Monday, January 22, 2007

Infertility Specialist

Today I dropped Anna off at Sariah's house and then I went to meet the infertility specialist on-base. He was very nice and attentive to me. We met for one full hour discussing all my symptoms and he addressed every one of my questions. The conclusion that he made was that I am insulin resistant. Type B diabetics produce insulin, however the hormone receptors do not function properly and therefore the insulin does not produce its desired effect of triggering the consumption of stored energy. Type B is insulin resistance.I'm not diabetic, however, I just am resistant to insulin.

Being insulin resistant explains why I haven't been able to become pregnant in addition to my past failures in losing weight. He said that without counteracting the insulin resistance, it's next to impossible to lose weight--even if I'm exercising and eating right. Let me tell you how nice it was to learn that!!!

I will be taking metformin to help remedy the insulin resistance.He plans to put me on metformin in conjunction with clomid (to help me ovulate) once my new cycle begins. He plans to end the menstrual bleeding that I currently have with some estrogen for 3 weeks & add progesterone during the third week + the 3 following days. I'm thrilled that birth control pills were not part of his plan to end this period. Once the new cycle begins, we will do a HSG--where they will inject a dye in the uterus and it will flush through the fallopian tubes. Then they will do an X-ray of the uterus. He said that this is more beneficial than just the X-ray because sometimes just flushing out the fallopian tubes can remove any type of blockage that might be present.

So he plans to do this metformin/clomid duo for 3 cycles and if no success, we will move on to artificial insemination. I am hopeful that we will not have to do needles...he seems confident that we could have success with the aforementioned plan. In addition to this, I will be exercising daily plus doing "strengthening exercises" twice a week and following a diet of equal carbs to protein. I am VERY excited about everything that we discussed and feel hopeful to have success in this area. It just feels SO GOOD to be DOING SOMETHING about my infertility, instead of just crying and asking Heavenly Father to just "make my body work!" ha ha!

Speaking of my body working, it helped bring my adorable, loving, beautiful daughter into the world. Here are her 5 year old pictures, enjoy!



Isn't she adorable??



My Anna Belle, 5 years old!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

In answer to you question, YES!! She is adorable. What is it like to have a 5 year old?? My oldes is only 3 1/2 and it is still crazy!

Anonymous said...

I am a firm believer that it is through other people that Heavenly Father is able to bless us with the blessings that He has in store for us. That doctor studied for a long time to learn how to help people like us...what a blessing!

Found any new protein recipes yet? ha ha!

Queen Mother said...

HI sweetie,

I'm not surprised that he would find you insulin resistant. What did your blood levels come back at?

May I make a suggestion? Start the Metformin little by little because it can give you cramps and diarrhea. very uncomfortable. I have PCOS without the Insulin Resistance, but they tried me on Metformin for a couple of months to see if it would help. It made my tummy really..."off." (If you know what I mean, LOL.)

And yes of course, Anna is beautiful! Hey, she's just a little younger than my Andrew... ;)

Queen Mother said...

one more thing...

I've had 2 HSGs. They are a little uncomfortable, be sure to take a couple of Advil an hour before the procedure. Other than that, they're actually really neat. I got to watch mine.