Re: Share Stories of Successful Fertility Treatments!
some guppans may have noticed that i've mentioned by battles with infertitility in various other threads, but i've never given the low down on my full saga, so...deep breaths..here goes! (SPOILER ALERT...THIS WILL BE A VERY LONG POST, PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!)
My periods have always been very painful, heavy bleeding, debilitating cramps, etc from day one (literally, like from when i started at age 13!), around age 16-17 my mom took to me to various desi lady gynecologist in our community (my mom was in the medical profession as well), and all they did was put me on the pill to help with the heavy periods, and that's basically all it did! As I got older, it kept getting worse...I eventually had to drop out of college because of all the incompletes I was getting from dropping courses because I couldn't even get out of bed! I got married at age 23, and it stayed pretty bad..about a year and a half into our marriage, I had our first miscarriage (i didn't even know I was pregnant), I was at home, started bleeding heavily and passing clots, i literally thought parts of my uterus were passing! My gynecologist said that there was no point in doing a D & C, since it looked like the embryo was gone already (sorry to get so graphic!)...still didn't realize there could be a deeper problem here, just chalked it up to god's will..and since we wern't really planning on starting a family so early in our marriage, didn't really dwell on it...so a couple of more years go by, and my periods get a little easier, and low and behold, I'm late one month...at this point, I started getting a little excited, but still nervous, so I go to the dr, and low and behold, I'm preggers....yay! So we start the whole prenatal routine, blood tests are good, HCG counts where they should be...however, as the weeks progressed, no heartbeat could be detected...kind of weird at 10 weeks, wouldn't you say? By looking at the blood work, everything was fine, but the ultrasounds were sketchy...so finally at 11 1/2 weeks my dr (a total idiot) decideds to call it quits and tells me the pregnancy is not viable and I need to do a D&C...well, turns out that the placenta had attached itself OUTSIDE my uterus, and that I was probably days away from hemorraging!! Oh god, that's when the panic started....so after about 2 months, my mom suggested I switch docs, and we went to another who had more experience with fertitlity issues...so he started us on charting, and taking temps, and blah, blah, blah....miscarriage #3 happened....and then #4, all within 8 weeks gestatational time...ok, Houston, we have a MAJOR problem...that's when Ammi said that enough is enough, we had to call in the big guns....
I made an appointment with a Reproductive Endocronologist who was a colleague of my moms (she was director of the laboratory in the hospital where he practiced, she had set up his IVF lab program), and after spending about 5 minutes looking over all my history, he scheduled me for a laproscopy and other tests so that we could find out what the heck was going on....ok, so it's a simple day surgery procedure...in and out quick...not in my case..here were the findings:
-Stage 4 endemetriosis (dr said in his 30+ yrs of practicing, this was one of the worst cases he had seen) scar tissue had completely taken over my entire reproductive cavity, even attached to my bladder
-left ovary had 21 cysts (in fact, I had never ovulated from my left side), so found out I had PCOS also
-left falopian tube was knotted up with scar tissue.
So, they did a laser cleanup to get rid of as much scar tissue as they could, desolved as many of the cysts as possible, but could not repair the left falopian tube...
I had to go through 10 months of medically induced menopause afterwards to give my body time to heal (monthly lupron injections..yuck) and got on a whole cocktail of meds for the PCOS...(life was literaly hell that year), once my cycle was induced again, went straight into IVF (my dr is very careful and conservative, only implanted 3 embryos) and alhamdullilah, we had a taker! My beautiful boy was born at 38 weeks, 7 1/2 lbs, total uncomplicated pregnancy (had a 3 hour labor, totally natural, no epidural, no episiotomy)...when we first started, we were told that because of my condition, I should not plan on having kids past age 30, so either stop at 1, or try IVF again right away..this is where it got tricky..my husband was very relunctant to have me go through all the shots and prodding and poking again, but I was adamant,so we did IVF again, and....concieved our twins!
The pregnancy with the twins was hard, lots of bleeding, complete bed rest from 26 weeks, the twins were born at 33 weeks, one was normal birth, one was c-section, both were in NICU for some time....
End of story is that when my twins turned 2 yrs, I had a complete hysterectomy to end my problems once and for all....the day of my 6 week follow up, I had to take my mom to ER for some chronic stomach pain she had been having, and we found out that she had cancer...STAGE 4 UTERAN cancer...she passed away 7 months later. Throughout my mom's ordeal it finall dawned on us that when my dr kept pressing for family history, we failed to mention that my mother's side of the family was full of uteran & ovarian cancer cases...
I thank Allah everyday I had the good sense to have my hysterectomy and that HE blessed us with three beautiful boys...ameen!