Infertility Journey: Part 2

Welcome back to our infertility journey. If you missed part 1, check it out here.

Because appointments take so long to schedule, by the time I was able to meet my new OB, we were officially trying for a year and a half, in the winter of January 2017. But, this new OB was not like my last, she was cold, and you could tell she really didn’t care. Instead of directly recommending us to a fertility clinic, she recommend us to a Nurse Practioner that specializes in fertility within their practice. Romy and I knowing no different took the recommendation and met with the N.P. again excited for our next journey, assuming we would be pregnant soon.

Our first visit with the N.P. was great, no red flags, she started to have tests drawn: my progesterone levels, Romy’s sperm count, all of the tests we had done came back great, no apparent issues. They recommended we start tracking my ovulation cycles, which would help them figure out when to schedule possible IUI’s (Intrauterine Insemination-or as I explained to our family the turkey baster method), we actually felt like we were getting somewhere.

But this process was definitely not fast, we soon found out that I didn’t ovulate on a regular scheduled (heck I have never had a regular period and I didn’t think much of it), thus we had to start medically assisting my follicle development. Of course, through this process, we also found that I had few ovarian cysts, no cause for concern, except it altered my medication, instead of using the popular choice of Chlomid, I was proscribed Letrozole. The plan was that I would come in day one of my period for an ultrasound to track the development of my follicles. Once my follicles were over 15mm, we could then schedule an IUI (some months they didn’t grow large enough, pushing out our process).  In the 8 months, we saw this N.P. we did 3 IUI’s that were all unsuccessful. Honestly, the whole IUI process was a pretty terrible experience and extremely slow.  On our last IUI, she suggested that if it didn’t work we should try a fertility clinic. She had recommended 2 local Milwaukee clinics but strongly urged us to Froedert & the Medical College Reproductive Medicine. 

Again, without wasting a beat (I don’t think we knew if the last IUI was successful or not yet) I called right away and ended up getting an appointment set up very soon after (apparently there was a cancelation in the schedule-THANK THE POWERS THAT BE, but normally their normal new patient waitlist is pretty long). I can tell you that our experience between Froedert and the N.P. were night and day. At Froedert we were thoroughly walked through all of our test results and the IUI’s that the N.P. had performed, and given MANY reasons why they should have never performed them. Basically, the 8 months of work with the N.P. were null and void in our doctor’s eyes. So again, we were starting over, 2 years after starting this journey, but this time felt right.

I can’t tell you how much anger we had after finding out that the N.P. basically screwed us out of a lot of money, but more importantly time. In my writing our infertility journey, I hope that I can give someone the knowledge we didn’t have to not make our mistakes. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

Stayed tuned for next weeks final post on our infertility journey.