Thursday, February 9, 2012

Thinking Ahead

I reached out to my RE today to see what his thoughts are on a natural IUI.  My Chinese medicine doctor (Dr. S) advised me to go down this route, even right away if I wanted.  He said there was no reason to wait.

This was sort of encouraging to hear.  Our plan has always been to pursue IUI once my health was in good shape according to Dr. S.  However, one of the things he did emphasize was the fact that the IUI be natural -- no ovulation induction drugs like Clomid.  He feels like this is very damaging to the body's health.

My next question to Dr. S was -- well, my periods are irregular, so how would we be able to time the IUI without the drugs?  He said was that the trigger shot is ok to do, and a small pay-off to help the sperm get to where they need to be.  One of the things he speculated was that perhaps since my husband has been working very hard and been very stressed out as of late, that his sperm might be having a hard time getting where they need to go.  So IUI might help us.

By the way, my irregular/long cycles are one of the things we're working on together.  I'm hoping to get my periods to a beautiful 28-29 day cycle.  Right now, they're on the long side, between an average of 33 to 39 days.  I've been taking Chinese herbs for about two cycles.  My first cycle was 36 days long (typical for me).  My second and most recent cycle was 30 days long, which is quite a miracle for me.  I am hopeful that the next few cycles will keep trending towards 28-30 days.

It's funny how before I was TTC, I loved my long cycles because it meant I dealt with my period less, and now they can't come frequently enough!

That's the latest scoop.  I am thinking that if we're not pregnant by May/June, we will pursue natural IUI at this point.  My husband has a huge project he's finishing in March (hopefully), and then we'll have a month or two after that to recover and maybe try to get pregnant on our own.  Also, by that time, I'll hopefully be much healthier according to Dr. S.  And then any IUI we tried would only have that much more of a chance of being successful.

So while we aren't pregnant yet, it does feel good to have a plan in place.  I guess that's all I can ask for for now.