My Infertility Story

When I got married, my hubby and I started trying to have a baby right away, but I was already nervous about there being a problem.  I had never had regular periods and my doctor had decided to just regulate them with birth control instead of figuring out what was going on.  When I stopped the birth control, I went to my doctor with a list of symptoms that I now know are clearly signs of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).  Unfortunately, the doctor that I saw didn't make the connection, so she kind of blew them off and suggested I go see my OBGYN.

To make a long story short, my OBGYN dropped the ball but did the best possible thing that she could for me, which was to send me to a Reproductive Endocrynologist (RE) who finally diagnosed me with PCOS, 9 months after that first trip to the doctor.  She also diagnosed my hubby with minor male factor infertility (morphology problems).  We started treatment with chlomid to get my body to mature follicles and then Interuterine Inseminations (IUI's) to give us the best chance of pregnancy.  Miraculously, we got pregnant on the first try.  Unfortunately, about 5 1/2 weeks in, I had a miscarriage.  At the time, I didn't really have anyone to talk to about it and I wish I had.  It was one of the hardest things I've ever been through and it's still really hard to think about.  It took us a little while to feel ready to try again.

Right before I had the miscarriage, my doctor realized that I also had a septum in my uterus.  Essentially, that means that when my uterus formed, there was a piece of tissue partially separating my uterus that shouldn't be there.  If a fertilized egg tried to implant in that part of my uterus, then it wouldn't survive because there wouldn't be enough blood flow.  It could have been the reason for the miscarriage, we'll never really know.  I had surgery to remove the septum with the hopes that it would help our chances.  After recovering from the surgery and some scheduling setbacks, we started treatment again.  We did two more cycles with chlomid and IUI's.  The first cycle ended in a chemical pregnancy and my doctor gave us the option to do some testing for recurrent loss, even though we'd only had two. She suggested that we wait until we'd had three but I couldn't do that.  The tests mostly came back normal although they did find that I have MTHFR.  They ran some more tests and determined that at this point in time, it wasn't something to be concerned about.  After the third cycle on clomid (BFN) we moved on to injectable medications with IUI's.  My doctor was worried that the clomid might be making my lining too thin, and hoped we'd have a better chance with something else.  We were on our third and last cycle with injectables (before my doctor wanted to try IVF) when we found out we were pregnant.

It sounds really easy when I write it all down, but it was the hardest period of my life.  I know that after the miscarriage and during those 4 failed cycles, I started to get depressed and my closest friends really couldn't relate to what was happening.  Even my mom said and did all the wrong things.  I urge you, if someone you know is going through infertility, educate yourselves and read this.  I wish the people in my life had and I wish that I had reached out more and found people who could understand.  I did start reading blogs and that's why I'm here now.  Reading those blogs made a difference for me and hopefully, I can do that for someone else.

While my pregnancy went well with few hiccups, it was really scary.  The memory of that first miscarriage and everything we'd gone through to that point was in my head all the time.  I was, of course, excited, but it was all tempered with worry.  I just tried to take it day by day and remind myself each morning that today, I was pregnant.  It wasn't until that little baby was in my arms that it all really felt real.  Even then it felt too good to be true sometimes, it still does.

Infertility has changed me as a person and a parent.  I know that I parent differently then I would have if I hadn't gone through what I did.  I've had a hard time finding other people who are on the same page as me, which is another reason why I'm here.  Life is good, but there are always challenges in parenting and we'll be back battling infertility if we want to have any other babies, so I'm ready to put myself out there and hopefully find feedback and support from people like you.