As we get closer and closer to the date our little man is
due, I thought I would share with you how this came about. No, I won’t be sharing “those specifics”, if
you need that info go to your mama. For
details on our dating and marriage life, see
the post that I did for our third anniversary (we have now been married for
FIVE years this year).
After we got married we knew that we didn’t want to have kids right away, so we
decided that to get a dog (enter
Homer). Though we didn’t want kids
so soon, we weren’t doing anything specific to stop it
from happening. In June 2008, we decided that we had waited long enough and started
trying to conceive. You may wonder why
we thought only a year and a half was a
good waiting time, well it’s because we knew Brandon wasn’t getting any younger
(he is 7 years older than me) and I was getting older.
Once we made the decision to actively try and conceive we
thought it would be easy to get pregnant.
I mean come on, I am the oldest of 11 kids (6 brothers, 2 sisters, 1
half brother, and 1 half sister) you would think fertility wouldn’t be an issue
for me. Umm No! Months went by and we had no luck. Finally in the summer of 2009 after a year
of trying, the strip turned pink and we had gotten pregnant. Our bliss did not last long, a few days after
we took the HPT I started spotting (more like bleeding). I went to visit my doctor and after several
days of testing, he confirmed that I had a miscarriage. It was such an early miscarriage that the
doctor had told us that it was nothing, but to me (someone who had been trying
for over a year now) it was something.
After this ordeal, we continued to try and month after month
we were disappointed. We often talked
about our options on what we would do.
Would we try IVF? Would we adopt?
Option after option ran through my head, but we didn’t know what to
do. I decided early that I didn’t want
to try IVF. Why you ask? Well I knew it would
be extremely hard on my body and I didn’t want to go through something so physically
and emotionally draining that couldn’t guarantee us a baby*. Also, we knew it would be expensive and since
my insurance wouldn’t cover IVF, we didn’t want to start out our kids life
thousands of dollars in debt.
Finally in July 2011, we decided that I need to see a
fertility specialist. One that could
help us figure out what was going wrong and why we weren’t conceiving. After doing some research online, I found a practice
that was close to my house and that met all the needs I required. I went for my initial appointment and the
doctor didn’t understand why could be wrong since nothing in my history pointed
to infertility on a permanent basis. After going through the initial round of blood
work and ultrasound, the doctor came back again and said that nothing was wrong
with me. Brandon went and did his part
in all the testing (I hope I don’t need to explain) and that test came back
that he was completely fine. In fact it
said his sperm was Grade A (that made him really proud). The doctors final suggestion was that I have a
hysterosalpingogram
(HSG) test done. This test would check
my ovaries and fallopian tubes for any scaring or damage that would case my not
to conceive.
In early August 2011, I went to the hospital for my HSG
test. During the test, the radiologist
told me that this test could be very healing for me and actually help cure what
the problem was. She said 8 out of 10
times her patients end up pregnant soon after having this test. This made me feel better. She told me right there and then that
according to the screen and what she was seeing that nothing was wrong and that
all was good “under the hood”. We
consulted with our doctor after getting the official results and she said that
we should go back to trying again and that if nothing happens in two months to
come back and we would start more advanced testing for infertility.
Suffice it to say we didn’t need to wait 2 months, within
one month of seeing of having that HSG test I took another HPT and the strip turned
pink. I was pregnant! I often wonder what changed and I know that
it was getting that HSG test done that did it. I use the term "my tubes were dusty and just
needed to be cleaned."
31 weeks later and I am still pregnant and everything is
going along fantastically. In just over
2 months I will be welcoming to this world my little baby boy and I couldn’t be
more excited.
Trying to conceive is something that is extremely personal
and can be utterly heartbreaking if it doesn’t go as planned, but my advice for
those that are trying is to do just that KEEP TRYING! And never give up!.
* I switched from we to I here since not going through IVF was ultimately my decision that Brandon supported
