Known vs anonymous donor feels like a huge decision… but it also feels like one that we will probably make (if we get that far) because of structural factors and timelines rather than a coherent position. Is that awful?
I wish the donor coordinator would call me already! I’ve been waiting a day and a half to even hear from my nurse.
Hello, I am back to not being pregnant again. Today I heard from my doctor and she said that once my situation resolves with this new miscarriage, I should come in to get a general blood panel, a thyroid panel, and to check for clotting disorders. She also wants to make sure I have a filled prescription on hand for progesterone so that I can use it during the TWW each month to support any possible pregnancy. So once I’m done bleeding, I will make the appointment.
I think I’ll spend some time later today organizing my fertility supplies.
I know I need to strain my tinctures (vitex, motherwort, black cohosh).
I also need to mix a new batch of my smoothie mix. For a while, I was doing detox greens (chlorella, spirulina, barley grass) in it, but I honestly feel like I’m properly detoxified since I barely drink anymore, use a Berkey filter, and have mostly cut plastic and chemical products out of my life. And I switched my NAC, ALA, and vitamin C to pills because I was having trouble getting to the smoothie every day so my intake was inconsistent. I’m way more consistent with supplement pills. So that leaves for the smoothie mix just plant-based protein (I use a hemp-heart-based one), maca, fenugreek, ashwagandha, and cinnamon. Which are the tasty ones, so maybe I won’t drag my feet about drinking it quite so much.
Lastly, I think I will make a pitcher of my iced “fertili-tea”: decaf green tea, red clover, red raspberry leaf, and nettle. I added a few drops of bergamot oil to the blend when I made it, so there’s a very slight earl grey vibe to it too. I like it very lightly sweetened with a tiny bit of maple syrup. I try to drink it during the first half of my cycle.
I’m turning over in my mind the whole “full-fat dairy” thing. I’ve been, for the most part, avoiding dairy while I work on my sinuses, with the exception of sometimes a teaspoon or so of cheese sprinkled on a salad. Last night I had a bowl of real ice cream for the first time in months, as a balm for my soul, and it was . . . fine? I mean, it was delicious, but it wasn’t like a passionate, engulfing feeling of reunion.
I feel like the advice to eat plant-based protein and the advice to eat full-fat dairy somewhat contradict each other since, before mostly dropping dairy, I was depending on it as a vegetarian (though obviously not vegan) protein source. We eat lots of nuts and beans and lentils and tempeh and tofu, and some Beyond meats (and, to a lesser degree, other faux meats), as our plant-based protein. We avoid seitan because it disagrees with Swan. We also eat organic, pasture-raised eggs and wild-caught seafood, usually having eggs almost every day and seafood 1–3 times per week (shrimp, salmon, and cod). So we’ve got the protein covered.
But if full-fat dairy is really so good for fertility, maybe I should add some yogurt back in? And keep doing a little ice cream? I just . . . I’m afraid of further irritating my sinuses. I’m weighing it back and forth—if I have to choose between fertility and sinuses, fertility wins, I guess?
I already eat absurdly healthily, aside from a slight chocolate bar dependence, so I’m not really concerned about changing my diet at all. The dairy is just the one thing that’s on my mind that I keep getting stuck on.
Sorry you’re back in this thread 
Do you want comments on either of the spoilers topics?
Sure! Any feedback always welcome!
I’m sorry to hear that, @wooljaguar. I have no helpful advice but am sending you good vibes.
Got some good news from fertility testing that I’ll spoiler in case anyone isn’t feeling it. For anyone who doesn’t know me here, I’m in a two-uterus marriage, so we’re doing fertility testing to see how to proceed with our little family.
I had my AMH tested back in October 2019, when I was 31, and it was measured at 1.08. I’ve been a little worried about it, especially since I have 21-day cycles. I had it tested again a few weeks ago, and it was measured at 1.97. I know nothing is a guarantee, but it’s a relief that it didn’t get worse, and my other results look solid too.
Would anyone here have a sense of why the numbers are so different? I probably have fewer healthy habits than I did back in 2019, so it’s not an embrace of clean living.
