Starting a Family: Our Story of Infertility

Where do I even begin?!

I’d like to start off by saying God is SO GOOD, and if you’re facing any battle that is out of your control give it to Him. When I was losing hope, I just prayed and prayed and prayed. I stayed positive the best that I could and glued a smile on my face even when I was hurting deep inside. It’s ok to have moments of extreme sadness, but I’ve learned that it’s important to quickly get over them because life moves on. There is beauty and blessings in so many other things happening around us, and it’s important that we don’t get so caught up in our struggles that the good goes unnoticed. This is a lesson that I learned over and over again through all of this. I know that it is easier said than done. We were blessed with so much good over the past 6 years, and it would be wrong of me to not recognize that. No matter how big or small the blessings were, they pushed us through the tough times and kept us moving forward.

Next, I’ll point out that infertility is HARD. And really, only those who are going through it or have gone through it understand just how hard it is. But the reality is that things could always be worse. Fighting cancer, in my opinion, is harder. I’ve watched people fight this awful disease over the past couple of years; some won the battle and others did not. If you ask me, being dealt the cards of infertility doesn’t even compare to cancer. Yes, infertility is unfair, it’s hard, and it flat out sucks, but there is so much support out there for it, and it’s more common than you realize. Why some people are dealt these cards and others are not, I do not know. I do know that I learned so much through it all (and still am), and I am a stronger person for it. And this world needs strong people like us.

OUR STORY

I did not know it at the time, but our story began on our 1-year wedding anniversary. We decided to stop using methods of birth control, and our exact words were, “If it happens, wonderful. If it doesn’t, then that’s fine, too. We won’t stress or try too hard at it.” Well, before we knew it, just having fun turned into 3 years with no pregnancy. People all around us were having babies—some planned and some unplanned—and I was starting to get concerned. I also started to notice more and more people sharing on social media about their infertility struggles. This was when I had the thought that maybe something was wrong with me. Kenny, the non-worrier, assured me that everything was probably fine. Another year passed before our eyes.

In May 2017, I decided that at my next yearly checkup that I was going to ask the doctor about it. At this point, my baby fever was fierce. So that’s what we did. I still remember this moment like it was yesterday. I told the doctor that I had not been using any method of birth control for the past 4 years and asked if it was normal to not be pregnant by now. Her exact words to me were, “Oh, honey. That’s considered being infertile.” I held back the tears until I got to my car. I suspected that I was infertile, but to hear it from a doctor’s mouth was a game changer. She immediately got me set up with an appointment at the Reproductive Medicine (RM) office. Many tests later, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and “lean PCOS”. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal disorder common among women of reproductive age. Lean PCOS is a term used for those who show some signs and symptoms of PCOS but not full blown PCOS. (To learn more about PCOS, you can refer to this article by Mayo Clinic.) According to Mayo Clinic, hypothyroidism “is a condition in which your thyroid gland doesn’t produce enough of certain crucial hormones.” I was immediately put on a pill to get my numbers in balance. As much as I hate being on medication, it was necessary if I wanted a chance at getting pregnant. The PCOS, on the other hand, is not something that is quite as easily treated.

When I found out, I felt sorry for myself and cried hard. But with Kenny assured me that we would get through it. He’s always so good at keeping things positive. If it wasn’t for him, I’m not sure how I would have been able to get through the past years. We decided to move forward with the first steps that our RM doctor suggested, which was to take Metformin for 3 months. If it didn’t happen for us after that, then they would re-evaluate and move forward with the next step. If you’re not familiar with Metformin, it is a drug prescribed for diabetics, but it also helps those with PCOS to ovulate. When I was on the drug, I felt awful. My body felt inflamed, achy, and uncomfortable. It didn’t feel right, and I wasn’t quite sure how this one pill was going to be the game changer. I was tired of feeling like this and could not see myself carrying a baby if I didn’t feel healthy myself. I started to do a ton of research and reading blogs about others who had PCOS. Natural healing and acupuncture seemed to be up on the list of things to do along with drastically changing your diet. As a health addict, I was already a very healthy eater, so reading this was extremely discouraging. I hate eliminating things from my diet. I’ve always been a believer that all things are ok in moderation but to eat healthy most of the time. Come to find out, there were things I was eating that are not the best for those with PCOS. Those things included processed foods/sugar, gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, alcohol, and caffeine. I started removing those the best that I could, but I will say that I’m still learning to manage it. I know what foods to stay away from if I want to feel my best, but I still have moments where I want that big slice of bread smeared with butter, or a brownie topped with vanilla ice cream. (I will get into more detail about my diet in a different post.)

