Still Broken

I don't like to speak for other people, but I don't think I'm pushing it when I say that at some point in the infertility journey, there's a point when you hope that you'll wake up and be fixed.  I know I had those moments often.  I knew pretty early on that something was wrong with me.  I didn't get my period until I was 16 or 17, and at the time I thought that was awesome.  It didn't hit me until later that this could be bad (it was actually a made for tv movie with Tr.acey G.old about infertility that opened my eyes to that fact).  My GP right before I got married told me not to worry, that a lot of people just need their cycles "reset" and after I stopped birth control I could very well be "normal."  I'd love to meet these people, because I'm really skeptical about their existence.  Anyway, I was really hopeful that I would in fact be fixed.  Not so much though.

As soon as I stopped taking birth control, my body slowly went out of whack again.  It took a little while.  I thought for awhile maybe I was okay because it took a couple months for my cycles to stretch themselves out and then stop again.  Some other things happened too though, the most obvious to me was the fact that my hair fell out much more easily then it ever had before.  Now I'm not saying that you could tell this by looking at me, but when I'd brush my hair or run my fingers through it, I'd be left with enough hair that I had to make a trip to the garbage can.  It was disconcerting.  And once I got diagnosed with PCOS, it became the only really daily reminder that I was broken.  My periods didn't come very often, so I could briefly forget I was infertile when I wasn't having one and physically, I don't have a lot of the other outward signs that some folks with PCOS have.  I count myself lucky for the fact that I don't have a lot of problems from the PCOS, but I know that I'll never be fixed.  I don't ovulate.  You can't make a baby if you don't ovulate.  So the hair falling out, it reminded me for 3 years that I couldn't make a baby.

Then I got pregnant, and my hair was beautiful pregnancy hair.  I don't think a strand fell out for 9 months.  It was pretty nice.  And since then I've been nursing, which has kept my hormones all wacky.  I finally got a period right around Easter and around the same time, guess what started happening?  Yup, the hair thing.  Now I never expected to be fixed after I had a baby.  I never thought that all the sudden I would be able to have as many as I wanted, whenever I wanted.  I just didn't have to think about it for awhile.  We weren't ready to think about more and I was thick in the middle of mama-hood.  I was happily ignoring my infertility, so it came and knocked on my door.  Just to remind me that it was still there, that I was still broken, that those silly little dreams I have of the surprise positive pregnancy test are just that, silly little dreams.  And so that's when I started thinking more seriously about going back to the RE, of what it would take for us to be ready, and I reminded myself of what all this was going to be like.  I can't say I was too excited when I really thought about walking into that office again.

So I'm curious to hear from those of you who have been through it more then once.  How was it the same or different the second time?  Is there any hope that it will be easier this time, or is that as foolish an idea as the dream of being fixed?  I'd love to hear from those who've been there.  Because maybe if I know the reality of it, I can stop fixating on this stupid hair of mine.