I made my way to the Downey office for our baseline ultrasound.  I knew what to expect this time, and because Jon’s company isn’t as flexible as mine and therefore taking a couple hours off here and there is pretty difficult for him, I went alone.  We figured it would be better for him to be there for a more critical appointment, like the insemination.

My ultrasound was scheduled with a different RE, why, I am not sure, but I went with it when I heard that she is the Chief of the infertility department.  She so happens to be the RE who performed both of our HSG tests (read about those here and here).  Anyway, I arrived a few minutes early and waited for a short period of time in the waiting room before being taken to the ultrasound room where I had to wait an additional 30 minutes before I was seen, ugh.  The anticipation of any situation is the worst, at least in my opinion.  She finally made her way in, apologized for the wait and went straight to it.

The first thing she mentioned was my thick uterine lining. She asked me to confirm the first day of my menstrual cycle, and then asked if I could possibly be pregnant.  Well weird question to ask an infertile person, but I guess I get it.  I responded that I didn’t think so, I had taken a pregnancy test prior to going to Las Vegas and it came back negative.  She requested that I take a blood pregnancy test at the lab, and instructed me to start the clomid only after receiving a negative result.

As for the clomid, she decided not to increase the dosage which surprised me.  I fully expected it to be increased as I felt it didn’t produce great results last time.  Her reasoning for not increasing the dosage was that I had responded pretty well during the last cycle in her opinion (1 large follicle, and another almost fully matured follicle).  She is the Chief of the infertility department, so I went with it.  She also mentioned that there was no need to increase the dosage as it does not necessarily increase the amount of follicles that are produced and that the increased dosage would most likely further the side effects that I experienced during our previous IUI treatment.  She did change one key factor however, and that was that this time was that I was to take the clomid from cycle day 5 – 9, not cycle day 3 – 7 like I did during the last treatment.  Although, I think this was mostly to accommodate the time it would take to get the results of the pregnancy test.

Before I left the office I asked a couple more questions.  First, I asked about the follicles she saw, if any and she really didn’t go into much detail, just that she saw what she expected – small and normal (whatever that means).  The great thing, was there were no big cysts, like the one they saw during the last baseline ultrasound. The other question I asked was about timed intercourse that I won’t get into detail about.  Long story short, things were very regimented last time (romantic I know 🤦‍♀️), and this time the approach was much different.  We scheduled the monitoring ultrasound where they check the follicles a little over a week later.  And with that done away I went, I paid the bill for the visit ($143), headed down to the pharmacy to fill my prescription and to the lab to get my blood test.

I headed into work and waited for the results of the test, knowing in the back of my mind it would be negative but holding our a little hope for a Christmas Miracle. And, nope, negative, yep, the same old, same old disappointment month after month, day after day.  It never gets easier, it always sucks just the same.  So, it’s clomid time! Stay tuned for that recap coming soon to a blog near you (cheesy, I know 🤣 – cut me some slack, I get a little silly sometimes).