Day 10: The Road to Baby Part 2
| October 10, 2012 | Posted by Jessie under 31 Days to an Imperfect Family and Home, Baby, Fertility |
Hi everyone! I’m back with Part 2 of our journey to get pregnant. If you missed last week’s post, you can catch up here. My main goal for sharing this story was to hopefully help someone else who is going through the same thing. Comfort in numbers definitely holds true for anyone who has been through this. Actually, I think a doctor once told me that 1 in 7 women struggle with fertility issues so it is really a common thing, many people just don’t discuss it. To be honest, we were those people for a year. We didn’t tell family, friends, coworkers, anyone that we were going through this. Looking back, I would do the same thing again. As hard as it is to go through something so heartbreaking with just us, it would be even harder for me if everywhere I turned another family member or friend was feeling sorry for us or wondering constantly, “Are they pregnant now?” For me, I didn’t want any more pressure or questions added to the situation. Like I said, everyone handles this differently though. Ok, so picking up where we left off…
After nine months of trying, I met with my doctor for my annual and discussed what we were going through with him. He said they typically wait a year to start doing any testing, but because we had already tried ovulation kits and all that fun stuff {which is what he would normally recommend at this point}, he was ready to move forward with testing. He ran a series of tests on Mike and I and couldn’t find any issues through those initial tests. The next step from there was a dye test to see if my tubes were clear. I wasn’t overly concerned or Googling the test or anything so I went in thinking it would be no big deal. The test itself wasn’t awful, but there were some difficulties getting the dye in due to my retroverted uterus {aka painful}. Mike was brought in towards the end because I was in pain and they were a little concerned. The radiologist ended up saying that he wasn’t the final verdict on the test, but that it looked like the dye hadn’t gone through my right tube. Our doctor called the next day verifying what they radiologist said and wanted me to come in for an appointment to discuss everything.
So in we go. He felt that a laparoscopic surgery was our best option at this point. He wanted to go in and see what was blocking the tube and get it cleared out and, of course, we jumped on board. Whatever the doctor thought would help, we were up for. It was going to be a couple of weeks for recovery after the surgery so we waited a few months and scheduled it the week before Christmas so I would have time off to heal up. For the 3 months before the test, my doctor ordered blood work each month to see if I had ovulated, just to keep checking. I think total in the months we tested for ovulation, 3 out of 5 were negative for ovulation.
About a week before my scheduled surgery, Mike and I decided it was time to share our struggles with our families. After all, I can’t quite go under the knife without letting the fam know-we would be tortured by keeping a secret that big. So we had them all over for dinner. I just wanted to have the conversation once and get it over with. Ugh, that was a hard night. Mike and I had gone over how we were going to explain everything and who was going to talk and had a whole plan in place. As soon as Mike started talking, the plan was pretty well out the window. Everyone was shocked, sad, heartbroken, and I think just really taken off-guard. We did our best to explain everything, but the night ended up with tears and more questions. It was hard for us to share and hard for them to hear. We have the greatest families ever. All they want is for us to be happy and pain-free and have been so loving and supportive through the whole thing. They just wanted to make it all go away. We love them:)
The surgery came in late December and I was unsure how to feel. As with anyone else who has dealt with fertility issues, you {in a twisted way} want there to be something wrong so you can fix it and get pregnant already. You want to find a reason. Unexplained infertility is much more difficult to grasp. Nothing serious or scary, but something small the doctor can just wipe away so you can move forward. Obviously life doesn’t work that way:) So I was half hoping nothing was there and half hoping there was a tiny piece of something blocking the tube that would be cleared out and I would magically get pregnant. So we went in for surgery and I woke up nervous to hear the results. Mike let me know that the doctor didn’t find anything. My tubes were perfectly clear by the end of the procedure when they went back through with the dye. Once again I was unsure how to feel at this point. A big part of me was relieved that everything was ok. But another part of me starting asking a million questions. ”Soooo why did we just have this procedure? Did the radiologist mess the test up because of the difficulty he had getting the test done? Why didn’t we have another dye test done before going through with the procedure? And where in the world is my explanation for not being pregnant?” Sore, really sick from a bad reaction to the anesthesia, and confused. Trying not to dwell over the news we just received, we went home, new scars and all, and waited to see what to do next.
With the surgery behind us and all healed up, the following month my doctor decided to prescribe Clomid for me. This is an oral medication that is supposed to boost ovulation. Since the majority of my blood work showed that I had not been ovulating regularly, I got high hopes that this was the answer. Of course you just want something to work and by this point, I could pretty much convince myself of anything so I was certain we would get pregnant. Womp womp. Month 1 was a huge disappointment. Not only was I not pregnant, I didn’t even ovulate. And on top of that, poor Mike had to deal with some hormonal mood swings from the medicine for a few days that made me feel like a complete crazy person. Another reason why he should win husband of the year:) They decided to double my dose for the second round and we ended up with the same results. Lots of tears. So, we settled in for month three hoping and praying like crazy this would work because if it didn’t we knew we were headed to a fertility doctor. Month 3 was devastating. Still no pregnancy, still no ovulation. Within 1 minute of hanging up with the nurse who very gently handed me the results, through tear-filled eyes, I was on the phone making an appointment with the fertility doctor. I was trying to give myself some hope, something to look forward to, an answer from someone.
A few weeks later we sat down with our new fertility doctor and were in complete shock over what he had to say about the tests, surgery, and everything we’d been through.
How’s that for a cliff hanger? Come back next week to hear Part 3.
And for those of you going through this and those of you who left comments on the last post about your own personal struggles, I commend you on your bravery and strength and pray for you everyday. It’s tough, but hang in there!
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing all of this. We aren’t to this point just yet, but we are getting closer. It’s a huge relief to know that there are other people out there having problems conceiving. (I’m sure there’s tons of them, just no one ever says anything and it feels like you are the only one.)
Congrats on the little one and I’m very happy for you guys!
You definitely aren’t alone, Sarah! Sending prayers your way that something happens soon:)