The Joy

The day I got my first BFP, everything changed. The worst part of TTC for me had been the not-knowing. I had no idea if I even could become pregnant, if I could ever bear a child at all. It is a terrible thing to wonder about. Despite the feminist movement's great success, I think deep down every woman wants to bear children, or at least wants to know that she can if she wants to. You're fighting against serious biological urges when you tell yourself you don't want/need to have kids. And for me, being a mother was always a given. I had always loved children and wanted some of my own. So to wonder for 15 months if I was even capable of doing this basic, seemingly easy, biological process was a serious, daily test of my emotional and mental fortitude.

But that day that I found out I was pregnant, and it was confirmed by a blood test, I knew I was at least capable of becoming pregnant. 15 months is a long time to wonder ask yourself this question. But it was answered that day with a resounding "YES!"

After I got the blood test results back, I made this sign for DH and left it on his pillow:



And then I called every human being I knew and told them the good news.

There is a sort of debate in the TTC world about whether to tell people you are pregnant right away or weather to wait until it is "safe." Most miscarriages occur within the first couple of weeks, with the numbers waning gradually until 12 weeks, when they fall off sharply. Most women consider themselves "safe" if they have carried a baby to 12 weeks. And so many wait until that point to make the announcement.

But there was no way I could wait. I had been trying for so long, and my family had been praying so long, watching and waiting for so long, silently and verbally rooting for me for so long that I could not NOT tell them.

Everyone was overjoyed, of course. I mean, I was only 3 weeks pregnant, for Pete's sake, but everyone was absolutely ecstatic for me.

To make things more interesting, my sister, who had suddenly suffered her own year-long bout of unexplained infertility, after successfully conceiving and bearing four children, had also just gotten pregnant about 4 weeks before. Our babies would only be a month apart in age!

I couldn't have been happier. Yes, it was a long wait, but now everything was going to be just great.



(I hope you can sense the foreboding in that statement. If you don't know me personally, get ready for everything not to be "just great."

And That's When Things Happened. Sort Of.

Back to blogging about the infertility....

So the month after my progesterone finally hit 10.2 (which was the 5th month on Clomid), we decided to take a break from Clomid. They say if Clomid is going to work, it will work within the first six months. And I was almost at six months. So I figured if it hadn't worked yet, why put myself through the hyper-ovulations again.

That month we:
1) Went off clomid.
2) Used Preseed (a sperm friendly lubricant. Highly recommend it)
3) Increased BD from every other day to every day (despite every other day being recommended as the optimal timing)
4) I had lost 12 lbs

So when I woke up, 10 DPO, and checked my temperature, and it showed an increase again, I decided to test. I knew from experience that testing at only 10 DPO is not the wisest thing to do. It's most likely going to give you a BFN, even if you are pregnant. Which will send you into yet another tailspin of depression and hopelessness. Which might end up being moot if you are indeed pregnant. But try telling a TTC woman with promising signs not to test at 10 DPO. You might as well tell the tide not to come in.

So I crept from my bed at 6:30am, stole to the bathroom, peed on a stick....

AND I GOT (drumroll please)....

A BFP!!!


Miracle of miracles!!! After 15 consecutive pregnancy tests in which the result area was as white as the driven snow, I woke up one morning and took a pregnancy test which showed the palest, faintest, most wonderful hint of a line.

I raced in to show DH, who was sound asleep. I'm sure he thought I was crazy. He joked not to wake him up to show him my urine ever again. But he sounded faintly excited too. I think.

That day I made an appointment to get my blood tested. I didn't say anything else to DH about the pregnancy test. I wanted to be sure before I really made a big deal of it.

Disillusioned

I haven't posted in a while. I lost my fertility blogging mojo, I guess.

I still have a lot to tell about how I got here. But I'm feeling at the moment like talking about now.

Now is when I am almost ready to give up and call it good. My baby, my three year old baby, just potty trained himself. So I've finally gotten to reclaim the surface of my bedroom dresser (which was a changing table for the last 4 1/2 years) and the surface of my son's dresser (which was also a changing table) and my purse, which always had to have a diaper and some wipes shoved in, and the top drawer of my dresser, which had extra diapers and swim diapers, and, and, and....

