Dr. Toth on board my IF team

Okay, so we are convinced we have bacteria. We are taking the oral antibiotic. But will it be enough? I am scared to try unless we have a great reason to believe it will be enough. We scheduled a phone consult with Dr. Toth and again hovered over the speaker. Dr. Toth spends over an hour and a half pouring over the family history forms we worked hard to fill out. This same risk assessment is found in the back of Dr. Toth’s other book-Fertile v. Infertile. It includes cancer, heart disease and other things that people don’t currently typically associate with infertility. Forty four or higher means that you are at high risk. We scored a 77, nearly doubling that. Most of it was from my side. Dr. Toth definitely thought bacteria was at least one of the culprits to our miscarriage. He mistakingly thought that the antibiotic I was on currently was done in the past so he recommended we immediately come to NY for diagnosis and treatment. He is out of network and that meant a full $17,000, not considering room and board. But he was the only doctor doing this, so did we have a choice? This wasn’t in vitro, which was also expensive. This might be a one shot that would work for a whole family of children. Cheaper then adoption….worth more to us then a new car…and here is the real kicker. Where God really blesses us-we would be healthier ourselves (problems we had no idea were associated to bacteria were, so we would feel better and also have less risk of heart problems and cancer, prevalent in my family!) And our children would be healthier-a healthier full term birth, healthier in childhood, and they could be reproductively healthy so we could stop this awful cycle of infertility! And less risk our children would get cancer and heart disease! God is good! So Good!
I also realized that DH’s major drive to have biological children was helping him get through this-all the hormones, and the needles, and the medicine and all the money we had dreamed we would be spending in other ways. God must have known that desire could be used to get him through this, and I thanked God for it.
I realized that Dr. Toth might be confused the next day, so I sent an email to him (very reachable, very kind). He said he understood now and did agree that we had a good shot moving forward with trying to conceive on the oral antibiotic regime that Dr. Hilgers had prescribed. And if I didn’t get pregnant by the end of the year or if we miscarried, then we would come for full diagnosis and treatment at that time. I told him I didn’t want to try unless we knew that he would continue to be involved during the pregnancy, as I had now learned that we might still need oral or iv antibiotics. I wasn’t going to get pregnant in a healthy manner, just to have the bacteria come back and take my baby. Dr. Toth agreed to provide all necessary support and I felt comforted.
I still had peace, but I did try to control everything anyway. I was a bit worried that the antibiotics would lead to a later miscarriage. I knew that some folks got all the treatment and had one more miscarriage because their immune system hadn’t calmed down quite yet. But then they went on to have healthy babies. Over 60% of them did and Dr. Toth saw the worst of the worst that had already tried everything else (even though he kept trying to get people to come see him FIRST). I thought how we might have a miscarriage this time, and then get treatment and have another miscarriage. I usually am comforted by worst case scenarios, but the idea that the fifth pregnancy would work out just didn’t comfort me. I felt out of control with my emotions. This had truly taken over our lives. I couldn’t stop researching and talking about it. I wanted to help others, as many as possible, and I wanted to make every chance for this one to be the right one. Because I didn’t think I could take another one. That is how I felt in my darkest hours. My friend was experiencing her fourth at this time and already had her and her husband’s appt to get cultured by Dr. Toth. I didn’t feel strong.
But, again, knowledge is power. So I emailed Dr. Toth and asked him what the plan was for pregnancy if it occurred this cycle. It was time to try again (and we hadn’t rested since the miscarriage at all!). Dr. Toth said I would need a ten day IV of full therapeutic dose of Clindamyacin. He uses an ambulatory IV, but I could get it locally done if a doctor would be willing to consult with Dr. Toth. After my last ob/gyn experience, I was doubtful.