenient in our lives, because we also happen to have a two year old who really didn't want to stay in bed. For the first two months of temping, she was up in the middle of the night, coming into our room and requiring "someone" (husband) to get up and bring her back to bed. If I got out of bed to help her, it would mess up my temp. So we divided into shifts, anything before 2am, I would handle, that would allow me 3 hours consecutive sleep before temp time. Anything after would be him. Conveniently, Adelyn really only woke up around 5am, so all the duty fell to my dear husband! Luckily we have all of that sorted out now (we put a gate on her door, works even if we don't close it!!), but I thought I would throw something in here about what a pain this was for us. It also means no sleeping in, ever (not that we could with a two year old around).
Even with all the difficulties, I found the information very useful. My luteal phase was 9 days the first cycle, and 11 days the second. Borderline for a luteal phase defect, but I also noticed that my temp wasn't stable in the luteal phase. It would regularly dip down below my cover line (the line that indicates your highest pre-ovulatory temp). I definitely thought something was fishy.
Fertility Drugs
In March we went back to the reproductive endocrinologist for a sonogram to see if we could start our first cycle of fertility treatments. We were finally cleared and good to go, so I met with the nurse to learn how to give myself injections (!!!) and how to order these drugs. The trick to this is timing. The timing starts from the first day of your period. Once you start your period, you have to go in for a sono to make sure the ovaries are ready to go (no cysts). This can be on day two or three of the cycle depending on when they're able to schedule you. If everything is ok, my treatment plan was to start taking clomid on day 3 (possibly the same day you just got told you were ok to start treatment) and then you start taking the injections on day 5. The injections are only available from a specialty pharmacy, and obviously each time I needed them was on the weekend. Both treatment cycles I ordered drugs Friday with Saturday delivery so I could start taking them Sunday night. Jeesh! One of them was the Friday before PKU camp, so I was rushing around trying to procure some clomid to take that night and arrange for my drugs to be delivered while I was away for the weekend. Ridiculous!
My first treatment cycle was and wasn't a success. I didn't end up pregnant, so big fail there. But my luteal phase was better. That cycle it was 11 days, with each and every day above my coverline. None of the bouncing around I had seen with the un-medicated cycles. I was pleased enough with that that I was only moderately disappointed with not being pregnant. So, I started my period, and back in the doctors office for a sono to see about another treatment cycle. This time, no dice. Cysts all over. I think there were 8 in total. This is apparently a normal reaction to fertility drug stimulation. Still, let me again say how much it SUCKS to want to be pregnant and have to use birth control!! I think most couples going through fertility treatments don't use birth control the months that they aren't on treatment. Perhaps the chance of getting pregnant is less, but hey, any chance is a chance right? Not for us. I just knew we would get pregnant, we had every other time. And I just knew that would mean another miscarriage. It was awful, but each and ever time we were tempted to throw caution to the wind, I would remember my New Year's resolution - no more miscarriages!!!
So we sat out a month, and I went to grief class and my luteal phase was erratic. Every one around me in the whole world was pregnant. I was sad. And by the way, ovarian cysts HURT!
I went back with my period again, and this time, no cysts. So we raced around (this was the pre-PKU camp treatment cycle) and got the drugs and did the treatment.  So to walk you through the end of a treatment cycle. I started injections on day five, continued with clomid days 3-8, then injections through day 10. Then into the office for a sono to see how the follicles are coming along. I went in on Friday, May 10th and had three mature follicles. This means ready to trigger. So that night I gave myself the HCG shot, which is used to trigger ovulation. We scheduled our intrauterine insemination (IUI) for May 12th. Mother's Day. We hadn't tried the IUI with the first cycle, but the drugs are expensive, and we decided the chance for success was better with the IUI, so we would go for it and throw all of our eggs in one basket so to speak. IUI is not a romantic procedure, but we went in together, so at least we were both in the room. And then we were sent on our way for the two week wait.
Everyone talks about this two week wait. That's the time between ovulation and when you're supposed to start your period if you're not pregnant (a luteal phase if you remember). For me, it's really only ever been 11 days at most. All the while, I'm temping. I was glad to see my temps well above the coverline and even a few spiking up to 98.7, higher than I had EVER seen my temp before. I just knew I was pregnant. So, 9 days past ovulation (DPO) I took a pregnancy test. I swear there was the faintest second pink line. It was so faint though that if I blinked it was gone. Also, because the trigger shot is HCG, you run the risk of a false positive pregnancy test if you take one too early. So, obviously, I took one at 10 DPO - still too faint to be sure my eyes aren't playing tricks on me. At 11 DPO, the line is still very faint, faint enough I can't even get a picture of it to send to my husband who is out of town, but I swear it is there. And it can't be a false positive if it's getting stronger right!?!! The pregnancy test at 12 DPO was positive enough for a pic, and I was sure by then. 12 days was longer than any of my luteal phases previously.
Yay hooray! We are pregnant. So now begins the obsession that only someone with multiple miscarriages can really commiserate with, but I thought I would invite you to share some of my insanity in the next post.