If you couldn’t guess by now, the Metformin didn’t work. I stopped taking it, took a break from the RM doctor, and started seeing a natural healing doctor. He prescribed me a load of natural supplements. He also told me that eggs were the reason for my inflammation and pain, so I immediately stopped eating them. I saw him for 6 months for weekly acupuncture treatments and supplements. His advice to me was great, and there were two pieces of advice that I took away from this experience.

1. You need to believe that you can get pregnant and envision yourself being pregnant. I don’t think I fully understood what this meant until later on; I thought I was already doing that.

2. Stop beating yourself up through your workouts. Find other ways to cope with stress. I was also seeing this doctor for extreme hip pain I was having from being an avid runner. I continued to run through my pain, but I was only hurting myself more. He suggested that I start doing yoga and give up running. I thought he was absolutely nuts! Running has always been my life and my outlet. Eventually, I listened to him because you can’t expect to get different results by doing the same thing you’re already doing. I gave up my racing days of running (though I still run a few miles per week) and found a new love for hot yoga. I still practice yoga 3 to 4 times per week. Magically, I was feeling much better.

Even though we did not have success during the 6 months of trying natural healing methods, I feel as though this step was important. I learned lessons that I needed to learn, and I got my body back to feeling like itself again. Why did I stop after 6 months? Quite frankly, that’s all the patience I had for something like this, it was breaking the bank account, and the doctor agreed that it would be logical to go back to traditional medicine if I did not have success after 6 months of seeing him. I appreciated his honesty.

During this time, a lot changed with my job. I went from being a full-time personal trainer and group fitness instructor to a part-time trainer and instructor because I started a new full-time career. I believe this was also meant to be and was for the best. It was an opportunity that dropped in my lap. This was God’s way of telling me that it’s time to focus on yourself and to take a new path. As a personal trainer, the early mornings, late evenings, and taking care of others can be draining. This may sound selfish, but during this phase of my life, the one thing that needed the most focus and TLC was me.

Right when I thought I was feeling good again, I started dealing with some major low back issues. Hello to a desk job! My body was not used to this drastic change. Instead of going back to the RM doctor, I decided to see a chiropractor. I’m so glad I did, because my back is 100% again, and he helped me out with some leftover nagging hip pain. I also heard that chiropractic care helped with infertility. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for us, but I’m still a believer in chiropractic care for back pain!

Finally, I felt as though I was in a place where we could start trying for a baby again with the help of medicine. Time was ticking, and I felt like I was getting nowhere. Looking back on it all, I was getting somewhere, I just had to take the zig zag road. We made the decision to go back to the RM doctor and begin the next steps. I’ll save you from the months and months of boring details, but in short, I spent month after month trying new methods of pills paired with shots. Kenny travels often for his job, so that added to our mix of difficulties. I like being in control of situations, and his travel gave me less control. Another difficult lesson that I learned through all of this is to learn to let go; everything will happen when the time is right. Everything had to be planned around his travel? Fine; we are strong, and we will make it work. I was getting discouraged, and it was getting close to the holidays again. Holidays are the hardest with infertility. It seems to blow everything up in your face times a thousand. The holidays on top of months of negative pregnancy tests is extremely difficult. Every pregnancy test that I took up to this point felt like a waste of time and money; not once had I seen a positive test. Literally, the closest I had gotten to seeing a positive pregnancy test was Google! I was starting to think that store bought pregnancy tests were just a gimmick.

Fast forward to November 2018. After months of tears, Kenny and I decided to take another short break from medicine. We needed to regroup; we felt that the holidays were hard enough and that it was not the best time to be attempting something like this. My parents suggested that we get another opinion from Mayo Clinic. We scheduled an appointment with them and decided to do nothing more until we met with them. I had a small hope that we would just get pregnant naturally during this break. Nope. It didn’t happen.

Around this same time, I was promoted at my job. Hello to another little blessing during this very difficult time. We also found out that we were going to be an aunt and uncle for the very first time! Within 3 months of each other, both my brother and Kenny’s brother told us that their wives were expecting. We were thrilled and excited for them, but this stung us a little bit as well. We were really questioning if our prayers would ever be answered at this point. But this was all in God’s plan. He wanted our child to have cousins first!

