Our Infertility Story - Part 1

After making our big announcement, I decided I wanted to share our full infertility story for a couple of reasons.  First, to document it for my own sake.  Second, so that it can hopefully serve as an encouragement to someone else who is walking this path.  And most importantly, because it’s a testimony to my sovereign God who is the giver and sustainer of life. 

So, here we go.  {Disclaimer – if you are a guy, I will be talking about lots of female medical stuff.  You’ve been warned.}

M and I were married in June 2007 when we were both 25, and as we had already dated for 3 years prior, we both knew we wanted to have kids and didn’t want to “wait forever” to start trying.  We thought we’d wait about 2 years, and we’d be parents by the time we were 28 and hopefully on to number 2 by age 30.  This sounded like a great plan to us, and even if it took a little bit to get pregnant, we still had plenty of time. 

A little back story here: when I was 17 or 18, I was tentatively diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) through blood work.  I wasn’t having any major symptoms per say, but had never been “regular.”  I was put on birth control (BCP) at that time, and things seemed fine from there on. 

So, in mid to late 2008 after we’d been married a little over a year, I started realizing that I didn’t really like what the BCP was doing to me – awful mood swings, and several other less-than-desirable symptoms.  M and I decided together that we were okay at that point if we got pregnant, so I took my last BCP in October 2008. 

At the end of November, my cycle didn’t start, and I was so excited thinking this might have already worked!  Oh how naïve I was…

Obviously, November was not “our month”…or December…or January.  Month after month went by with still no cycle in sight.  I had learned from my friend Google that sometimes it can take up to 6 months for your cycle to regulate after coming off of an extended use of the BCP.  I had been on it for about 9 years at this point, so that totally made sense to me. 

By the time June 2009 rolled around (7 months) I was sitting in my ob/gyn’s (Dr. W) office to try to figure out what was going on.  She recommended charting for a few months to see if there was any type of pattern in my waking temperature.  I charted from June to November with no patterns at all.   In December she decided to run some blood work to see if anything came back abnormal with my thyroid or other levels, which nothing did.  I still had some indicators of PCOS from my blood work, and she seemed to think that was the problem, and that I was not ovulating. 

By this point M and I were both ready to be “officially” trying rather than just not preventing.  Dr. W agreed, and decided to put me on a mild dose of Clomid to try to trick my brain into ovulating.  M and I were sure this was all we needed, and that we’d be pregnant by the end of January 2010 for sure! 




Come back for part 2 tomorrow!