A brief history

When I was young, I thought it was so easy to get pregnant.  I was always diligent about birth control and strongly believed that if I missed even one pill, I might get knocked up.  After all, my mom has 3 children and my sister had already had her 3 kids before I even graduated high school.  Who knew that I was actually wasting so much money on birth control?

Fast forward a few years, and I am married to a wonderful man.  I told him how badly I wanted a family, and we agreed to start trying right away.  After all, he was set to leave for basic training just a month after our wedding...so we figured we might as well get started.  I had always had a feeling that it would be difficult for me since I had not even had so much as a scare up until that point, but the husband was confident.  So confident, in fact, that he thought I would get pregnant the very first time we tried.  I'll spare you the details, but he did turn to me after and said "I sure hope you're ready for this" thinking that maybe that one time had really done the trick.  So much confidence, that one!

Well that was in December 2008, and here we are...four years later and still waiting for our miracle.  After trying on our own for a couple of years, I decided to face my fears and we went to see a fertility specialist in December 2011.  We started with the basics: hormone testing for me and semen analysis for the husband.  Blood draws, an HSG test, and urine samples galore.  I sat back and waited for the bad news---I just knew that this was somehow my fault.  Meanwhile, the husband was afraid that it was his fault and that I would hate him for it.  I was afraid that I would too.  Color me surprised when all of the tests came back normal.  You would think that this would be good news.  But instead, it just raised more questions---if all of the tests were normal, why weren't we getting pregnant?

The doctors started me on Clomid, which is often the first step in fighting infertility.  Clomid is a drug that can help stimulate ovulation.  Since I have always ovulated on my own, I didn't think this was necessary, but who am I to argue with a doctor?  Anyway, we tried a couple rounds of Clomid the natural way before deciding to try an IUI.  This, we figured, would really do the trick.  We were sure that we would get pregnant that time!  Well, we didn't.  So we tried twice more...still no luck.  We met with the doctor to discuss other options, and he told me that we just have "bad luck."  Awesome.  So he says that we have 2 options: do a laparoscopy to see if there is some underlying issue like endometriosis that I don't have symptoms for, or get on the list for IVF.  Well, we weren't ready to do IVF yet.  After all, if they can't figure out why I can't get pregnant, why should I think that IVF would have better success?  And we just can't throw around thousands of dollars on a maybe.  I decided to do the lap instead.  Sure, cut me open and see what's what.  This brought a whole new level of anxiety....what if they found that I was missing something, or had cysts, or cancer?  In the end, everything once again came back normal.

After getting the results of the laparoscopy, I decided I was ready for a break from unnecessary medical treatments.  I went to see a homeopathic doctor to try and get some answers, but she didn't really have any either.  Now I am at an intersection, trying to decide which road to take.  The husband is going through some serious training right now that will decide his whole career...and our life.  I don't want to cause any undue stress on him, so hopefully this blog will be my outlet.  Maybe it will help me come up with some answers.  I guess we will see...