I feel like I might have the rest of my life in view again. The light at the end of the baby-rearing tunnel is in sight. And it's made me kind of excited. About being able to be ME again. Not a nursing, exhausted, diaper-changing, baby-barf smelling shadow of myself.

Don't get me wrong. I have loved bearing and rearing children. I have loved my babies. But I am soooo tired of trying to get pregnant and being disappointed that I am ready to give up right about now.

Almost.

Clomid Continued

My first month of Clomid ended in a BFN, so my doctor upped my dosage to 100 mgs. This definitely kicked things into gear, if the 5-6 days of serious pain leading up to my ovulations were any indication. I had to be careful not even to lean against anything or let anything touch my belly during those days. Ouch! And my emotionality didn't improve at all. At least it didn't make me angry or agressive as I'd heard had happened with some women.

But the Clomid did seem to be making some improvement. My progesterone level went up to a 2.3 the first month at 50 mgs, then a 3.5 after the first month of 100mgs. It continued to rise a few points every month, indicating that my ovulations were getting stronger, but still I wasn't getting pregnant.

Finally, after the 5th month of Clomid with no pregnancy, I decided to take a break from the meds. I just wasn't feeling like myself and the pain was pretty bad. But my ovulations had at least improved. I was finally up to a 10.2!

Clomid

Clomid is the universal, catch-all drug prescribed to most women with infertility. It may or may not relate at all to what is going on with her body, or what cannot be diagnosed, but if she can't get pregnant and it's been at least 12 months, her doctor will probably prescribe her Clomid.

Technically, Clomid is really only to be used to induce ovulation in women who don't ovulate at all. But it is also given to women who have poor quality ovulations or whose ovulations are uncertain. This was the case with me. I have always had regular periods, and I have always been able to tell when I ovulated. I would have a twinge of pain, maybe for 5-10 minutes, right in the ovary that was ovulating that month.

But after a series of blood tests, carefully timed to check the hormone levels in my body at ovulation, the doctor said it wasn't clear whether my ovulations were of good quality. My progesterone level was only 1.5. It should be 10 to indicate that ovulation has occured, and, though this idea is controversial among fertility specialists, a level of 10 progesterone must be achieved in order to sustain a pregnancy.

I had only been TTC for six months at this point. And doctors, as a rule, don't consider you infertile until you have TTC'ed for a whole year. But I was already 30 years old, and I had carefully tracked my cycles for six months, and we'd tested everything else, and I was VERY persistant. So my doctor prescribed me Clomid.

The first month I took 50 mgs. It made me kind of loopy. By that I mean that I was hyper emotional. I would cry at the slightest thing. Not things that were real, things that should make me cry. But random things, like Hallmark commercials or long distance commercials. Or when teaching my history students about the Emancipation Proclamation. It was kind of embarrassing.

Another side effect was that my ovulations became much more painful. Instead of a few minutes of pain, I began to have several days of pain and swelling and tenderness leading up to ovulation. It was uncomfortable. But at least it made it much more clear when "all systems were go."

The Waiting Game

Waiting is the one universal thing that all TTC women have in common. Everyone's story is different: PCOS, IVF, male infertility, deviated uterus, endometriosis, blocked tubes....there are all kinds of diagnoses (and lack thereof), but the one thing we all share is having to wait, WAIT, WAIT, WAAAAAAIIIIIIIITTTTT. First you wait for your period to end. Then you wait for signs of ovulation, then you wait for your OPKs to indicate it's time to BD, then you BD like crazy, and then comes the most awful wait of all....the dreaded two week wait (2WW) before you can find out if you're pregnant. It is the longest 14 days of any human's life. But who am I kidding? No one who is TTC waits the full 2 weeks. Most start testing 7 days past ovulation (DPO) if there is even the slightest indication that she may be pregnant (or not). Sore boobs? I better test! Strange CM? I better test! Spotting? I for SURE better test. Then when the HPT comes back negative, she tests again 9DPO. And then again at 11DPO. And again until she either runs out of tests or money for more tests or until AF proves without a shadow of a doubt that she is NOT pregnant.

It's maddening. Every twinge of the body is scrutinized for the possibility that it may mean something significant is going on. Most of the time it means nothing. And when AF shows up, you cry, get depressed, get discouraged, get determined again, and start the whole process over.

Again.


And Again.



