Doctor Visit #3

It was finally Tuesday, and we were going to get some answers!! Our "phone" appointment was scheduled for 3:15. As it approached I was very nervous, I tried writing stuff down that I wanted to talk to her about but when it came to writing my thoughts down on paper, I  forgot half the stuff I wanted to ask! Annoying, I know! Finally the phone rang and Jorry and I were prepared with the voice recorder... Yes, I recorded it so that as we come to find out these answers I wouldn't forget what she said!! She first started out by saying that all of my "blood clotting" blood work came back negative (as I have told you before) :) I then asked about the HSG because lets be honest that was my biggest concern! This was her response "Now, the HSG that I reviewed actually looked FINE!" what????? NOT what I was expecting......  then she continued "I know that when, Brooke performed it, she was a little concerned because she thought it looked like the dye was leaking sideways into your Fallopian tube when actually it looked like it was just leaking back down into the vagina, which is totally normal, that almost always happens when doing an HSG." She also said that she reviewed my HSG test with another Doctor that was working that same day and they both agree that you could clearly see my right Fallopian tube coming off and going a different direction than where the "leak" was. Now, if you've never had an HSG test done before, you probably don't know what the Fallopian tube looks like.. It looks like a really long, squiggly hair strand very thin and you can't see it very well. That is how they are suppose to look.

Let me back up a bit, I wanted to tell you my thoughts when we were first going into this HSG test. In my head I thought FOR SURE that I had scar tissue lining my uterus, because of my 2 d&c's and that was why all these embryo's weren't able to implant. Makes sense right? I thought so. I was pretty dead set on it. I was hoping for scar tissue because its an easy fix, just send me into surgery and remove it.. Boy, was I wrong.. there was absolutely NO scar tissue lining anything! Bummer... Now what could it be? When they told me it was Hydrosalpinx aka tubal infection, I thought "yes! at least an answer, that's why all of this is happening!!" Then with Dr. Conway's findings, that was not it either.... sigh...

So anyway, she said that both of my tubes were absolutely normal and that there is nothing that we need to do to further evaluate my tubes! sweet...

On to the Semen Analysis.... 

Dr. Conway said that this was the only thing she found a little abnormal, but nothing too major. There are 3 things they look for in doing a Semen Analysis and those are...

#1 Sperm Count
#2 Morphology
#3 Motility

They like the sperm count to at least be 20 million in every male and Jorry's was 42 MILLION!!!! (woop woop) So that was great, it was double than the normal cutoff!! The other part is Morphology, looking at the shape of the sperm. They like it to be 4% or greater and Jorry's was right at 4% shaped normally. I know that sounds really, really low but they are super strict at scoring the shape and since he was right at 4% even though that's pretty borderline, that still shouldn't be a problem. So it is still considered to be totally normal! So that's good. The only thing was a little abnormal was the motility, the way the sperm are moving. They like to see at least 40% moving and his was 23%. :( so the concern was pretty mild. Nothing too abnormal. She said "its interesting ya know, because you guys haven't really HAD TROUBLE conceiving." If the morphology was really low or the sperm count was really low that would maybe give more of an explanation as to why this keeps happening, but because its so borderline abnormal it's not really the reason we are having these issues with miscarriages. :(

We are falling into that category of somewhat unexplained. 

One other thing that Dr. Singer check for was my thyroid, normal for the thyroid is 4 or lower and mine was in the normal range which is 3.59. In fertility, newer studies have been proven that if your thyroid is even at 2.5 or higher that can increase your chances of miscarriage in the first trimester. Since mine is at 3.59 they are putting me on a super low dose of Synthyroid medication only for pregnancy, so it won't be a lifetime thing before they start me on any kind of treatment. Oh and I'll also be taking a baby aspirin once a day! 

Since our first Doctor's appointment with Dr. Conway, we've been talking about genetic testing. Genetic testing, is suuuuper expensive so I am hoping that those give us some answers because to be honest, its our last resort!!! Even though Jorry and I may have normal genetics, when an embryo is "forming" sometimes those genetics get twisted, or messed up that it creates abnormal genetics for the baby and its just natures way of getting rid of it before it get too far into pregnancy. IF the genetic testing comes back abnormal, well we will probably never be able to conceive a "normal" healthy baby on our own :( we still have a chance to conceive a healthy baby but that might include 3 or 5 more miscarriages before we get 1 healthy one. Ya, we can still try but I can't go through any more miscarriages and the heartache when we want one so badly. With that being said, IF either mine or Jorry's genetics are abnormal our option is to do IVF (Invetro fertilization) with PGD testing (embryo genetic testing). If they are normal, we are still going to spend the money and do IVF with PGD anyway to reduce our chances of miscarriages.

As of this very second this is all the information we have to share with you. We are going in for blood work today for the Karyotype on both Jorry and I. We will get those results back in two weeks and I will share with you the results of those tests.

This is hard for us because it would be so much easier if we could just do this on our own, but unfortunately we've tried and it doesn't get us very far.. So we are taking it day by day and doing our very best and hoping for the very best.

I hope you've enjoyed my blogs so far, I hope to share more with you as we go on! Please keep us in your prayers!!

XOXO