Thursday, September 14, 2006

A Baby from a Pill?!?

History, Part V - Clomid Fertility Treatments

Clomid is a drug that makes a woman ovulate multiple eggs. The Clomid fertility treatments work like this –

  1. Tracking Ovulation: They track a woman’s cycle for two to three months so they know when she ovulates.
  2. Taking Clomid: Five days prior to ovulation, the woman begins taking a nightly regimen of 50mg Clomid tablets.
  3. Ultra Sound: When ovulation occurs, the Clomid-induced multiple eggs drop, ready for fertilization. In order to maximize the potential for fertilization, they place ‘washed’ sperm (only the best of the boys) as close to the eggs as possible in a process known as Inter Uterine Insertion, or IUI. Prior to the IUI, the woman returns to the clinic for an ultra sound to make sure that the eggs are ready.
  4. Inter Uterine Insertion: If all is well, the woman & the man return to the clinic, the man gives a sample, the clinic ‘washes’ it, and then inserts into the woman using a long, thin, plastic needle

If all goes well, 10 -14 days later, the woman is pregnant. If you are thinking of using this method, be forewarned; it only increases the chance of pregnancy by less than 25%.

That is, more or less, how it goes (from a layman’s perspective).

Here is how it went for us -

  1. During testing, they tracked P.Pie’s ovulation, so we were ahead of the game.
  2. She took the Clomid. Because it really knocks your hormones way out of whack, she had weird dreams and was pretty emotional.
  3. PROBLEM: At the ultra sound, they discovered that the eggs (three of them!) were not dropping properly - we have since decided that this was probably the reason we weren’t getting pregnant in the first place. So they gave us a prescription for a shot that we were to inject P.Pie with before going to bed, ostensibly to get the eggs moving. We did that. *Side Note: I did a hilarious impression of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction during the “Overdose” scene with Uma Thurman. Funny stuff.
  4. We went in, I gave a donation, they inserted it, and we were on our way.

Two weeks is a long time to wait… especially for a pair of "GenX want it now"ers.

We were on pins and needles.