Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

The 12 month mark is the guideline for when to seek help for couples under 35. When we hit that point, I scheduled an appointment with my OB/GYN.  I knew fertility specialists existed, but didn't think we had been in the game long enough for that.  I will tell anyone and everyone now that you should head straight to that specialist.

Honestly, it didn't seem like a bad idea at the time. The doctor knew which tests she wanted conducted and had a course of treatment. Plus insurance covered everything except the co-pays. 

However, I should have listened to my gut and left immediately. I am sure the practice is a great for OB/GYN matters, but really should not even pretend to treat infertility. Why? Here you go:

1. No weekend appointments. Apparently ovaries are supposed to have an internal clock and stop their process unless it is Monday - Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm. Yes, that is correct. My fertility was limited to business hours. This was very stressful for us.
2. No monitoring on Clomid, even after I asked. I had read that it is possible to end up with Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (basically very enlarged ovaries). Her response was that Clomid was no big deal and completely safe. Thankfully this has never been a problem for me, but our specialist treats Clomid with much more care.
3. No clear instructions on when to come in for the IUI and when we finally pushed for answers, we discovered it's up to us to tell them. We had to rely on home monitoring using $0.93 ovulation predictor kits.(OPKs detect luteinizing hormone which surges 24-48 hours prior to ovulation).
4. Do you know how much it sucks to sit in a waiting room for two hours while pregnant lady after pregnant lady parades on by for her weekly check-in? They have kazoos, party hats, and pregnancy club t-shirts.

All that said, the actual treatment cycles were the icing on the cake. The first month I was on Clomid was a bust because we apparently weren't using the right OPKs and missed our opportunity for an IUI. You think they could have told us this when we called for instructions TWO WEEKS EARLIER. The second treatment cycle was ok.

The third treatment cycle was appalling. I waited for an hour longer than I should have waited. You know those swimmers have a shelf life, right? They don't live forever in a test tube. When they finally called me back, the nurse practitioner proceeded to tell me that they had received a new centrifuge and didn't know how to work it. She laughed as she said they had everyone in the office reading the instructions and finally pushed some buttons and it seemed like it worked. I was dumbfounded. As soon as I walked out of the front door I was able to come up with a litany of things I should have said about their carelessness with agreeing to do a procedure for which they did not know how and more than that, their insensitivity regarding how stressful and emotional this is for the infertile couple. But of course my shock overrode any ability to speak in the moment. 

We decided to give the OB/GYN one more shot. Mostly because it was so inexpensive and partly because I was hesitant to embark on the fertility clinic journey. I thought that if the OB/GYN process did the trick then maybe we had just run into bad luck. Starting at a fertility clinic meant we had problems that a general doctor could not solve and that bad luck could not explain. Isn't admission the first step to getting help? Turns out that is a hard one to do.

Anyway, we stressed for two weeks about receiving a positive OPK on a Friday or Saturday (recall they don't do weekend appointments). We ended up being ok with the timing and Chris called first thing on a Monday morning to schedule the IUI. They told him that they could not do the procedure because they had run out of "IUI kits". I was, once again, in disbelief. I called the office and asked if my husband had heard correctly.  He had. This time I managed to get out, "so we are totally screwed for yet another month because you ran out of kits and didn't tell us beforehand?" "Um, yes, sorry." I was about to say more but the tears started coming. I was at work. Awesome. All I could do was hang up on the nurse as she was telling me that I could try one of the fertility clinics in town. 

We called both fertility clinics, but understandably, they wouldn't do an IUI on a new patient without a consultation first. I did a little more research on the two fertility clinics, found the clear winner, and called the next day to schedule our consultation.