Part 4

After our 3rd IUI, we went in to see Dr. Craig to discuss what was next. He said, let's go for IVF and that was the end of our discussion. We kind of felt rushed, we didn't really get to ask our questions, it just felt like we checked off another thing, lets move on to the next. (I don't think we ever got to talk with him longer than 10 minutes) We went to their IVF class you have to take to be able to do the procedure. Everyone's schedules would be made similar so we would all get the procedure done at the same time. It was how many offices did IVF, we just weren't feeling good about it. Before we decided, my Relief Society President suggested another dr that we should see. Dr. Couvaras. What could it hurt? We had to let the first office know our decision in a certain number of days, so we didn't have a whole lot of time. This was in the middle of June.

We got in to see Dr. Couvaras really quickly and since Coby couldn't make it, my mom went with me. Our first appointment was a couple hours long. We sat in his office and talked about everything. We went through my life starting in my childhood to see if anything could be off with my hormones that might not show up in tests. We went through Coby's timeline too. Dr. Craig is more of a science Dr. He has his procedures and knows his numbers and how much of this med gives a certain result. Dr. Couvaras is a more natural doctor. He wants to try and fix everything as naturally as possible before you do a procedure so you have the best chance and don't have to use as many meds. Both Dr's definitely have their quirks. I wasn't thrilled with how Dr. Couvaras would answer some of our questions. He would get upset and defensive like we were questioning him when really we were just trying to understand, but in the end we felt like he was going to take more time with us to try and help us get the result we wanted. Also our fertility struggle is mainly a male factor, an extremely low sperm count (about 2% of an average male); Dr. Craig never looked at Coby after his analysis... never really tried to improve the count except for one pill. Dr. Couvaras checked his hormones and set up a process to try and improve it with no guarantee, but at least it was a try. He also told us that he would have never done any of the IUI's with us in the first place because unless you have a certain count... you just don't have much of a shot. Turns out we weren't even close to that count that he would want us to have. It was upsetting to hear that you pretty much just wasted your money, but at least we were moving forward.

(Dr. Craig is a great Dr, but I think he concentrates a lot more on female factors than male)

We set up a plan with Dr. Couvaras for our next procedure. He wanted me to do a 2 month hormone balance program to get all of my hormones as balanced as possible so when we did do IVF, we would have our best shot. He also wanted to try a couple things to get Coby's count up. If it sky rocketed, he would consider another IUI, if it didn't, we'd go for IVF.

My 2 month hormone balance program consisted of: 1 shot in the morning of Heparin (a blood thinner: he was worried that the meds weren't getting to where they needed to with thicker blood, so we did this so we would get as much out of the meds as possible), about 8 pills in the morning, one in the afternoon, and 12 at night (most of these pills were vitamins), another shot at night, LOTS of protein every day, almost no carbs (I wasn't too strict on this one when I started losing weight from it), exercise between 4pm and 8pm, go to bed by 10, be up by 6am, and get my blood drawn once a week to make sure my blood wasn't too thin..... the point was to get my body on such a strict schedule to help it get in the best position I could.

All of this and Coby pretty much had to take a couple pills a day and a multi-vitamin.

(Remember how I was terrified of needles... well 2 a day was a new thing for me. It was horrible. If Coby wasn't there they would have never gotten done since I was so chicken to do it myself.)

This is not even the worst of it. I got so many bruises from shots and this was probably average. I would also get these hard lumps under my skin from so many shots in the same places. They had to be in my stomach, about an inch under my belly button, and not far off to the side. Directly under hurt a lot more so we really had a couple spots to constantly do the shots.

I think the eating was the hardest though. I love carbs and trying to limit that as much as possible was so hard. (I might take that back... the sleep thing was so hard for me. I'm such a night owl and NOT a morning person)

After the 2 months my hormones were looking great: good news, however after trying a few different things during those 2 months, we couldn't get Coby's count up at all... on to IVF.