My husband and I met during my freshman year of college and honestly it maybe cliche but it was love very early on and has been smooth sailing ever since. Not long after we started dating I was officially diagnosed with endometriosis. I had been having symptoms since a cyst ruptured my freshman year of high school. The diagnosis through a lap did not come as a surprise, the surprise came at how advanced it was given my age of only 19. At this time the doctor indicated that he doubted I would ever be able to convince a child period. The first doctor did not provide much hope of me ever being able to have a child, which at the age of 19 was not an easy thing to hear. A year of treatment with very little relief forced my parents and I to explore other doctor's once the first one today my mom and I "this is your life and you need to learn to deal with it" in response my pain level.
This was the best decision we ever made in my medical treatment! I moved on to an RE who is in our town and specializes in endo! What an amazing blessing this man has been. I have been seeing him since May of 2005 and he has honestly saved my life. He is a man with a plan which I love ( I always plan and want to have a plan for any situation). There have been some rough times with the endo and many different treatments including physical therapy, surgery, and plenty of medications, but never have I doubted my doctor or his plan for me.
The goal from very early on has to be allow me to one day try to have a child. Naturally has always been the goal, but my husband and I have always been open to medical intervention (just have hoped we would never need it). A year ago we were beginning to feel like we were ready to begin our family. He has a great job and financially we were as ready as we would be for a while. During my annual appointment with my RE I mentioned to him I did not think I wanted any more birth control. He was elated at this idea! It was so great to see him so excited for us. Following my exam and more questions he said that my body "was in the best shape he had ever seen it in" and saw no reason we should not try to have a baby!!!! We talked about how this was what we had been working towards since 2005 and he agreed we had done everything we could to get to this point. He said he would only give us one year of trying on our own before he used medical intervention to help us out.
We had the finally stamp of approval that we needed or so we thought. He wanted me to have one cycle before we actually "tried" to get pregnant. This was the first long month of many more to come.
For the most part the first year was very unexciting:
-One ultrasound in February when I had some random bleeding. Turned out to be ovulation bleeding!
-Most cycles were 28-30 days for the first 6 months
-I did a great job for the first 6-7 months of not tracking my cycles or trying to detect ovulation (temping OPK etc)
-I kept hoping it would just happen (friends would probably say I was really really hoping it would just happen!)
Around June of this year I started to get worried that it was going to be the long process I had dreaded for years. August came and I had the weirdest period very abnormal. My doctor's office was concerned I was miscarrying, which was heartbreaking but encouraging at the same time (meant everything was working). Turned out I was not. September was another weird month with a 45 day cycle! My doctor scheduled an appointment for us this month and indicated he thought IUI with injectables was our best option. This was exactly what we had expected him to say and we were ready to move forward! We were to start the process as soon as my cycle ended (around the end of October possibly). All we had to do was the semen analysis for my hubby. We were not worried about it, why should we be? He provided his sample and we went on planning for the IUI. Then our nurse called a week later. The results were heartbreaking. His count was boarder lined, his motility and shape were both very low (she did not give numbers). The results were so bad our RE cancelled our IUI. This was the most devastating part of this journey so far. We were so close to moving forward and then all of a sudden we were moving backwards. We are now waiting for his next around of tests which should happen in about 2 weeks. Depending on the result we will either move forward with IUI (if the results are good!) or visit a male infertility specialist. The good news is our RE has says even with the results were are still excellent candidates for IVF.
I plan to use this blog to keep track of where we have been, where we are, and where we are headed. Feel free to join us on our journey to having our on Baby Gator!
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