No? Maybe? If it’s a very important thing to have known genetics and you override that out of haste, then you’re setting yourself up for unease with your/your child’s story. If it’s one factor that you’re weighing against other factors and it’s not necessary but a “nice to have” then that’s just a really common pro/con calculus in the fertility world and I wouldn’t worry about it very long. Hopefully you get some information soon.
I’m sorry. Despite what the statistics might say, two losses is still common and in the realm of “normal” for human reproduction, but I’m glad your doctor is taking a proactive approach regardless. If something is found, there is usually something that can be done. If nothing is found, you’re in the “human reproduction is shit, no really actually compared to most mammals it is super shit” category and it’s more of a numbers game.
Is it full fat dairy itself that is recommended, or a matter of if eating dairy then choose full fat? I think the low fat dairy recommendations have been shown to be relatively unideal for a lot of things, but if dairy is just absent from your diet I wouldn’t have thought that was a concern.
I’m . . . not sure? I haven’t been able to figure it out online. I know it says low-fat is bad, and I don’t have to worry about that because I’ve never much cared for low-fat anything. But I am pretty sure that I read that milk fat is shown to have positive effect. I am definitely in an “every little bit counts” kind of mindset at this point. I know it’s possible for people to get pregnant if they are, say, vegans or lactose intolerant, because clearly people do. But at 39 with two back-to-back losses and no living children, and also not vegan or lactose intolerant, I’m kinda willing to do it if it might help, even a little bit? As long as my sinuses don’t suffer too much. I haven’t even confirmed that it contributes to the problem, really. I’ve just read that—my own experience is kinda all over the place.
A good friend of mine who is my age just announced her pregnancy and posted a cute little video of a wiggling ultrasound.
I am very happy for her because I know she’s wanted this for a super long time and also because her life is coming together amazingly. (Within the past year, she moved to a warmer country, her mom moved from the states to be closer to her, her husband got inducted into the rock hall of fame, and she bought an AMAZING house that I am looking forward to visiting once I finally have the time and money to go abroad.) They just started trying when they got their house and she apparently got pregnant on the first try!
I am feeling a little forlorn at the same time though. As someone who has never gotten to the “creature on the ultrasound is big enough to wiggle” stage of a pregnancy, it’s hard not to feel sad and wonder when it will be my turn. Just in these less-than-five months since my first miscarriage, seven people I know have announced their pregnancies, all within my age cohort (+/- two years). I am happy for them, but mannnn.
I am having THE WORST time trying to get this progesterone prescription filled.
I got a call from the “preauthorization department” (of what, I am honestly not sure, maybe the medical group?) from a very young-sounding woman who said that the particular progesterone that my doctor prescribed, Endometrin, is almost never approved and is super expensive (which, yeah, I checked on that, it was $1300). She said that one way for me to get what I need is to not involve the insurance at all but rather find a compounding pharmacy that will compound the suppositories for me and charge less. She said she’d call some places and I should too.
So I called around to five different compounding pharmacies. Most of them don’t even make suppositories. The one that did said it’d be $300 and when I balked at the price, name-dropped some doctor whose name I didn’t recognize and when I said that I didn’t know who that was they were like something something Kardashians. Los Angeles, I swear. 
I finally called the preauth chick back to tell her I was striking out, and she said she’d found a place that’ll do it for $165. That’s still really expensive for 48 days of prescription, but it’s better than $300 and a lot better than $1300.
So now I have to hear back from my doctor to make sure she even recommends this non-insurance, non-official-medicine way of doing things.
I know my insurance doesn’t cover infertility but, like, if seems like if I might need a hormone supplement for my body to properly do regular body things, (even if that body thing is procreate), then that should be a thing that they pay for. I feel like, OK, I can take the blame for my shitty eggs because I waited so long and that’s life, but if there’s a hormone thing or a structural thing that is actually wrong with my body it doesn’t make sense to me that the insurance doesn’t cover getting body back into whatever regular non-fucked body condition should be.
Speaking of infertility coverage, yeah, my plan has none, but I found a PDF online that seems to suggest that the type of HMO that I have could have it as a supplement?? IDK even what insurance supplements are or how they work or how I would go about trying to get it added. I didn’t see the option anywhere when I signed up for my plan. Any ideas?
