Let the journey begin...

I'm starting this blog now so that in the future I can reflect on this whole IVF experience. The reason I named the blog One More Meatball is that my husband, Mike, is 100% Italian and we are trying to add one more meatball to our sauce. Mike has three children from his previous marriage...Anthony (14), Shelby (13), and Christopher(12).

Mike and I got married July 1, 2006 and in September 2006 I had a melt down. I was ready to be a mom, not a step-mom, but a mom. We threw out the BCP's and said lets see what happens.
Six months into trying I started getting worried and found my wonderful nesties on the TTTC board to vent about my frustrations. Granted I was only 6 months into it and probably could have stayed on the BOTB board but I didn't like the atmosphere. I had a feeling that this was not going to be as easy as the miracle of life video makes it look.

One year rolled around and I was devastated. I went to my annual OB/GYN visit and told my feelings to my OB/GYN. She was wonderful and open minded. She started the testing right away on me and Mike. My hormone level/numbers came back fine but Mike's SA numbers did not. I know everyone is shocked when I tell them we have MFI but that is the case. We don't know if it was all the years in the Army and all those shots they give the soldiers and his age or what it is. We were told to go see an urologist, Dr. G.

Dr. G was very understanding and did all the testing he could. Plus he put Mike on Clomid for 3 months to see if that helped - it did nothing. I was also put on Clomid for 2 cycles and my progesterone approved but it didn't result in a pregnancy of any kind.

So now it's January 2008 and I break down and call an RE office - FCI of Illinois. We went in for our consultation in March 2008 and did all the testing in April 2008. We were at that time totally OOP. Plus we were trying to sell our house and we had already moved in our brand new house. So we had to stop treatments due to money issues.

In May 2008 Mike's grandma passed away. But with this we were left some money...money to help pay for some treatments. So in January 2009 we did our first IUI. I was so excited, nervous, anxious, you name it I was feeling it. But it too resulted in a BFN. Then in February I had a major cyst that made me sit out for a cycle. When March rolled around we had traveling to do...in the beginning of March we went to Canada and the end of March we went on a Cruise to the Bahamas' the most awesome vacation ever! No good time for treatments. In April I found out through my HR manager that my company offers health insurance that covers IF treatments...OMG!!! But I can't sign up for it till July. So now we decided to take a nice long break and get our finances together and wait for the insurance to kick in. I get my Insurance - BCBS of IL - HMO plan. Everything is covered, but FCI of Illinois does not accepted BCBS of IL HMO. So I have to find a new RE. GREAT!!

I find one through my co-worker, Dr. Charles E. Miller and Associates. I set up the appointment in August. Dr. Miller goes over my paperwork and is very disappointed that I did an IUI with Mikes numbers. He suggested right away that we move onto IVF.

So here we are starting our IVF journey. We just finished all of our testing...aka Day 3 B/W and U/S, Mike's repeat SA, and a SHG and an uterus culture. Everything came back normal for me and Mike's numbers are still very low. So we will be proceeding with IVF w/ICSI. My IVF consultation is Friday, October 16th and I get all my drugs tomorrow, October 6th. So I will be posting again with pics of my drugs...LOL.