Down the Rabbit Hole, Part II

In our last adventure, I wrote about how I a) had another miscarriage and b) was recommended to an Advanced Maternal-Fetal Medicine office.

After banishing my children from the waiting room, I took a seat in the completely rotund waiting room. I couldn't see anything from where I was sitting because of a huge pole going up to the ceiling. Nonetheless, I found great joy in passing the time by chatting with my fellow inmates and ridiculing the photos of Vogue. Facebookers have seen this one:

From Vogue. By Some Photographer, Not Me.

I was finally taken into the back by a lady Doc from Poland. She actually asked my opinion about a vaginal birth versus a Cesarean birth--she had a C-section because her baby was breech. We talked for a long time and then she excused herself to go talk to "the doctor." Gah! I feel like this Bait And Switch happens all the time in doctors offices.

When the real Doctor came, he turned out to be a pleasant Jewish dude.

http://www.jjudaica.com/dont-worry-be-jewish-smiley-face-kippa-yarmulke

The sum up: these doctors were kind of at a loss since I already have kids. It's almost like I don't really have a problem, excepting that apparently my body has newly declared a moratorium on carrying babies. They ruled out hormone imbalances as a cause because of, uh, regularity. Things worth checking included blood clotting disorders and the condition of my uterus (detected via ultrasound).

Jewish Doc was nice, if a little indirect. About everything. 

"Oh, well, I've had multiple ultrasounds recently." 

"This type of ultrasound is different than a normal ultrasound."

"So....how? Is it more invasive somehow?"

"Well, that's not for me to say. It's okay for you to say, but..."

"Okay, so what type of ultrasound is it?!"

"Well, we put a little bit of saline solution in to help us see if there is something preventing an embryo from implanting well, like a polyp or adhesion..."

"It doesn't sound too uncomfortable."

"I think they're all uncomfortable, so it's not for me to say..."

In the end, I was very nervous about the results of all these blood tests for no reason at all. They checked for anti-phospholipid antibodies, lupus anti-coagulant, beta-something, and apparently another test to check my fertility levels. All the clotting ones were NEGATIVO. Which is good...and also bad, because there's no answer to be found there. But mostly this is good news!

I had no knowledge they conducted any other tests, but when the nurse called me back she let me know that my eggs were plentiful and healthy:

"...so everything there was negative. We also drew an Anti-Mullerian test-"

"A what?! Malaria?"

"Oh, it doesn't have anything to do with Malaria. It's just a test to see the quality and quantity of your eggs. And yours is good!"

"Oh, great! What...I mean...what sort of units of measurements are we looking at here? What's bad and what's good?"

"Well, anything under a two is too low. We like to see it above that. You're at a 5.6, so that's just great."

"Oh! Fantastic!"

I still find this a weird factoid to know about myself. Do you know your egg health number?! Does the dude in your life know his sperm count?! In any case, now it is up to me to call these people back at my leisure and schedule an extra-uncomfortable, super-invasive ultrasound. I haven't done this yet because, if you couldn't tell, I'm not super excited about it.