Ok, My CM is Egg-Whitey, My Ovulation Timer Says Go... Now Who Is Feeling Romantic?

This morning I was feeling nostalgic about when my husband and I first started trying for a family. For those just joining me, I've been trying for about five years now, had four miscarriages, have PCOS, yadda yadda yadda... All this is what I know now, but back in the day when we first started trying I had not even an inkling that we'd have any trouble conceiving.

(((Let's do a Wayne's World-esque flashback scene.... dodododo, dodododo)))

Back when we first started trying, we called it "Not not-trying". What that means is we're not doing anything to prevent it from happening. What we wanted people to think was that we were so super casual about the whole process, and who knows when its going to happen but we are cool enough not to care.

Now I look at that saying as total bull-shit. As least, it was from me when I was saying it. I actually do have a couple of friends who I think really meant it when they were "Not not-trying". Of course they got pregnant within 15 minutes of saying that, but I have learned that is just the weird cosmic law of pregnancy. Don't try to understand it. But when I said, oh so casually, "If its happens, it happens", I really meant "OH MY GOD ITS BEEN A MONTH AND I'M NOT PREGNANT YET WHAT IF THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME I'M HAVING SEX WITH MY HUSBAND EVERY OTHER DAY WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO". You know, the usual.

My husband Adam actually was being casual, but it didn't take him long to figure out it wasn't so casual for me. I think spontaneously wanting to get down every day for a week then going back to a "normal rotation" was the first thing to tip him off. And as the months went on and I started to get up in my head more and more, anytime he stated he wasn't in the mood for intimacy it would promptly elicit a mature grown-up conversation about the importance of timely love-making while attempting to conceive.

Ok maybe not. It was more like a grown-up temper tantrum complete with stomping feet and then me switching awkwardly to flirting and embarrassingly trying to throw myself at him. I imagine it was quite a sight. It didn't take to long for him to feel more like a science experiment totally devoid of romance, and I don't blame him.

I don't know what happened to me. Somehow trying to get pregnant mentally took over my psyche completely. I am generally an easy-going person, and within a few months I changed into a whole new person. I think part of it had to do with my expectations. At the time I was only 25, theoretically in my prime baby-making years. My mother had gotten pregnant with me in her first month of "not not-trying"... in the hot tub at the Catamaran Hotel in San Diego no less, thanks Dad for sharing that lovely mental picture (Do you ever wish you could open up your brain and mentally scrub some images out? Ew ew ew). And there had been no history, that I knew, of infertility in my family. I've come to speculate that my great-aunt may have had similar problems, but back in those days people didn't ask questions.

To make matters even more confusing, when I went off the birth control pill my period almost right away disappeared completely. I thought, whoo hoo I must be pregnant. Commence hundreds and thousands of pregnancy tests. I should have saved them all; we could have used them to construct a guest house or donated to Hurricane Katrina folks to aid in rebuilding efforts. Not to mention who-knows how much money I spent on those damned things. Thank god for my friend Hanna who gave me a heads up about the dollar store pregnancy tests or I might be in bankruptcy right now.

Test after test came back negative. Yet "Aunt Flo" never showed up. I couldn't understand it. After about six months of this, I finally called my doctor. A five minute ultrasound conclusively answered what was going on; my ovaries were full of cysts. The doctor told me I probably had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Not terribly uncommon, happens in about 5-10% of women. There are lots of smart websites out there that explains what it is, but how I usually tell it is plumbing problems. More or less, my body doesn't make the hormones properly that tells my ovaries to release the egg. So, when a mature egg is ready to be released and the method for getting it to the uterus doesn't show up, my body just puts a protective cyst layer around it and that’s the end.

It’s common for most women to have a cyst or two. You've probably heard about cysts bursting in women, which is extremely painful I can tell you. But you don't have to have cysts to have PCOS. Women with PCOS have a LOT of cysts... mine looks like someone crammed a couple of pearl necklaces up my who-ha. And it comes with some other hormone and other medical problems, but the biggest issue is usually infertility problems. For starters, not ovulating--which I have on good authority is important to the baby making process. And second, you're at a much higher risk of miscarriage, which has come to be a pretty big issue for me.

For me, the diagnosis was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I finally had an explanation, that I wasn't just "stressing" myself out of having a period like many folks told me. I knew what was wrong, and I could arm myself with information on how to address it. But it was also a curse, because it meant spending hours researching, contemplating, planning, and sometimes despairing. I really didn't have any guidance, no plan of action from someone who knew more about this than I did.

At the time my doctor gave me the diagnosis, it was more or less "Well this is what you have. Here are some pills to make you have a period. You'll probably have trouble getting pregnant." I'm really not exaggerating. So of course I spent hours on the internet researching, I really had no choice. And many of the stories on there were terribly extreme and very depressing. But I didn't know anyone else who had this disorder, and had no one else to talk to about it. Eventually I got to a new doctor, who did a much better job explaining PCOS and infertility and gave me much better information on managing the condition. And finally (eventually) did the smartest thing of all and went to a fertility specialist. But those first few years felt like spending a lot of time in the darkness.

Ok, so we're about eight or nine months into trying to get pregnant at this point. Now all the people who knew we were "not not-trying" are curious, either that we are pregnant and keeping it a secret or wondering why we hadn't gotten pregnant yet. I revealed my diagnosis to close family and friends, but I never knew how to answer the endless follow up questions, "How do you fix it? What do you do now?" My answer was normally, I don't know just keep trying I guess. And when others I didn't know quite as well ask about kids, I usually just said, "A radioactive spider bit me and they are still trying to find a cure, and just a friendly heads up I'm prone to attack people who ask too many questions".

On top of that, Adam had gone from dealing with awkwardly randy wife to one who felt like she was broken. On top of the anxiety I felt at not being able to get pregnant, I felt terrible guilt that I couldn't provide my husband that he wanted so much as well. Of course he was wonderful and supportive and said it wasn't my fault, and all the things wonderful husbands say. A lesser man would have caved under all the pressure, and enough marriages have ended over infertility. But I clung to him, and he clung right back. So among the many things I count as the good effects of infertility (yes, I do believe there are some positive sides, but again that is a different post!), I think the best of all of it is knowing we could ride this out together. Even in that early stage that much became clear to me, and I'm so thankful for that.

But that still left me with my busted plumbing and no game plan. And that was my limbo. More like purgatory. In Dante's Inferno, I think he should have added a section to purgatory right behind the unbaptized people for women who are trying to get pregnant. And it went on for a couple of years, until I got to a new doctor who introduced me to wonderful world of rage- or depressing-inducing fertility drugs. But again, that's another post (and probably a pretty funny one too! Oh the days of chair throwing, how I miss you...). And there were new challenges to come that I hadn't even dreamed of yet. But for now, right behind the unbaptized folks was tough enough.