Me and my Uterus...

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If the title hasn't given you warning enough, I will be talking about my lady bits in this post. I understand that not everyone finds my uterus as fascinating as I do so, if that's the case for you, may I suggest you go here instead.

As I mentioned previously, the Boy and I are now using the services of a new fertility clinic. Our initial appointment was great. The new doctor (Dr. K, as she will be called) is new to the clinic and was thorough and seemed keen throughout the hour that we spent with her. We went over all the usual mumbo-jumbo regarding our health and TTC history, she gave us some lab requisitions for blood work (my old friend!), and gave me a prescription

for progesterone. This last item is to help lengthen out my LP or luteal phase, for those of you not in the know. I had often wondered if maybe taking progesterone would help at all but my last doc never seemed to think so. Anyway, I'm now fully stocked, so we'll see what happens with that.

After we finished our chat, Dr. K surprised me with an ultrasound. Never one to turn down the chance to look at my insides, I agreed. At a fertility clinic, this is generally done with a transvaginal ultrasound wand, because it provides better images of the uterus and ovaries than an abdominal ultrasound. There are few things as uncomfortable as having something jammed up against one's cervix, but this is all part of the fun of trying to produce a new human. While she was poking around, Dr. K noticed two things - first, that I had what she thought might be a polyp in my uterus and second, that my antral follicle count (follicles that are big enough to be seen and counted) was a little low for my age. Dr. K phrased this as my ovaries looking 'older' than they should for my age. I prefer to think that they're just lazy. They're probably procrastinators and are thinking about producing more follicles tomorrow.

That was pretty much the end of our appointment. Dr. K didn't sound terribly concerned about it and said we'd stick with the plan of my using progesterone for awhile, then we'd move on to Clomid and if still no success, we'd look at more aggressive treatments i.e. IUI or IVF. I was also booked in for a hysteroscopy for a closer look at my uterus (an appointment which occured yesterday!).

All in all, it was a successful first appointment. I left feeling like we'd actually learnt more in that hour than we had in the past year or two at the last clinic. We have new things to try and I finally feel like we have some kind of game plan, rather than just 'wait and see'. I don't want to disparage my last doctor but I do feel like there were wasn't much effort on his part to help me conceive. Having said that, I am aware that he is terribly busy, is the only doctor at his clinic, and that IUI and IVF are what pay the bills.

I don't want this post getting out of hand, so I'll bring you Part Two: My Uterus on T.V! tomorrow.