A while back
Rae wrote about why she was not choosing NaPro for her fertility care treatments and it really made me think about why we were choosing NaPro for ours.
As I write this, I almost feel like I need to give it a Can of Worms label and prepare myself for the backlash, but I'm not writing it for that reason. I'm not writing it to condem
anyone's choice that may be different from mine,
whatever it may be. I'm writing this because I want to remember why we made the choices we've made; I want to share the whys behind our journey thus far.
Back when The Man and I decided to learn NFP, we had no idea that we would have trouble conceiving. In fact, we were petrified of NFP 'failing' and ending up pregnant. Oh, those were the days - ha! It wasn't long before we were 1) confident in NFP that the fears went away and then soon after that 2) realized that my charts weren't exactly 'normal' and that something might be 'off.' My charts weren't crazy enough to cause us any real alarm though and we went along charting and postponing until one month when we decided that we no longer had just cause to postpone and that it was time to open the door a little further and to use our fertile days.
Well, you know the story from there to today: fertile days used --> fears of
not getting pregnant realized.
And so we were faced with choices as to how to move forward. Some choices were not for us, for many different reasons and others we spent time looking into. Sweet Rae even tried to help us out by looking for a Catholic doctor closer to us. She realized that I'm not kidding when I say we don't have many (any?) resources here.
And so, the day came when my 'regular' doctor's office could do no more for us and were referring us on to a specialist. We were faced with two choices:
1) Go to the specialist and advocate for what we were and were not willing to do ourselves.
2) Go to a doctor who we knew would respect our wishes.
Now, if I were going with a friend and advocating for her - no problem. Let's go. I'll explain why she wants to do things this way or that and we'll figure out a plan together.
But this was for me and when my 'fight or flight' response kicks in, the only part that really kicks is the flight response. I knew where our lines were, but I also knew that I did not have the energy to fight for them. I knew that if I was asked to cross the line the only response I would have would be to just disregard the doctor's advice. No explaining. No asking for another way. No advocating.
I'm outspoken and talkative, but this IF journey brings me to my knees. It causes me to want to curl up inside myself and wish for it all to go away.
So faced with the 2 choices, we decided it was time to go to a NaPro doctor; to learn Creighton; and to take the next step. The reasons for this choice include:
- If surgery was in my future, Dr. S. is one of the best and has an amazing reputation. He is also conservative and surgery is not his automatic first step.
- Of the other Catholic, but non-NaPro, doctors that were close (meaning drivable in less than a day) to us, Dr. S. was closer.
- Billing is done in such a way that the insurance covers most things since the goal is to heal whatever is wrong rather than 'just' get pregnant. While I wish money had nothing in this, it does. If our insurance wasn't covering Dr. S. we wouldn't be seeing him.
- The Nurse Practitioner was willing to see me with my almost 2 years of Sympto-Thermal charts and just 10 days of CrMS charts.
It was that last one that was one of the biggest "selling" points. I know there is value in my ST charts to have that respected was important to me. Learning to chart CrMS was stressful and I would have been totally lost were it not for my ST training. I still don't like not having temps each month, but I've been a good patient and only charted CrMS since we started.
With surgery right around the corner, and realizing that if we had waited any longer it would have been impossible to be a patient of Dr. S, we are glad we went down this road. I will say that were Dr. S. not retiring, we might have decided to wait a few more cycles before surgery, but seeing as how we can't go back in time, we are moving forward with the best decision we can make based on the information we have. We are at peace with this decision and are praying for good results.
I wish that the decision weren't NaPro or no-NaPro but just good health care. I wish that the WVU Center for Reproductive Medicine didn't have a reputation for producing multiples and an answering service that gives IVF as it's first option right after "press 1 if you are calling from a doctor's office." I wish that this amazing reproductive technology were accepted by main stream medicine for it's ability to heal rather than being rejected because it is "Catholic" (or perhaps because it is not as profitable?).
Mostly, I just wish that my body worked right and I could get pregnant "the old fashioned way." And NaPro is giving us the best chance of that.