Emily's Story - Part 1

The start to a beautiful story.  I hope that Emily continues to share her story and that is it able to provide insight into the feelings of someone battling with infertility.   
Thank you!  Your strength could inspire an army. 
 

Emily's Story - Part 1

This was not in the plan. The plan. Oh the plan. I had it all laid out by the time I was 14 (that was 1999). I was going to find my college sweetheart and then marry him after I graduated college…full honors of course. A few years after that we were going to make babies and lots of them. I wanted, no, I want 4, yes 4. I had my whole explanation planned out too. Not 1, I didn’t want an only child, Not 2, I had grown up with just 2 kids (we are 13 months a part - we hated each other until I moved away for college) and when you are fighting with your sibling, there is no one else to play with, Not 3, I didn’t want to have a middle child, so 4, both my parents had grown up in 4 children families and they seemed to be doing well. :)

So back to the plan…I found my college sweetheart in 2005…I didn’t anticipate him being almost 9 years older than me, but you can’t help who you fall in love with. I clued him in on “the plan” and he loved it, thought it was great, perfect, it would work for us. There was just one problem, he wanted 5 children. He had grown up as only child and he wanted his own basketball team. I told him that he could give birth to the 5th child and he said if technology had advanced that far by the time the 5th child came around, he would gladly do it. With that, I knew I had found the love of my life.

So why all the back story you might ask, I just wanted to show you how far back the plan goes and where I am now. You might also wonder why I add humor to my story…certainly it is not a laughing matter…but I determined a long time ago, if I do not laugh then I might as well give up on life and let the grief/fear/sorrow consume me and I’m not about to let that happen.

So again…back to the plan…we married in the fall of 2009. I knew I had to change my plan a bit. Initially I wanted to wait a year and a half before we started to make babies. But, given that Mr. Man was quite a bit older and didn’t want to be having kids when he was 40 (he was 32 and I was 23 when we married), we need to get ‘busy’. So I waited about 5 months and in March of 2010 on his 33rd birthday I told him I wanted to start trying. We were ecstatic! We did everything most couples do at this time…I’ll spare you the details.

Unfortunately, we made the terrible mistake of telling our families and closest friends that we were trying to conceive. Six months passed and still no baby. From our friends and families we kept getting the ‘You just need to relax,’ ‘You should be having sex this many times’ and ‘Are you pregnant yet?’ At eight months, I started googling. ‘How long does it typically take a woman to conceive?’ ‘How long do I wait to see a specialist?’ ‘How to get pregnant.’ It is then that I leaned that after a year has passed, you should consult a specialist. So in March of 2011 we went specialist hunting. It helped that Mr. Man’s mom had a lot of expertise in this area, she had miscarried more times than fingers. Mr. Man is what we like to call a miracle baby.

We made an appointment with the fertility specialist (let’s call her Specialist #1) that was covered in my network of doctors on my insurance, because if you haven’t figured it out yet, as I’m sure some of you will, fertility treatments are expensive and I needed all the help my medical could give me. At the time my medical would pay for $2000 of my fertility needs. We went in to see Specialist #1 and decided that we were both going to get tested, might as well. So we did all the obligatory tests and answered all the questions and they took blood, so much blood. Any one who doesn’t know, I’m deathly afraid of needles, so up to that point that was one of the hardest things that I had ever had to do. I also had my first of many vaginal sonograms. Turns out my uterus is tilted to the right, my right ovary is where it is supposed to be and my left ovary is way off to the side (by my hip bone). All of which, I was assured, was fine.

A little side note…I was 24 at this point…every nurse and I mean EVERY nurse kept commenting on how I was so young. At the time I thought nothing of it, I mean yeah…I was 24, this is the last place I should be…I mean I wasn’t 35!! (that was old back then ;-P ) Also, up to this point I had never had an irregular period, I mean I was as regular as the moon, you could even set your watch to my period…if periods had a poster child, it would have been me.

So after Specialist #1 runs our labs; turns out, Mr. Man has perfect semen, like 99th percentile perfect, like if they took the SAT they would get a 1599 or 1600. So I guess it was all my fault! So Specialist #1 was as nice as she could be as she explained to me that they would need more tests because my initial results were inconclusive…what does that mean? So while we were waiting on labs to come back she immediately recommends an IUI (Intrauterine Insemination). Which basically means at my time of ovulation, they squirt Mr. Man’s semen up my vaginal cavity. By the way…if you haven’t figured it out yet…Specialist #1 wasn’t very good, but what did I know…it was my first specialist. I barely had time to react and take in my infertility before she set me up for a procedure.

So we prepare for the IUI. They put me on Clomid, which I later found out is not good…at all…the side effects are worse than any other drug out there. Clomid is from the 50s and its success rates are low…so low. When you do an IUI they have you take an ovulation test so that they can determine the precise time when to inseminate you, but just in case they schedule you on a specific day in your cycle. My first clue should have been when I took the ovulation test, I always got negative…always. So they called me a day before and asked if I had gotten a positive test, I had not, so we went for the procedure any ways. And surprise, surprise, no pregnancy. Nothing.

Specialist #1 wouldn't give up that easily, so she decides on a dye test. In a dye test, they inject a florescent dye into your uterus that they can see in an X-ray. They mainly do this test to see if there is an issue with your fallopian tubes; to make sure that they are not blocked, etc. We do the test and the dye goes down my tubes and empties into my ovaries, so that was a win. Specialist #1 decides that’s great and starts me on another round of IUI and just ups the dosage of Clomid. I’m sure you can guess how that went…no pregnancy.

My labs finally arrive back at this point (they sent them off to be crazy tested??) and it turns out I have really low hormone levels…like pre-menopausal low. Turns out, a woman at my age level (24) has a 78% chance of conceiving a child naturally. My chances…11% and will only decrease as I get older. So what did this mean to Specialist #1? Another cocktail of drugs will do the trick! So into Round 3 of IUI and of course…no pregnancy. It was at this point that we had run out of money for the year. We had drained all of my savings and what little money we had left from what we received at our wedding. So we started saving again in hopes that next year we could pick up where we left off. What was I left with? The most empty feeling, I would never be able to conceive my own children by myself. I felt like I had let down my husband and my family. Where was my plan now?

Thank you for reading. I would just like to thank the creator of this blog for the strength she has shown in being able to put her thoughts to metaphoric paper and share her story. When she first told me that she was going to create this blog, I was in shock, although I hid it well, I think. I couldn’t imagine sharing my story, my private story that I didn’t want any one but my closest of close friends and family to know about. It took me 3 years before I was openly able to share my story; 3 years of holding on and internalizing my suffering because I didn’t want anyone to know. I was just so embarrassed, the one thing we are supposed to do, reproduce, I could not do. Her story and the many others I have heard and read posted here, help me to begin to let go. I hope you find comfort in my story the way I have in many others. I am so glad that this blog gives people an opportunity to share their thoughts, feelings and hopes. Part 2 to come soon.