Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Clomid: The Perfect Excuse To Rip People's Faces Off For 6 Days In a Row.

Carrying on...I decided to get the scoop over the phone.

My husband trusts me to relay accurate information to him and I'm impatient. My doc called the day after Thanksgiving and we were just about to hit the road for a little holiday get away. Knowing what the next piece of the puzzle was would only make the weekend more relaxing. I could turn my brain off for a few minutes.

Here comes the Clomid, our ticket to increasing the population count.


Clomid is the most well known fertility drug out there. But like I've said before, this isn't Octomom stuff so keep your jokes to yourselves! Clomid is used to jump starts ovulation (and the success rate is 80%). Again, like I've said, we aren't totally sure I'm not ovulating, and we DO know that I've ovulated in the past. Most women that have stopped ovulating also stop having periods or skip periods. No such luck over here. I'm still feeling especially gross 4 days every month.

Here's the basics: every month when you ovulate, one of your eggs sends out a signal to the rest that says, "Hey jerks, I'm the one! This is MY month! I'm blowing this pop stand!" and that's the egg that's ovulated. With Clomid, that signal is blocked and a few eggs get ovulated, making for more targets. The more eggs hanging around, the better the chances one with get fertilized.

So let's get something out of the way right now. The most common side effect of Clomid is MULTIPLES. Twins, or less likely, triplets. But it doesn't go beyond that. In situations like Jon & Kate or the Octomom, In Vitro and other more hardcore fertility treatments were involved. That's not going to happen to us. Now the odds of twins for a woman taking Clomid is 1 in 250 (typically, the chance of twins is 1 in 2500...but MY chances were higher because my father is a twin AND has twin sisters and my mom had a brother and sister that were twins). Less than half a percent of women on Clomid have triplets. So basically having more targets increases our chances of this:




Or more likely in our case, this:


Why am I ranting?

I'm not especially happy that we didn't just get pregnant on our own. Yes, my husband's doctor solved what he thinks the problem was. But it would have been nice to just hump around and have it happen. Throw jokes about ending up pregnant with 10 babies on top of everything else...well...I guess I'm a little sensitive about it all. But we can handle twins. We can handle anything.

Moving on...

Besides multiples, Clomid has other possible side effects that I'm not really looking forward to. Very common are hot flashes, breast tenderness, nausea, some possible pain and wild, uncontrollable, glass-smashing MOOD SWINGS! It isn't nicknamed "Clomood" for nothing. But the side effects only last for the 6 days you take the meds and I've been told that if you take it in the evening, you can sleep through most of it. Damn. I was going to use the meds as an excuse to start telling people what I REALLY think!

Two scary side effects are a swelling of the ovaries (if we don't get preggo in the first 3 months, I'll go in for an ultrasound to make sure everything is the size it should be) and a build up of fluid around the heart (which my doc has never personally seen in a patient). These will no doubt happen to me because I have the worst luck.

My doc said most of her patients are preggo within the first 3 months on Clomid, and lots of chicks get lucky on the first try! If we don't luck out, she will up the dose for another 3 months. I've got everything crossed that it doesn't come to that because after 6 months, there must be more to the story than just possibly not ovulating.

But first, I need to get my period (aren't you so glad you decided to start reading this???) so I know when to start popping pills. It would be extra super if I was knocked up now so I didn't have to put my body through this, but I'm not putting any money on that.

$9 and 6 days of crabiness. That's what it's going to take.

3 comments:

  1. i (and my mother) still vote for phoebe as twin girl #2's name. ;)

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  2. Todd mentioned again the other day how much he likes your name!

    Also, I can't believe you read this blog, will all the junk and baby talk : )

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  3. it's about YOU! how could i not read it?!

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