Feeling Kind of Stupid

First of all, I love my RE. He's great. He's the first doctor I've had in a long time who I feel like I have real discussions with about my course of treatment. A really important quality in a doctor, and one I haven't had in a long time. It's kind of sad because as a result I realized that I left out an important piece of information, that I spot a lot in my luteal phase. Because my OB had tested my progesterone levels and they were sky high, I assumed that it wasn't relevant. My RE was a little shocked that I hadn't mentioned it before and is definetely putting me on suppositories the next cycle. What he said pretty much boiled down to, it doesnt' matter what your blood levels are, you are spotting and we need to stop it. So, now I feel stupid for censoring myself, and feel like it could seriously have effected all of these failed months of getting pregnant. Well, I can only move on from here.

So, we decided that the best course of action would be to add Chlomid and progesterone to the next IUI. This month, E's sperm actually tripled in quantity from 3 to 9 million, post wash. Which is great, but points to there being more of a problem than just male factor. Originally, I thought I would be doing injectibles this month, just to put me on the path to make sure my health insurance would pay for IVF when the time came, but I felt like I would be doing it just for insurance reasons and I was pretty uncomfortable with it considering I don't seem to have any ovulation issues. My RE thinks (in a vacuum where insurance isn't an issue) that the chlomid might just do the job, improving egg quality as well as improving the hormonal environment around ovulation, IUI should help with sperm issues, and progesterone with any luteal phase issues. It makes sense to me. He says that if we haven't done injectibles by the time he feels that IVF is really the way to go (he and I both don't feel it's necessary yet), then he'll pull the male factor card for our health insurance to approve it. He seemed pretty confident it wouldn't be an issue, and I appreciate that I'll be treated based on what is medically best for me and not what the insurance thinks is necessary. So, here's hoping that this new approach will be what I need to get pregnant.

9 dpIUI # 3

And blood. Spotting already. Seriously, I don't even get to have any extra days of hope this month.

The hopeful side of me says it could be implantation bleeding, but the realistic side of me knows that I start spotting anywhere from 7 dpo to 11dpo and I'm still not pregnant.

IUI #3 was pretty painless this month, besides the stress of my husband being in reserve duty and having a hard time getting to my monitoring sessions because my daughter was sick. But besides that everything was fine. My follicle was only at 18mm when he triggered me but I was so sick of going for blood work and u/s's that I was just happy to have everything decided. I guess it had another 36 hours to grow plus I trust my RE has plenty of experience so I was comfortable with the decision.

RE appointment tomorrow morning to possibly start a medicated IUI, for insurance purposes more than anything else.