Dr. Gentle in the Fertility Clinic with Clomid...

Has Dr. Gentle solved the mystery? Will he be the winner of the game? It is really anyone's guess at this point but he seems to understand more of the relevant circumstances than the rest of us.....

Mr. LIW and I met with him on Friday afternoon. Given the information in front of him, including (especially?) the fact that I did not ovulate this month until after CD 20 and my cycles are usually 25-28 days, he is relatively confident that an ovulation problem is at the root of our IF. He offered us two plans to proceed: 1) take clomid for two cycles OR 2) undergo an HSG to make sure that there's no blockage in my tubes. He favored the first option since there is nothing in my history to suggest that I have tubal blockage and the behavior of my cycles strongly indicate that supported ovulation will facilitate pregnancy.

We chose option #1 and all three of us agreed that, if two cycles of clomid do not work, we will proceed with an HSG. If we don't get pregnant in one or two cycles after the HSG, then we will proceed to an IUI. I feel incredibly comfortable with his advice and conclusions and actually feel more hopeful than I have in a long time.

Of course, given the fact that I ovulated so late, I will be waiting for AF this month, which will delay the start of clomid. But we ALL know this waiting game. Either we wait for AF to show up, or we wait for her to go away for 9 months. It's forever a game of frustrated waiting.

One of the benefits of this appointment with Dr. Gentle is that I obtained more specific information about test results. He has always been open about the results but this time he emphasized the numbers enough so that I could write them down. So, here's a few of the most important for your reading enjoyment.... You, the very wise IF bloggers that you are, will understand the significance better than I....

CD3 FSH level: 5.8 (I am told that this is excellent for my age)

CD7 u/s: revealed multiple follicles, typical of a woman who is younger than 35, perhaps as young as 28 (I *knew* that that had to be good!)

Mr. LIW's count: 75 million (the only problem is that the lab neglected to do the morphology test but he expects that to be good given the other results)

The *only* painful moment for me was when Dr. Gentle hesitated and said that he had to bring up a touchy subject. I wondered what it could be and then he asked me if I have gained or lost a significant amount of weight recently. I haven't done either (but what really is recently?) and, as some of my most avid readers know, I have spent time in the eating-disordered trenches, so I knew that my answer to this question was important.

I explained my history of overeating from age 14 or so until my late 20s and then its manifestation into compulsive exercise in my late 20s until early 2006 when my body was riddled with infections and I realized that I had not conquered my ED after all. I explained that in the summer of 2003 my life fell apart and I got down to my lowest weight of my pre-pubescent life (115 lb with a BMI of 20; I am nearly 5'3".) I tend to be very muscular but I was in no way underweight. And I never noticed any fluctuations in my cycle.

Until, until.....I started gaining weight back when my life came back together. I still restricted sometimes and overate other times and overexercised regularly, but I was back up to 125lbs or so. But it took overexercising to keep me there. As anyone with an ED knows (and I think women with IF know this, too), no matter how you think your body "should" be it just won't. Unless you put it through something unnatural.

So, in early 2006, I shifted the goal of my therapy sessions, read numerous books on ED (one of my favorites remains "The Thi.n Cage"), composed inspirational lists of quotations to keep me from turning every negative feeling into body hatred, and set my sights on body acceptance. Saying that it was f*cking hell is an understatement. But I did it. I still struggle occasionally when I realize that I have not balanced the number of calories or the 5 food groups with my exercise level but, all in all, I live food-obsession free. And a larger body (136lbs or so) is worth the freedom...

But, but....Dr. Gentle's inquiry caused me to realize that my cycles started getting shorter in late 2003/early 2004 AFTER I had lost and then gained 10 or 15 pounds. And I wanted to cry. I STILL want to cry, which is why I am writing this. I wanted to scream because I felt so badly about what I had done to myself - and not just in terms of my cycles. I no longer beat myself up for "failing" to become anorexic (no matter how hard I tried I couldn't threaten my ability to achieve and be productive) and I have mostly forgiven myself for turning to food for love and support in an emotionally-neglectful household.

But I am profoundly sad. A sadness that creates, at this very moment, a very damp keyboard.

I mentioned to Mr. LIW how our conversation with Dr. Gentle left me challenged by a desire to beat myself up for how my ED impacted my fertility. But he did not get the sense that Dr. Gentle's perception was that that was a definitive reason. Dr. Gentle said that it might explain why the follicles appeared the way they did in the u/s (I didn't ask for more information on what he meant here.) Mr. LIW said that it was not clear that that is a definitive reason for our problems. And that it doesn't make sense to beat myself up over something that is not definitive.

And I could have kissed Dr. Gentle when he said, very emphatically, "you realize, I hope, that I am NOT asking you to go on a diet?!"

Having spent so much time in the past on an ED bulletin board, I know that ovulation problems are the least severe in terms of potential damages caused by EDs. I never got obese, nor did I ever get underweight. I struggled with the obsession like only an eating-disordered mind can, but I avoided all of the disastrous physical side effects.

And I am so very proud of myself for taking charge of the disease before it could ruin me and especially before I could pass it on to a child. Becoming a mother that shows a child how to love him/herself both in words and by example was at the top of the list of motivators for me.

The thought that it might have interfered with my ability to become a mother, though, still feels like a dagger to the heart. And it makes me cry for myself - for all of those years I wasted hated myself and punishing myself for crimes I did not commit - and the baby that *maybe* I could have had by now....