Our Struggle Part 1

Written on February 20, 2013, 16 months into our baby journey. Be prepared for a long-winded post.

I go back and forth about when to share our story.  It's not a question about whether or not to write something, but more so when.  Truth be told, I've started about 3 posts on this subject.  That subject being infertility.  I originally thought I would be posting this after I announced that I was pregnant.  But as the months have worn on,  this post keeps getting put off.

After we got married, the question started coming up again and again "When are you going to have a baby?"  My answer was always, "It'll happen when it happens," but secretly hoping it would be sooner rather than later.

We decided that we would start trying when my birth control ran out in October 2011.  I naively thought it would happen right away.  And this is where the TMI comes in.

Weeks turned into months and still no monthly visit.  Thanksgiving rolled around and I was convinced I was pregnant.  After buying three tests and basically peeing on money, no surprised that it was negative.  Soon came Christmas and still nothing.  False hope that we would have a baby within the year.  I googled just about everything.  People saying that they got pregnant right after stopping the pill, others who took months.

I finally gave in and saw my doctor at the end of January.  She prescribed progesterone to jump start my cycle.  I thought, "Finally, now we're getting somewhere."  More false hope and wasted pregnancy tests.

April came with another progesterone trial and more false hope.   I was absolutely convinced I was pregnant.  I was nauseous, exhausted and thought for sure I had implantation bleeding.  More pregnancy tests later, obvi not the case.  But I kept telling myself that it would happen, that I wasn't going to go see a doctor until we hit the 12 month mark.

Well June rolled around and still nothing.  And to think that we almost didn't go to Dan and Brittany's Disney World wedding because we thought that I would be incredibly pregnant and couldn't fly.   Right after we got back from our trip, I headed to the OB/GYN to maybe get an answer.  A consult and ultrasound later showed that I had symptoms of PCOS, meaning I haven't been ovulating on my own since stopping the pill.  My doctor put me on 50mg of Clomid to get me ovulating.  I got excited.  This might be it.  I remember going to MN to see my grandparents and my aunts and uncles in July 2012 to talk about our upcoming family reunion.  I was just starting the Clomid and we were positive that we would have a 3 month old by the time that the reunion rolled around in August 2013 (we'll be lucky if I'm 3 months pregnant by that time).  (You can read about my initial feelings about being diagnosed with PCOS here)

Day 35 came and still nothing, so more progesterone and an increased does in Clomid.  I met with the nurse practitioner in August and she suggested that Andrew get tested.  I had been joking with him for months that it was probably his fault that we weren't pregnant yet, so now it was the time to find out.   He got up early and drove to the Wisconsin Fertility Institute in Middleton to get tested before work on morning.  He went by himself, but I can imagine how awkward it was.  I got a call from my doctor a week later to tell us that Andrew was more than perfect and not to worry about him.  I let out a sigh of relief but also thought "Crap, it really is my fault."

I started the next cycle of 100mg Clomid.  I, thankfully, never experienced any side effects while on the medication.  Unless false hope is considered a side effect.  It goes without saying how well that cycle went.  During that time, I had left my job in Verona and was starting in the Madison school district.  While I picked my insurance company based upon the fact that my ob/gyn was covered under it, I knew that I would still get a new insurance number and card, so we decided to take a month off until we got our new insurance cards.  Well, I started to get excited because you read all about those people who tried for months and then decided to take a break for a bit and BAM got preggo.  September was the only month that whole year that I got AF on my own.  I called up my doctor to start my 3rd cycle of Clomid.

I was starting to get more and more depressed because we were coming up on the 12 month mark.  Because I had taken a month off of Clomid and didn't have 3 back-to-back cycles, my doctor said that he would do 3 more cycles of Clomid before referring me to a specialist unless we wanted to go that route sooner.  I was hopeful at first because I wasn't ready to admit defeat yet and I was sure that this next cycle would work.  October was another bust and I couldn't take the heartache anymore.  I called the doctor's office and asked for a referral.