My Second and Third IUIs

I am writing this at the beginning of my fourth cycle of IUI. I didn’t write during my last few cycles because I was having a really hard time dealing with the disappointment and needed to focus on my mental health. 

My second IUI cycle I don’t know how many follicles I produced that cycle because we didn’t do a pelvic ultrasound. Unfortunately, my husband only produced 6.6 million sperm. The target amount was 10 million and we were both completely devastated. It definitely put us both in more of a negative outlook on how the cycle would go. Neither one of us were surprised when it turned out I didn’t get pregnant that month. My third cycle fell during Christmas and my doctors switched me to Femara in hopes that I would produce more follicles. We did a monitored cycle to give me more peace of mind. Unfortunately, I only produced one follicle and we decided to not do IUI. Again, we were not surprised that I didn’t end up pregnant. 

After the third cycle (when we didn’t do IUI) I scheduled a virtual appointment with my doctor before the start of my next cycle. We discussed what our options were and what we wanted to do next. After talking through everything we decided to do one more cycle of IUI and prepare to start IVF. I could tell during the appointment that my doctor felt bad for me, it was like she could see the defeat in my eyes. She told me that we weren’t at the finish line yet and not to give up hope. 

My next cycle we switched back to clomid and did another monitored cycle. I produced three follicles but only one dominant follicle, so we went forward with IUI. Since this was a monitored cycle, we also used a trigger shot which my husband had to give me (I’m terrified of needles). The trigger shot was extremely painful and made me extremely emotional the rest of the cycle. My husband produced 46 million sperm in his specimen this time, so we were extremely hopeful. I even had some pregnancy symptoms towards the end, but again I unfortunately did not get pregnant. We discussed doing IVF the next cycle and my husband and I decided we weren’t ready, so we are doing IUI again.

This cycle, which will be my fourth IUI, we upped the clomid dosage to 150 mg. I definitely can feel a difference from the other cycles, I am way more hormonal. This cycle will also be monitored (like the previous) and we will be using the trigger shot again. I have set up an appointment with my doctor to discuss what the next steps will be if we aren’t successful this cycle.