National Infertility Awareness Week, April 22-28. This week I’m going to be blogging about infertility and I’ve never really blogged about my infertility (IF) before. I talk about it, and when we were trying to conceive (TTC) I found a great community of IF bloggers, but this blog at the time was primarily read by family and IRL friends and I wasn’t comfortable sharing the nitty gritty of the details. Partly because it seemed a little weird to me, and partly because I wanted to be able to tell in my own time when we did finally become pregnant. So this is my story.
Here’s the short version. I’m infertile. I have an ovulation disorder. GYN said PCOS, RE said probably not rather PCOS like. It doesn’t really matter because I don’t ovulate. After a year of stress over “what if” while we waited to start treatment I did two cycles of Clo.mid (one 50 mg, one 100mg) with my Gyn, who told me after the first failed cycle “you’re your, just relax, it will happen.” I got the courage to call the RE the following week – it was a month before the appointment which was 5 days after ovulation. The RE validated my stress, made me feel comfortable, and talked to us about a plan starting non-invasive and where we could go if that didn’t work. But I was already pregnant. And now Simon is here. When we’re ready to try again, we’ll go to the RE first.
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The long version with details, possibly too many details, and in installments.
The first time I worried about my fertility I was in high school. I had a long to non-existent cycle. For awhile I had fairly consistent 6 week cycles that over time stretched to every 9 months or so. I asked the doctor, who was my pediatrician, about having kids some day. She told me not to worry and sent me to Plan.ned Par.enthood for a prescription for the pill. For the next seven years or so I was mostly on the pill, but when I was off, I rarely had a period.
I saw a new doctor in 2006, after I’d moved to NYC and this was the first time I heard PCOS. She didn’t make it sound like it was a big deal, and when I asked her about fertility she said “don’t worry about it, we can just give you a pill to make you ovulate when you’re ready for that.” Like magic or something. Oh, how much I’ve learned since then. I stayed on the pill. Dated some. Met my husband. Got married. Talked about having kids and when we thought we’d like to try.
Just before I started graduate school I thought I might be pregnant. I’m really, really horrible about remembering to take the pill, and since getting pregnant on our own would have been a happy surprise, I never stressed too much about it. But taking that test was scary, because the thought I might actually be pregnant was scary. The test was negative. I breathed a sigh of relief, but at the same time was a little disappointed. That’s how I knew I was about ready to start this journey. I just had to get Rob on board and figure out if even trying to have a baby in grad school was feasible.
I went to see my nurse practitioner for my yearly exam and asked her when, if I wanted to get pregnant a year from now (which would be after the first year of school), I should go off the pill. I told her I didn’t have a cycle without the pill, and thought I would likely need some kind of IF treatment. Her response was to go off the pill now, because I don’t know what my body will do because I’ve been on the pill for so long. So I did, I knew what my body would do, but this way I would at least have proof, and that waiting period of 6 months to a year before a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE) will see you out of the way. I had a 45 day cycle, ovulating on day 31 and then I went 187 days and nothing.