Let's play catch up!

OK...here it goes. I've tried to write this MANY times. But I always delete it for some reason. Maybe because I secretly hope it's all just a nightmare. Never the less...you faithful follower deserve to know what the heck is going on and how baking a little muffin is going.

I'm just going to cut it to you straight.

We got some devastating news in November that Mr. Muffin has very very very few swimmers. Yup. So not only do we have female IF but now we get severe MFI (male factor infertility) also. HOW AWESOME IS THAT??!?! ::sarcasm::

Normal sperm count should be 20-40 million per milliliter. Most SA's collected are around 2 milliliter so that should be about 40-80 (+/-) million total.

Mr. Muffin's November SA showed .8 million.
Mr. Muffin's December SA showed .1 million (yes, as in 100,000)

Normal motility (forward progression) is around 60%

Mr. Muffin's both times was at 30%

To say we were shocked and rocked to our core is an understatement. We jumped from me doing one round of Clomid to being told that IVF w/ICSI is our only option for a biological child. Here is a quick (less than 2 minutes) video about ICSI.

This past Monday we had our RE appointment in KC. We've chosen to go to KU Med Center for Advanced Reproductive Medicine. Our RE is Dr. Kim and we really like him. I was nervous that I wouldn't understand him very well since he's Chinese, I was just afraid I'd have to ask him to repeat things lol. I wish I could say we got some good news...but really we didn't. I felt so bad for J, after our consultation he had to do another SA. I mean we were just told how craptastic our reproductive organs were and then he's expected to go "do his thing" while I get another ultra sound aka meeting w/the dildo cam.

Last spring, my ovaries showed just a few follicles. But according to Dr. B (my OBGYN) this didn't throw up any red flags. So for the past year, I was under the impression (you know b/c I thought I could trust my doctor) that I had PCOS but did not have polysistic ovaries. (If you're confused I'm sorry, google is your friend). Dr. Kim put the prob in and was shocked to see that my ovaries were completely filled with follicles. Luckily there was a KU Med student in the room so it was cool that he explained things to her and I just laid and listened. He told her to look closely because my little ovaries were uncommon in the PCOS world.

Normal ovaries (that ovulate every month) have 1-2 follicles in each one. Most polysistic ovaries have 10-12 follicles and they lines the edge of the ovary creating a "sting of pearl" affect.

Pretty huh!! Yeah just kidding. Not pretty at all. This is not my ovary but I just wanted to give you an example of what a polysistic ovary looks like. So the reason why mine were a little more rare (according to Dr. Kim) was that one of my ovaries had 15 follicles and the other had 17. YIKES! I was pretty emotional and very shocked. I did have that "string of pearl" look but I had some big extra ones in the middle. My poor ovaries are just full of these nasty fluid filled follicles that can turn into cysts.

Ughhh...it's just so much to take in. We had a IVF consultation meeting and talked to a financial coordinator all in one visit. When we left it was raining and I felt like the Heavens were crying with us. We were dazed-what are we going to do!?!?! We need like 16k to do IVF w/ICSI and we're 100% OOP. The lady who deals with the insurance claims said she would call  my insurance and prescription providers and see if any of our IVF meds would be covered. Every one at the office seemed to really be on our team, which was awesome.

I know this is a long post and I'm sorry. It's just been a crazy few months and I wanted to update you. Tomorrow morning I go in again for a 2 hour glucose tolerance test and more blood work. We should hear back either tomorrow or Monday about J's most recent SA results. I'll go back to KU Med at the end of March to regroup and try to plan an IVF cycle (can't believe I'm even typing that). We're praying we can do it this fall but it might not be until Spring 2013. We're paying everything up front and not putting it on any sort of credit ::sigh:: Dave Ramsey would be proud.

Signing off for now and going to have a bowl of cereal since I won't be able to eat again until 10:30 am tomorrow :)