And we’re starting to rethink the idea that we can’t afford IVF if we strike out a third time, pregnancy-wise. After all, we have nearly half of our savings goal for [a house + 3 months expenses] in the bank account, and I just got a raise. I feel like we could wait a little longer for a new home, but not really for a baby. When I first thought that, we were impossibly broke. But we’re not broke anymore. (Negative net worth, sure, but it’s all student loans that I have IBR for.) I’m pretty worried about chromosomal stuff at this point—if my doctor says things look OK in terms of my bloodwork and that she doesn’t spot any reason why I shouldn’t be able to keep supporting pregnancies, I feel like chromosome stuff would be the main issue. So if IVF were to let me perhaps circumvent that by testing, IDK, maybe it’s worth a shot.
Price varies radically for IVF, but I’d think in LA you’d have a pick of clinics. Chromosomal testing is super expensive though since only a couple companies do it and you ship out to them- generally an extra $4-8k per cycle depending on how many embryos you get. And the science is a bit conflicted on how accurate it really is. We know the testing for specific conditions is good, like if youre a CF family, but the general testing (used to be called PGS I think it’s like PGA now or something?) is less clear right now. Makes me worry I discarded and entire cycle of viable embryos after all 
anyway, that’s a tricky one!
Wait, so it might not even WORK?! So, like, if my problem is shitty chromosomes, I wouldn’t be any better off than I am now? By which I mean that now I seem to have not much of a real problem getting pregnant (5 cycles the first time and two cycles the second time) but the little critters just don’t make it. I was thinking if there was a way of selecting so that they have a better chance of making it, then that might give me a leg up. If that’s not even true, then it’s probably not worth it?
IVF in general should give you much better odds, because you can control so many factors. (Injecting the best sperm right in if there’s any male factor issues, placing the embryo in the uterus so CM isn’t an issue, ensuring endometrial thickness). But the “virtually guaranteed no miscarriages if you chromosomally test” isn’t as clear cut as we thought it was.
I’ve been lurking in this thread since I’m not actively trying to get pregnant, but I got progesterone suppositories at a compounding pharmacy on my doctor’s advice. Hopefully yours is able to get back to you soon on whether they are supportive of that plan.
(But in general, blah to insurance not covering this sort of thing!)
I got progesterone suppositories at a non-compounding pharmacy, so like @Sunflower I have 
that your doc approves the ones the insurance person found.
I found out that there is no wait list for donated embryos! If we decide to do it, we can start anytime. The big downside is that we can’t genetically test them, but… I didn’t test mine! And these would be much, much prettier than the embryos I made. None of this 3bc* nonsense. And I have always kind of wanted to have a third baby and not know the sex and wait to be surprised (competing desire: to choose a girl based on genetic testing).
*If you are not familiar with embryo grades, that’s an embryo that, IF it’s genetically normal, has a 28% implantation rate… but it wasn’t tested, so cut that by at least half, maybe two-thirds. That was my last transfer.
@frogger, I don’t think that I do have strong feelings about it, and I know my husband doesn’t! I think I am prepared to honor the wishes of the donating parents. (Tiny oddness: assistant to the coordinator that I talked to didn’t seem to know what the Donor Sibling Registry is? But I would probably look into it.)
None off the possibilities available to me are perfect or free of ethical quandaries, but this one sounds pretty promising!
I just discovered that the gross-ass tinctures (vitex, black cohosh, motherwort) that I’d made for myself to take in the first half of my cycle are actually palatable in a small glass of grapefruit juice. Since I’m already expecting bitterness, they just add an interesting herbal/earthy note instead of being bitter and disgusting. So that’s a win.
Plot twist: I don’t have to worry about compounding because the doctor was able to convince the insurance to cover the original prescription for Endometrin. Not sure yet what my copay will be but it’s bound to be better than the $165 I was looking at for compounding.
In an inch of undiluted cranberry concentrate works too!
For a second I thought you meant instead of endometrin and I was like, I don’t think that’s a good substitute 
. I am relieved to see that is NOT what you meant.
And also that @wooljaguar’s insurance is going to cover it. Woo hoo! I mean, it is terrible stuff and it stains and I hate it, but at least you won’t be overpaying!
I have opk sticks now. So I think that means actual trying. And hopefully also actively avoiding one cycle