January 2019. Our visit to Mayo Clinic was very disappointing. My hopes were high, as I’ve heard amazing things about them. I thought that they would have a new suggestion, new diet recommendations, etc. Nope. They told us what we were doing sounded like a good plan and to keep moving forward with it. Since I have “lean PCOS”, they classified my case as unexplained infertility. They were not willing to help me any further with PCOS because I did not show all the signs of it. After feeling like we wasted our time—because really, after reviewing my records they could have just told me this over the phone—on our 6-hour drive back to Champaign, we said ok...this is it. We are going all in with our next treatments. We also discussed that if our next round of infertility treatment didn’t work then we would look into IVF options. Our plan after that was to look into adoption. We set up an appointment with the IVF doctor to learn more about the process and to get a head start on it knowing that it might take a while to get an official appointment to begin the process.

Meeting the IVF doctor was a pretty positive visit and gave me a lot of hope again. I heard these words from a doctor: “Looking at your history and listening to the two of you talk, there is no reason why you should not be able to get pregnant. You’re both healthy individuals. You will have no problem carrying a baby.” I brought up the word adoption to him during our conversation and told him we were tossing the idea around if we didn’t have success soon. He said, “You have no reason to even be considering adoption at this point. You’re going to get pregnant.” Something clicked inside of me at this point, and I was determined to get pregnant one way or the other. The doctor also suggested that I get checked for endometriosis. In order to know for sure if this is something you have, you have to have surgery. He told us it was not necessary, but he recommended it as one last precaution and to check it off the list. If I did have it, they would remove it, and he said that most of the time after this surgery couples get pregnant on their own. If not, then we would move forward with IVF. At this point in the meeting, I felt like I was being sold to; I’m in sales, and I know a sales pitch when I hear one. Kenny, on the other hand, thought it would be good to check. For some reason, I just didn’t feel comfortable being cut open to find out if I did or did not have endometriosis. My instincts were telling me no, and when you have strong instincts, listen to them. I ended up contacting the office to set up an appointment for the surgery even though I was not feeling good about it. Fortunately, they had a very slow response rate, and at this point my patience was thin. If you want my business, your response time better be within 24 hours! I prayed extremely hard about this. I told God that I needed a very blunt and obvious sign whether or not to go through with the surgery. I prayed that prayer every evening until I got an answer.

In the meantime, our RM doctor suggested a new and more aggressive attempt to getting pregnant. This involved Femara for 5 days followed by menopur shots for a couple of weeks and an ovidrel shot. Femara is a drug that pushes the follicles in your ovaries to grow large enough for an egg to attach to them. Menopur provides follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) that help healthy ovaries to make eggs. Ovidrel is used to trigger ovulation. At this point, not only did Kenny’s job involve travel, but my job also involved a lot more travel. We literally had to plan everything around our travel schedules, because everything is very time sensitive when going through infertility treatments. More things out of my control! But Kenny assured me that we would make it work, and we did. We agreed to do one last treatment with our RM doctor before taking action with the IVF doctor. Luckily, my next travel trip was a driving trip, so I was able to travel with my suitcase of shots. While I was on the road for the week, I was giving myself a shot every evening. It was scary for me to take this step without Kenny’s support in person, but he Facetimed me every evening when it was time to do my shot. He was as supportive as our schedules allowed him to be.

Finally, we followed through with all the steps of this process. When the nurse checked to see how things were moving along, she was impressed with how well my body reacted to the medications this time around. Many, many large follicles were growing. She was concerned that we might have to cancel the next round of medications, otherwise I could have ended up like “Jon and Kate plus 8”! When she said we might have to cancel a round, I thought, “Wow. Another roadblock, another large chunk of money down the drain, and time wasted.” The nurse needed to confirm with my doctor to make the final call. I prayed so hard following that appointment and put all my faith in God. If it was meant to be, we’d be able to follow through with the rest of the treatment plan. I heard from the nurse later that day that we were good to go with moving forward as long as we were okay with the chance of having twins. Yup, absolutely!

The month was over and that was that. Now we had to sit and wait for 2 weeks to see if we had success. Within that month, we had my brother’s baby shower. We made a weekend trip out of it and went to Michigan. I remember Kenny telling me, “You know, if we get pregnant this time around, it will be a Christmas baby...a Christmas miracle!” Those words gave me so much hope. We also realized that when we would find out if the pregnancy test was negative or positive would be right around our 7-year anniversary. What a blessing it would be, because our last anniversary I sat in tears after a negative test. Another hopeful and positive sign I had was when we went out to dinner one evening in Michigan, and the restaurant we went to was advertising their “twin restaurant” that was opening soon. They had little postcards sitting on each table that said, “We’re expecting TWINS!” I pointed out to Kenny, “OMG! What if this is a sign that we’re having twins too?” (Side note: We are NOT having twins!) Call me crazy, but at this point you look for any and all positive signs to keep your spirits up. It’s so important to have a positive outlook during a time like this. “Babies pick up on your mood and want to grow in a calm and happy place.” That’s what I was told by a doctor somewhere along the way, and I believe it! All of the cards were lining up way too perfectly, but I was not going to get my hopes up, but they were slightly up! HAHA!

