For the last year and a half, my husband and I have been trying to
have a second child. We want more Eriks in our life.
This time around, we have been having some difficulties conceiving.
For a time, I considered keeping this part of our lives private, but
there have been many parts of the whole fertility thing that I think
really warrants sharing.
I must start off by saying, that all of the infertility specialists
we’ve worked with have been so wonderful and kind. They truly make an
unhappy experience with conception and make it a lot more tolerable.
Also, and maybe even more importantly, I think more couples should be
open about conceiving–the good, bad, easy and not-so–easy. A friend
of mine has been dealing with fertility problems for years and has
gone very public with her online campaign to raise $20 thousand in
order to have a saragat. I really admire her for her courage, strength
and utter devotion to having her first child. Read more here and consider donating to her puzzle campaign.
How It Started
After a year of trying to conceive (TTC), and not succeeding, you get
a referral to see a infertility specialist. (My personal hang-up … the
wording choice here. Shouldn’t we put a positive spin on it all and
call them fertility specialists instead of infertility specialists?)
Anyways … we tried for a whole year with no luck and then we got
that referral to the infertility clinic at Kaiser. We had to wait
three whole months before we could see a specialists and I must admit,
they were tough months of waiting for me. So our fertility journey
really begins in November of 2013.
The Diagnosis
To make a very long story short, nothing is really “wrong” with either
my husband or I. All of our parts work well, or mostly well. The
problem we’re having is regulating my cycles. (Yes, I said cycle on
this blog post and I might say and use other words that might be
mildly uncomfortable for you the reader. I won’t gloss over anything
just to make you comfortable. That’s not how I roll.)
All my life I have had extremely irregular cycles. In my 20’s I took
control of my reproductive health and I went on birth control to help
/regulate my cycles. Well, after deciding we were ready for kid number
two, and after we stopped using birth control, my crazy cycles went
back to being super irregular. I’m talking about 55 day or 100 day
cycles. As anyone who is trying to conceive knows, you have to
pinpoint ovulation in order to have a decent shot at getting pregnant.
When your cycle is all spread out over months with no pattern it is
really hard to TTC.
We were really lucky the first time around. When we decided to start a
family, we got pregnant the very first possible chance we could get
pregnant. We knew that we were not going to be lucky twice in a row,
but we didn’t know we would have to undergo fertility treatments.
I’ll end this first post about my fertility journey by sharing that it
has been four months since we started fertility treatments. During the
last four months we, really I, have had varying amounts of Clomid.
Clomid helps stimulate ovulation. It has worked better than what my
body has been able to achieved, but we’re still not quite there. Last
month, we tried an IUI (interuterine insemination), which is really
just one more opportunity for egg and sperm to meet and it also raises
your chances of conceiving by 15% or
so.
IN my next blog post, I’ll write more about the different injections I
am having to give myself and how in the world I actually do it
nonvisually.
Bay Area Blind Mom 