And Again.


There is more crying, more frustration, more confusion, more depression, but ultimately you have no choice but to either give up and decide you are not going to bear children, or to do it yet again.

And you want a baby. You want a baby DESPERATELY by now. So you are willing to do it again and again and again. And then again.

TCOYF

I'm not sure who recommended it to me or how I found it--probably it was someone on FF (Fertility Friend)--but early in my TTC journey, I bought the Bible of fertility: Taking Charge of Your Fertility (TCOYF). This book laid out everything clearly, concisely, and with pictures. Even the grossest stuff had clear drawings and actual photographs to help a woman figure things out. Through this book I learned:

To chart my BBT
To notice signs in my body that indicated ovulation was imminent
To examine my cervical mucus (CM)
To test my cervical texture
To evaluate my cervical opening
(all of which tell you where in your cycle you are)
Other methods of determining the highest phase of fertility
What positions are more likely to help egg and sperm unite
What your hormones should be doing at various times of the month
What problems you might have and what the symptoms are
What procedures are available to treat said problems, both medical and natural
And several hundred other important and useful bits of information relating to how a woman's reproductive cycle should work, can go wrong, and may be fixed.

If you are reading this and you don't have TCOYF, get it. GET IT NOW! And read the whole thing. You'll know more about your cycle after you read this book than your doctor. And make your man read it with you. It's good for him to know what is going on with you and to be able to support you in the things you'll need to do to get pregnant. 'Cause there are going to be some weird ones. And some inconvenient ones. And yes, sadly, some very unromantic ones. But you've got your whole life to be a sex kitten. Right now you're a baby making machine, and he needs to be the engineer.

Support

Round about the time my doctor sort of wrote me off, I joined Fertility Friend, a website designed to help women trying to concieve. It offered free charting (measuring your basal body temperature every day to determine if/when you ovulate) as well as tons of information on fertility, and it had message boards and buddy groups you could join to get feedback, answers, and support from other women going through the same thing as you.

If you haven't gone through fertility or know someone closely who has, you won't know that NO ONE knows (and most don't care) how hard it is to want a baby and not be able to have one except someone who has been there. As soon as you get married, people start asking you, "So, when are you two going to start a family?" A seemingly innocent question, but after months and months of negative pregnancy tests (BFNs), it's a question that stings. And some people think they're being funny when they say more pointedly, "So what's the deal? Where are the babies?" And then there are the people who think they are offering you great advice when they say, "Stop worrying about it so much and it will happen," or "You guys just need to practice more, hahaha." But those comments just make you feel more inadequate and more stressed. But probably the worst is the glazed look in your friends' and family memebers' eyes when you start talking about fertility stuff again, like they just can't bear to hear it anymore. Sigh...

So when you find a site like Fertility Friend, where you can complain and cry and vent and people not only listen but actually understand, it is a GOD SEND.

Step Three: Educating Yourself

My first OBGYN was labeled a "fertility specialist." He was a nice man, not overly young or terribly old. He had a decent bedside manner. He wasn't insulting to me, acting as if I were just a stupid patient. He seemed to understand that I really wanted to get pregnant and wanted to help. To a certain extent.

He did run the usual, "Well, we like you to wait a year before we really get worried; it can take a normal, healthy couple a full year to get pregnant" bit past me. But I wasn't having that. I was already 30, for Pete's sake. My primary child-bearing years were long gone, and I was facing the iffy ones, with the "good luck with that" ones only 5 years away.

So at my insistence, he agreed to start diagnostics after only six months of TTC. First were several rounds of blood tests. They wanted to check all my hormone levels. And they wanted to be sure that I was actually ovulating, though I've always had regular cycles and been able to feel a twang of pain when I ovulated. Blood tests are no fun. The needles are no fun, especially when you have tiny, deep, squirrelly veins like I do. But I got so many tests done that within a few months, I was over my fear of them. And I even figured out where my one or two good gushers were.

Next came Big Daddy's turn. His was the "leave a deposit in this cup" type of test. We both had visions of "Forget Paris" as he drove the cup over to the doctor's office with it tucked in his coat pocket.

