Infertility Part 1

I recently came across this article/post I had drafted some time ago for Helium, an online forum that supposedly helps pays you for your posts and enables you to be in touch with potential work through the marketplace.  It does pay, but it's based on a rating system based on the opinions of your fellow writers.  Which is fine but even if you're #1 in your topic it still is only pennies.  You have to submit several articles a day I am sure just to make it work for you.  I just didn't have that time. Anyways, I figured I would share this because I cannot impress enough on couples struggling with fertility to explore the whole hormone issue as I had.  

Relax, it will just happen. You're trying too hard. A couple of the most inane and surprisingly common suggestions ever and exactly what you do not want to hear if you have been trying for any length of time to conceive. I mean, really, how could I be "trying too hard"? Of course, then there are stories about a friend of a friend, cousin's uncle's niece who got pregnant when she stopped trying, cause she relaxed and took a vacation. Uh huh, yeah I am sure that was the reason.

I struggled with infertility for over two years. I got to know my body pretty well and began to realize just how crazy wanting to have a baby can make you. Let's wake up at the same time every morning, don't move an inch except to reach out for your thermometer so you can take your temperature and painstakingly record it on this little chart, which no one seems to really pay all that much attention to by the way. Let's lie still after hubby makes a deposit with your legs so romantically raised in the air, hoping everything will travel down or up rather to reach the eggs. It was amazing when I found out that there is only a 25% chance of conceiving each cycle. That floored me.  Yes, I took biology but those little facts lay way back in my high school brain.  My more recent adult brain drained of all pertinent school learning information seemed think that everyone I knew got pregnant just by thinking lusty thoughts.

Eventually I was referred to a fertility specialist. I live in a small community where having fertility treatment meant a 2 hour ride on the ferry to the big city. So I wasn't going to be starting anything drastic to start. My doctor looked at my temperature charts, sent me for regular blood tests to assess my hormones and eventually put me on a cycle of clomid. That didn't work at all. I did think I was pregnant one time but ended up bleeding so excessively I am sure that that pregnancy didn't "take". Oh, did I mention I also went into the hospital for this simply horrid treatment where he shoots die up my tubes to see if they are blocked.  Now I've been through the pain of childbirth but I can say that this is right up there in agony. Men are so lucky!

I researched the web as much as possible to educate myself and learned about a little thing called luteal phase defect, which basically was that if the time between ovulation and when your hormones spiked again was too short, there wasn't enough time for an egg to actually implant into the uterus lining. Looking at my temperature chart mine seemed on the short side, ideally it's supposed to be 14 days, mine seemed less. My doctor looked at it and said yeah it was a little on the short said but didn't think that was the problem. Instead let's get you checked out for endometriosis even though you have absolutely no history of endometriosis. So on our 3rd anniversary, I went in the hospital to have a procedure done where a camera is inserted in me to check the lining of my uterus etc. A complete waste of time I thought because I had never had any symptoms like that at all but I didn't want to be difficult or to come across like I wasn't cooperative. So, I did it and there was nothing to report, course. The kicker was when my doctor called to report, he seemed fairly dismissive, didn't inquire once into how I was feeling or how I was recuperating and said it was up to me now, maybe he could send me over to the city to see a specialist, to let him know. I felt like he had just brushed me off. Like I can't figure out what your problem is so oh well. I was now the victim of the phenomenon called "unexplained infertility".