[Soki]

Planning and deciding to have a child cna be exciting and scary, let alone if infertility treatments are a factor.

Where are you in the process? Have you been through many doctors yet?

[BBG]

I wasn't sure where to post this...hopefully it is in the right forum. In any case I will make my long story short. I started trying to get pregnant when I was 24. By the time I got to 30 I had been through years of exams...testing...been to every doctor known to man...every specialist I could find...yet not one of them could tell me why I was not getting pregnant. All of my exams and tests came back perfectly normal. When I was 30 a friend of mine called...who is an attorney and knew of my situation...telling me of an adoption he was handling and asked me was I interested. For years I told myself to just let things go...that if I was meant to have children...it would happen when it was meant to happen. Well of course I said yes and within a couple of months my incredible daughter was born. For years everyone kept telling me...oh now that you've adopted you'll get pregnant right away...blah blah...I'm sure most of you know the comments that are made by others. Well that didn't happen either...but I didn't care. I was the mother to the most beautiful daughter and life was great. Moving forward a few years...when I was 41...completley out of the blue...I became pregnant. I was in such shock that it took my primary doctor and my gyno doctor to convince me that it had really happened. Because of my age my doctor wanted to perform an u/s to make sure everything was ok...at this time I was about 5 to 6 weeks pregnant. I of course jumped at the chance and the next week it happened...I could see on the screen that I was really pregnant. Then suddenly the u/s tech says I will be right back...I have to go get the doctor. The doctor comes back in and by then I was in tears thinking something was really wrong. He looks at the screen and says to me...well...it seems that you have a bicornuate uterus. I had no idea what he was talking about...I thought at first he was joking...maybe he said twins...he was smiling so I knew things were ok. Then he explained to me what this was and I was shocked...amazed..then angry. Here I was 41 years old...been through years of infertility tests and exams...and not one specialist saw this...not one doctor. How can that be???? Well in any case at that point I was sent every two weeks to the neonatologist (sp) to keep a check on the baby...which in the long run unfortunately did not help...I miscarried my daughter going into my 5th month because of complications related to the bicornuate uterus. I have since been told that had I been diagnosed with this years back when I first started trying to have children...that it would have been possible to do a procedure to fix it so I could have possibly had children. At this point...because of my age...they would not do anything for me. Now for those of you that don't know...a bicornuate uterus is a "double uterus"...meaning I have two small ones instead of one normal sized...so as the baby started to grow my uterus was too small to expand enough to allow the baby to grow. To make matters worse...I miscarried at home giving birth in my bedroom...rushed to the hospital for surgery...and the doctor that did the surgery only cleaned out one uterus (I had told him I had two) so over the next couple of weeks I developed a severe infection that nearly killed me by the time they found it. I spent two more weeks in the hospital...having another major surgery...it was all a nightmare.

Ok I am going to stop rambling here. I just wanted others to be aware that these types of things do happen and to be sure to discuss everything with your doctor. Sometimes there are reasons there to explain infertility and the doctors just don't see it...and also remember that the earlier a problem is found the better off you are. I wish all of you the best of health and luck.

[Soki]

BBG, WOW! That is quite the series of events. I'm so sorry that you lost your second daughter

How common is a biconuate uterus? and how in the world did no previous doctor notice THAT!! Do you have any info on how successful the surgey to correct it is?

Welcome to the forums, I hope you keep posting

[BBG]

To be honest I am not sure exactly how common this type of uterus is. After being diagnosed with it I did some research on the computer and I did come across a couple of woman that also had this condition. The women that I found were young...in their 20's...and both of them said that they had the procedure done and that it was successful and were able to get pregnant and have healthy children (although they did go into labor early which is common). I think alot depends on how severe the condition is in each individual woman because there are different stages. Sometimes it's only a small problem...a small seperation...that can be easily fixed...other times...as in my situation...there are two completely seperate uterus. Also something else I forgot to mention...I was born with only one kidney (which was not diganosed until i was in my late 30's). When someone has a bicornuate uterus it is very common to also have only one kidney. As for your other question...I have absolutely no idea why no one ever diagnosed me. It is amazing to me that it was never found...don't think I will ever understand that one...lol. The easiest way I found to learn more about it was to go to google.com and just type in bicornuate uterus for a search. There is alot of information...even pictures...about this issue.

[Soki]

Wow, This is from the very first article I found-

There are a number of ways that a uterus can be shaped differently from "normal". The most common is the bicornuate uterus, which means the uterus has two horns.