WARNING: This is a long, moderately detailed, semi-depressing post with a happy ending. Promise :)
So the past two years have been interesting to say the least. For the most part things carried on as usual... we worked, traveled, shopped, ate, and did all the stuff we normally do. But in the midst of all the normal was the frustrating, depressing, never ending battle with infertility we were quietly fighting on the sidelines.
Tons of couples struggle with infertility... the big IF. I can't tell you how many sad stories I read about couples who tried for years and years, procedure after procedure, totaling thousands of dollars. Some ended up with a precious little baby, whether through IVF, IUI, surrogates, or adoption... but some didn't. It was heartbreaking reading each story, absolutely refusing to believe that this was going to be my path. Thankfully, it wasn't... but we'll get to that later ;)
In the meantime, here's our story. All of it.
We had decided to wait until a year after we got married to try for a baby, so as planned, on May 24, 2009 we celebrated our anniversary with an au revoir to birth control and began to try away. Things continued as usual for about six months before either one of us (and by that, I mean me) started to worry. So I took my worry to Google, where I found out that it was normal to take anywhere from 3 months to a year to get pregnant. Especially after being on birth control for an extended amount of time. So no worries. If for some very strange reason we made it to a year, we would talk to a doctor. But there was no way it would take us that long. No way.
So each month passed, and still nothing. My cycles wouldn't regulate - one month it was 6 days, the next it was 63, and anywhere in between - which made it pretty hard to figure out when I was ovulating, and I was getting increasingly frustrated. And crazy. And each month that went by was one month closer to a year...
And then we reached a year. Sigh. On the one hand we obviously weren't too thrilled it had taken this long, but on the other hand we were looking forward to talking to a doctor and finally getting some answers. So we sat down with the doctor, went through a ton of questions and then headed off for a ton of tests. Everything looked to be normal for the most part, so he sent us off with a prescription for Clomid that would jump start my ovulation and hopefully get us pregnant within the three cycles, which he said was normal for most women.
So we started our Clomid. Our routine over the next month was like this:
Day 1 - pee test to confirm pregnant/not pregnant
Days 5,6,7,8 & 9 - take a pill
Days 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 - baby makin' time
Day 20 - blood test to check progesterone levels
Then we wait for a period... no period = celebration. period = no celebration.
Well, to make a long story short, we went past the three month "normal" time frame and decided to do another two months. There's a maximum of six months on Clomid because of the risk of cysts and inflammation and overall damage it can do to your reproductive organs, and since it wasn't working after five, we opted not to do the last month. Not to mention it made me feel horrible. There was vomiting, night sweats which lead to insomnia, horrible hormone imbalances that changed my skin tone and hair texture, extremely painful periods, and turned me into an overall emotionally unstable basket case who cried all day every day for the better part of five months. It was sad.
So I contacted my (awful) doctor, and I tell him I want to see a specialist now. No problem, he says, you'll just need to complete some more testing before we can send your referral up. Ok, that's fine. So we let him know we're going to take a break and do the testing after the New Year, as now we're into the holiday season and I'd like to spend some time un-crazy. So we take a break, and finally felt like we were breathing for the first time in a year and a half. It was wonderful.
We come back from the New Year, and decide to schedule the last testing for April. Almost two years... but then we would be off to the specialist and we would finally be on the right path to having a baby. So the doctor emails me the information about the last test I'll be having - a hysterosalpingogram - when and where, and that's that. My doctor hasn't really been generous about the information up to this point, so I'm not too surprised that he didn't give me any heads up as to what to expect. So I turn to my good friend Google, who sends me to Wiki (feel free to read about it
here if you like, because I am not going into graphic detail). So I get a general idea of what's going to happen, and honestly it doesn't sound too bad. It's basically an x-ray of the reproductive system to check for any scarring or blockage or something that might be preventing us from getting pregnant. So I started to get excited... I'm thinking maybe something happened while I was on the Clomid that caused a blockage, but this procedure will clear it all up and then we should be good to go!
So I get my HSG done, and another long story short - it effing hurt. Not to get too graphic, but they blow up an effing balloon in your effing uterus and inject a liquid to see the x-ray, which all in all made for an extremely painful, extremely unpleasant experience for me. And the results come back completely... normal. No blockage, no tear, no cysts, no nothing. Everything is healthy and normal and exactly the way it should be.
Ugh.
Doctors had been telling us for nearly two years that everything was normal. And by this point I'm so sick of hearing that word... I just want to know how much more normal we have to be to have a baby? Because so far, normal isn't working out too well.
So now we've got our unexplained infertility diagnosis and all of our normal test results, and we can finally make our appointment at Shady Grove Fertility Center. We make the appointment for August 8th, and in the meantime we just decide to enjoy the rest of our summer and carry on as usual.
About a week after we make our appointment, we're listening to the radio on the way to work and the host is talking about this article he read that says using egg whites can help with infertility. So we laugh and listen as people call in about all these other infertility myths and old wives tales they've heard about. And of course we've heard them all at this point. Then a nurse calls in and she explains the science/theory behind using the egg whites... turns out egg whites have the same consistency of man juice, so if you use it pre-baby making it helps to lead the little guys to where they need to be. Interesting. And gross. Well, she says, obviously it's not good or sanitary, but in her doctor's office, they recommend this stuff called
Pre-Seed to couples having trouble conceiving, because it does the same thing. Hrmm. Well that was veeeeeeeeery interesting. At no point in the past two years had any doctor or nurse mention this to us. So we did a little research to find out exactly what this stuff was...
So we read the website and it turns out it does exactly what the nurse said. And then we read the reviews from actual users, and it was shocking. Couples that had been trying for a year, two years, eight years... many of them had been where we were and beyond. Some had gone through IUI and IVF and still weren't able to get pregnant. And then they used Pre-Seed and poof - pregnant. So we decided to get some a give it a shot. What's the worst that could happen, we don't get pregnant? Been there, done that. Not to mention it was only $20 at CVS, and let's be honest... it wouldn't be the worst thing I wasted $20 on.
Three weeks later it's the end of May and we're coming up on our third anniversary... and I happen to be late. Not that it hasn't happened before, but we decided to get a pack of tests just out of curiosity. So we go home, have ourselves a delicious dinner, a few glasses of wine and we get ready to relax and watch a movie. I go upstairs to change and figure I might as well try test and see. So I tell Chad, and I go about it. I read the directions - 5 seconds, point it down, check in 3 minutes - and here we go! Of course, I'm not expecting anything since I've seen more negatives than I like to admit, but I go about my business, put the cap back on and set it on the ledge in the bathroom. It couldn't have been more that 10 seconds before I snatched it back up again, remembering that the directions said pointed down. So I grabbed the test and immediately pointed it down, but as I did, I thought I saw something in the window...
Pregnant.
I stared at it for a couple seconds, thinking there's no way that's right. So I show it to Chad and we both start to cry. We couldn't believe after all this time this was actually happening. We were going to have a baby :)
So here we are with our first little one on the way, and so far it's been nothing but wonderful. Baby is healthy and growing, and we couldn't be happier. Surprisingly enough, when we went to our first doctor's appointment and she measured the baby, the conception date turned out to be the very first day we used Pre-Seed. Which shocked us even more... we were about to drop thousands on fertility procedures when all we really needed was a little tube of lube :)
And that's our story. Long, like I said, but for a good reason AND with a happy ending. And please, if you know anyone who's struggling to conceive, feel free to share this with them.
The end.
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