Then came the HSG. This procedure, where they check to see if a woman's tubes are open is the ultimate in the joke, "this may feel a little uncomfortable." First they have you lay spread eagle on an xray table, which is always very relaxation inducing. Next they insert a balloon into your cervix and blow it up to make the hole bigger. Imagine sticking a carrot up your nose and you'll get roughly the same feeling of comfort. Then they shoot contrast dye through your uterus and up your tubes and see if it comes out the other end of the tubes.

After the HSG came back completely normal, both tubes open, and Big Daddy's test came back with flying colors, and my hormone levels all looked good aside from low progesterone, they didn't really know what else to test. It did appear that I was ovulating, though it couldn't be determined if the ovulations were good quality because of the low progesterone. So the next thing my OBGYN did was what every OBGYN does if they can't explain why you're not getting pregnant--they put you on Clomid, a fertility drug.

And it was about this time that I realized that fertility science is still in the dark ages. No one knows anything. If you don't happen to come up with one of the big two or three female issues liked blocked tubes, endometriosis, or PCOS, and your man doesn't come back with serious sperm issues, they just kind of shrug their shoulders, prescribe you some drugs, and send you on your way telling you to "relax more" and to "be more patient."

Thanks, doc. Thanks a lot. So I decided to start being my own doctor, my own fertility specialist. If no one was really interested or able to help me figure things out, I guess I was going to have to do it on my own.

Step Two: Badgering the OBGYN

If you don't know this about the medical world yet, let me let you in on a little secret: It's run by MEN. Most of the doctors are men. Most of the clinicians are men. Most of the researchers are men. Most of the people who own the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are men. And so bajillions of dollars have been spent making sure that 90 year old men can still have erections while fertility-challenged women of child-bearing ages are left to fend for themselves in producing a child.

At least that's how it shakes down most of the time.

The medical advances that have graced every field under the sun seem to have evaded the field of fertility. Most insurance plans don't cover basic infertility procedures, even diagnostic ones. They don't even cover birth control. They cover viagara, you can bet your sweet life. But comparitively little attention is given to issues of producing more offspring should trouble arise.

This is what I found out when I visited with my OB.

I will tell you something else about the medical world: If you are a man and you want a better erection, you only have to wait 15 minutes for your drug to kick in. If you are a woman wanting to concieve a child, you have to wait a year before a doctor will consider helping you out. I'm not joking. It's standard medical practice to have a woman wait an entire year of trying to get pregnant before doctors will even take steps to diagnose any problems. Considering that it may take several cycles to diagnose the problems, it will likely be closer to a year and a half before the woman can hope to recieve any treatment. If her case is more dire and she has to see a Reproductive Endocrinologist, this woman will have to schedule an appointment a minimum of SIX MONTHS OUT to get in to see him.

And then she'll have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for any diagnostics and treatment because, well, the insurance companies are, say it with me, run by men. And men don't care if women can get pregnant as long as they themselves can get errections.

You should also know that fertility time is more like dog years for women. 1 day for an actively attempting to concieve woman is like a week to most people. A week for an actively attempting to conieve woman is like a month for most people. The 2 weeks between her period and ovulation is like months to an actively trying to concieve woman. And the 2 week wait between ovulation and taking a pregnancy test is an ETERNITY to an actively trying to concieve woman.

So all of this is why, when I met with my OBGYN after six months of TTC, I began to be very glad I am a very assertive, persuasive, persistant and well-read woman.

Step One: Mild Surprise

I have to admit, I was pretty surprised when, two weeks after our first attempt at getting pregnant, I held negative pregnancy test in my hand. I wasn't upset. I was mostly just honestly surprised.

The next month I was surprised again, but a bit more so. Close to shocked this time, really. I had had every expectation that having kids would be a simple matter of boy meets girl, boy marries girl, girl stops taking the pill, girl gets pregnant. Never in my wildest imagination did I guess I'd have to try more than a month or two. After all, I came from a fertile family. My grandmother had produced 10 kids. My own mother had given birth to three kids, but with half a dozen other pregnancies. My own sister had easily conceived four children by this point. It was in my blood to be a child bearer. And my wide hips had always supported this assumption.

And yet here I was, month after month, getting negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test. Baffling.

But up to this point, I still maintained the firm belief that children were imminent. I was just too impatient to wait. So after the six month of trying with no luck, but increasing shock and concern, I broke down and made an appointment with the doctor.