Dealing With Infertility

I have been fairly silent regarding a personal aspect of my life, but I'm beginning to think more and more that what I'm going through--what Brian and I are both going through--should be shared with others. 

I'm not sure what it is, but there's a certain stigma regarding pregnancy and fertility. Babies are supposed to be "happy accidents", intended to be prevented through contraception and safe sex practices, and while I do believe that birth control is an excellent tool that should be used for those not ready for children, it is not up to anybody else when and why they decide they are ready to begin a family.

First, I have confessions. I have been pregnant a total of five times, four of those pregnancies in the last year. All of them were unintended (Brian nearly had heart attacks each time I came to him with the news of a pregnancy), and shortly after I would get a positive test, the pregnancy would terminate. I only made it past five weeks one time. My babies never had heartbeats, but I had such hopes and dreams of the future the instant that I would see those two pink lines.

Losing that potential for motherhood five times was a blow to the heart that only one who has gone through the pain can understand. To have all those hopes--the nursery plans, names picked out, images of lullabies and toothless kisses-- shattered from one moment to the next is  heartbreaking. 

Every time I logged onto Facebook, knowing of my pregnancy but keeping silent in fear of the worst, I would inevitably find at least two other women I went to high school with announcing their pregnancies. I wanted to share that experience so badly, and bitterness and despair ripped out my soul until I could barely stand to even pass a pregnant woman in the grocery store. Every infant I saw made me starry-eyed and hopeful. 

I would beg Brian. Please. I want a baby so badly. I know you do too.

He would always tell me not yet. We can't afford it, or I want us to be married a few years first, or we're too young.

I shouted. I cried. I cursed God for taking away my hopes. I prayed for forgiveness for sins in my past that surely I was being punished for. I deserved this. I didn't deserve any of it.

As much stigma is around conceiving, there is twice as much around miscarriage and pregnancy loss. But the painful truth is, 1 in 4 women have experienced a miscarriage or pregnancy loss. Why don't we talk about it?

God has a better plan. Then why did it happen in the first place?

It will all happen when God wants it to happen. What about what I wanted? 

Or the worst, 

Everything happens for a reason. You don't need kids right now.

Finally, Brian told me that we could start trying. For the first few months, it became an obsession. I read everything there was to know about conceiving. I stocked up on fertility monitors and pregnancy tests. I peed on everything that even looked like it would change colors and wasted a ton of time, money, and tears. 

Finally, I realized something was definitely wrong, and Brian urged me to go to the doctor. 

Let me start out by saying that my doctor is incredible. Within a few minutes of being in her office, she handed me a purple pamphlet and a diagnosis. 

Dear, you have PCOS. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It's not uncommon; as many as 1 in 10 women have PCOS, and most have no idea they have it.

Without going into much detail, PCOS is believed to stem from an insulin resistance--the body makes more insulin than it uses, and then tries to counteract that by pumping androgens (male hormones) into my body. This keeps the female hormones from doing what they should, keeping me from being able to get pregnant and quite possibly also terminating existing pregnancies. 

She schedules an ultrasound to look at all my lady bits, gives me a prescription for a diabetes drug to help my body process insulin, and sends me out the door feeling resolved about what my body is doing. 

And then I sat down with Dr. Google. 

Let me tell you. Dr. Google is a mean, hateful witch that I am convinced is run by Satan with his hypochondriac doubts burrowing into your brain. 

Three days after my appointment, I sat bawling on the couch, eating chocolate chip cookie dough and watching a diaper commercial. I'm never going to have kids. 

It all seemed so hopeless. And still, I go through moments of panic and depression just thinking that I will never hear the rush of a fetal heartbeat, never feel a baby's kicks, never experience that surge of emotion while I held my husbands hand and discovered whether we would have a handsome little boy who had his father's eyes or a little girl with my nose.

But I also felt determined. I could feel the medicine doing its job. That in itself gave me hope. Three weeks later I went in for an ultrasound and they confirmed that the medicine was working! I was ovulating! 

And then more devastating news--I have an irregular uterus, something called an arcuate uterus. It means that instead of being round at the top, it dips down in the middle a bit.  This doesn't sound so bad until you think about a baby trying to grow in a place that has a dent in the ceiling. They run out of room to move, and therefore I would have a higher risk of being breech, having smaller birth weight babies, and preterm labor. 

(A comparison of my arcuate uterus top with a normal uterus bottom)

Only about 5% of women have an arcuate uterus. 

The probability of someone with PCOS also having an arcuate uterus is 1 in 200 women, or 0.005%.

Now I feel alone. 

An arcuate uterus, coupled with the PCOS, means one big thing: high risk pregnancy. I might succeed in conceiving and making it past the first trimester, getting to hear the heartbeat and feel the kicks, get that renewed surge of hope that the medicine would succeed, and then lose it all when a baby would be unable to survive because my body has failed me yet again. 

The reason I feel compelled to share this is because I just got a phone call from my  OBGYN saying that after reviewing my chart, she wants to send me to an infertility specialist, before I get pregnant.

This is painful to hear, painful to talk about. I'm not sure what my plan is as of yet, if I even have one. But I wanted to share my story, and now that it's out, I plan on giving updates and sharing my journey towards a healthy pregnancy.