Ahhhh….I can still remember the day when we decided to have children.  We had tossed around the idea for about a year, but wanted to wait until life was more “settled’.  Is anything ever more “settled”?  My husband (29 at the time) was neck deep in his pursuit of a Ph.d. in Chemistry.  I (30 at the time) was forehead deep working full-time as a counselor and getting my Masters in Social Work.  Needless to say, we were busy-and worried we had too much on our plate to start a family.  Eventually though, the thought of adding a new addition, a little combo of us, began to materialize into a reality.  Around January 2009, we decided to make it happen.  We had it all planned out.  We would wait three months, get pregnant THAT month, and have our child about 2 months after I finished school.  Picture perfect! Easy Peasy!

Looking back,  I just want to snicker, pinch those rosy cheeks of our 2009 selves, buy them a strawberry ice cream cone, and permanently affix those rose colored glasses to their forehead.  Little did we know the uphill battle that lay before us…

*I would like to make a disclaimer here…This blog will not be for the “faint of heart”. I long ago became accustomed to all the gross, embarrassing terms that come with discussing infertility…. so as a blog reader, I want you to be prepared. So lets get it out now…sperm, sex, semen samples, cervical mucus, uturus,  testicles, spotting, peeing on a stick, and periods.  Go ahead…giggle, blush, and say, “Eww..that is soooo gross!”.  I sure did! But, as those of us going through infertility issues know, these terms soon become as commonplace and conversational as talking about the weekend forecast. This is about to get real people! But seriously, I’ll try to keep it at a minimum…..*

Around July 2009, we started to get the first inklings of insecurity and concern about this whole process.  We would joke about how society spends so much time when you are growing up teaching you how NOT to get pregnant-that when you finally start trying, you don’t know how to do it right!  Everyone said, “Just relax!  It will happen when it is supposed to happen.  Stop trying–and I bet next month you will be pregnant!”  (All of these have since become phrases that make me want to pull my own eyelashes out when people say them, which they still do…ALL THE TIME!).  We purchased the LH strips, which test for a hormone surge that occurs right before ovulation.  We timed everything perfect.  I took basal body temperatures…checked cervical positions. We did it upside down, right side up, backwards, and tilted. Anything we could think of, and still…nothing.

Around February 2010, we started getting the battery of tests that come with determining infertility issues.  I initially came back perfect.  I had a normal length, regular cycle, was ovulating, and had no blocked tubes (so the initial dye test showed).  My husband tests came back showing  a low sperm count, around 10 million.  He was then diagnosed with a varicocele vein, which is a twisting of veins in the testicles that effects the flow of blood and damages sperm.  He underwent surgery to correct the issue in March 2010.  We tried for another 6 months with no success.  It was during this time where we began to truly face that having children might not be possible.

Eventually, we moved up the ladder to a fertility specialist in early 2011.  We tried Clomid cycles.  We tried two IUIs (Intrauterine Inseminations), one with ovarian stimulation and one without.  Negative!  My husband’s sperm count continued to decline.  We were ultimately, with a lot of research and tests, able to pin the decline on toxic metal exposure from his chemistry lab research.  Solution…Husband out of the lab., Ph.d on hold.  Just a little extra side of stress to go with our main course of stress! Changes in lifestyle and diet helped him detox the heavy  metals, and in the months to follow his count went from 4 million to 250 million (which is nearly unheard of)-with excellent  motility and morphology.  YIPEEE!!! PROGRESS!!! We celebrated this as a personal victory against the cosmos.  Yet still…months went by with no pregnancy. No one could find any issues with me, but I had this little voice in the back of my mind whispering that something was very wrong…..

Bills were starting to mount up.  This fertility mess can be EXPENSIVE-and our insurance didn’t cover anything in the “Assisted Reproduction” category.  Dejected, frustrated, and bordering on throwing in the proverbial towel, we decided to get one last opinion in October 2011 from a different fertility specialist recommended to us by a few close friends. It was here our journey took a new turn.  Within 2 weeks, the new specialist had pinpointed the issue.  After undergoing a surgical procedure called a laparoscopy (a small camera is inserted into an incision in bellybutton to get a look at the reproductive system), I was diagnosed with a unilateral hydrosalpinx.  I will go into further detail about this particular issue later, but ultimately a hydrosalpinx occurs when the distal end of the fallopian tube closes in on itself, preventing the egg from entering the tube after ovulation.  Also, the blocked end causes fluid to flow back into the uterus making it a toxic environment for embryos.  Therefore, even when I ovulated from the “good’ tube side the chances of getting pregnant were slim to none.  My new doctor immediately performed a salpingectomy, removing my left fallopian tube.  The right tube had a lot of scarring, which he cleared out the best he could.  At our post-surgery consult, he recommended moving straight to IVF in order to maximize our chances of conceiving.  After a lot of praying, scraping together of finances, and unconditional support from our loved ones….Here we are!  One tube…Rockin it out! IVF….Here we come!

Wow!  That was a long one…but I am actually impressed I was able to compress it down as much as I did.  I will go into much more detail about certain things in the future, but I have always believed knowing the  backstory is important.  You can never know where your going until you know where you’ve been…all that good stuff.  I look forward to the day where this chapter of our lives is behind us, where it all takes on that clouded looking-glass quality that comes with time and distance from heartache and worry.  Right now it feels so raw, so real.  Each day is consumed with it, this possibility of impossibility.  I try to breath…I believe we will come out on the other side of this stronger, closer, never taking for granted this miracle we call life.  I fix my mind on an image of us swinging on our back porch, watching our children play under the sycamore trees.  I will sip my sweet tea, squeeze my husband’s hand, wistfully smile, and say,”Remember those years where we thought they would never get here?…Well, look at us now.”  And that, my friends, is the beauty of hope……