Zero Babies

Lets talk about fertility shall we?! Or rather infertility I should say. Sorry, it's a lot of words and little pictures. I'm writing it more for me than for anyone else though, so read if you want and don't if you don't. :)  The beginning of our adventure began about 2 and 1/2 years after Josh and I got married. We decided it was time we let nature take its course and I went off birth control. Unfortunately nature isn't always predictable and after several months of no change we realized getting pregnant might not be as easy as we had originally thought. Josh kind of knew the steps that a doctor would take in our situation so we tried for a year before I went to see a doctor, hoping that we could then get a dose of Clomid and it would be an easy fix. After taking a few tests she suggested we try a while longer and didn't think Clomid would do anything.

Fast forwarding a few months. Josh and I decided that I would move to Utah early and look for a job, while he finished up a few rotations before joining me. We knew that we would likely be in Utah for less than a year so I held off on seeing more doctors, knowing that any further steps we would take with our infertility would take longer and cost lots.

More fast forwarding. About 9 months later we found ourselves in Spokane. Since it had been over two years of trying with zero results we decided it was past time I saw a specialist. I began seeing Dr. Robins at the Center for Reproductive Health, and it was lame. (Not my favorite office. It left me feeling like I was just one in a herd of cattle.) After running tests he concluded that we should start with 3 rounds using an ovulation induction drug called FSH. After going through one round Josh and I talked and decided to skip the next two. We had already spent a fair amount of money running tests and rerunning tests. Our insurance offered zero coverage for infertility, making each round cost just under $1,000. Based on the tests we had run there was no reason to believe that ovulation induction was going to be anymore successful than the last two years had been. We opted instead to start saving our fannies off, anticipating spending the big bucks on IVF. (It's really difficult to build up any sort of savings while going through medical school.)

Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward...We spent the rest of our time in Spokane saving as much money as we could, and then after moving to Seattle I met with a doctor from Pacific Northwest Fertility to see if they agreed that IVF should be the next step. They did, and after getting the cost info we realized we would still need more money and continued trying to work and save. The first round of IVF would cost about $15,000. Then we would have to pay several thousand a year to freeze any eggs we wanted to keep for future rounds.

Months later after working, saving, working, saving, working, saving, and working and saving, we were close to having enough money for our first round of IVF. And then we got a surprise.

And since I have no pictures of ...infertility... (I don't even know what that would be.) Here is a picture of our fur child. We love his weirdness.