About a week later, I started to feel different than I ever had before. Sorry if this is too much information, but my stomach felt bloated and my breasts were swollen and tender. I didn’t know if it was a side effect of the new medication that I had been taking, or better yet if it meant that I was pregnant. I didn’t tell Kenny that I was feeling different because I didn’t want to get his hopes up. Again, since everything was time sensitive, we were instructed by our doctor to take a pregnancy test on Wednesday, April 10, 2019. During this time, I knew I would be in Tampa, Florida, for a work conference. Since our 7-year anniversary fell on Sunday, April 14, we planned to extend our stay in Florida and spend the weekend at Clearwater Beach. Kenny flew down on that Thursday. I didn’t like that I had to take a pregnancy test without Kenny present, and we discussed waiting until Kenny arrived. However, I was on progesterone during this time, and I was instructed to continue it if I had a positive test and to stop taking it if it was negative. Without telling Kenny my decision, I decided to take the test Wednesday morning as the doctor ordered. Kenny did not ask me if I had taken the test or not, because I told him that I might wait for him. Later I asked him why he never asked, and he said, “Because I knew you would share the news with me one way or the other when you were ready to. And if it was negative, I didn’t want to ask and make you more upset if you didn’t want to talk about it.” Bless his heart.

THE POSITIVE TEST

I packed a box with two pregnancy tests before leaving for the trip. The night before taking the test, I had a dream that the test was positive, and it felt very, very real. I woke up at 5:00 Wednesday morning, and I felt like an excited kid on Christmas morning. At the same time, I was nervous, because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my time in Florida being upset. I headed to the bathroom and took the test. Afterwards, I sat there with my eyes closed, because it takes 3 minutes before the test results appear. I opened my eyes after probably 1 minute of waiting. I glanced over at the test with my tired eyes. I saw the faintest pink line showing that I was pregnant. At this point, I was unsure if I was just seeing things or if the bright lights were messing with the results. I decided to go back and lay in bed for a couple more minutes. When I got up to look at the test again, this time the pink line was darker. I was not seeing things! IT WAS MY FIRST POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST EVER! Tears of joy ran down my face, and I just said thank you to God! If this wasn’t the biggest sign to not go through with the surgery, then I don’t know what is! At this point, I was too excited to go back to bed. I decided to use this energy and head straight to the workout room. I completed an interval training workout on the treadmill paired with some light lifting. Next, I decided to head straight to the store to buy Kenny a card, the first card that I could finally write the words “YOU’RE GOING TO BE A DAD!”

I talked to Kenny on the phone that morning. It was so hard not to tell him the news, but I knew I wanted to tell him in person and see his reaction...a moment that I had been dreaming of for a very long time. I’m so glad he didn’t ask me about the test, because I would have had to tell him a little fib by saying that I decided not to take the test yet. Since Kenny arrived on Thursday, I waited 36 hours until I finally got to see him. I had the work conference to keep me busy, but, man, that was the longest 2 days of my life! Finally, Thursday evening after the workday was over, I headed back to the hotel room where Kenny was waiting. I felt nervous and like I was keeping a big lie from him. I immediately pulled the card out and told him that I had an early anniversary gift for him to open. As he read the card, his jaw dropped, and his eyes filled with tears. He was in as much disbelief as I was. He said, “You’re kidding me! Show me the pregnancy test!” I pulled out the pregnancy test to show him. “OMG! We finally did it!” We went out to dinner to celebrate and spent the rest of our time in Florida feeling relaxed and very blessed. The next morning, Kenny said, “Go pee on another stick. I want to make sure this isn’t a fluke.” I did, and sure enough this time the line was darker than the day before. When we returned to Illinois, I had an appointment for blood work right away to confirm the pregnancy. When the results were in, my nurse called me and said, “Congratulations! You’re pregnant!” Hearing this confirmation brought so many happy tears!

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The fight felt long, hard, and never ending. But God knew exactly what He was doing the entire time. I do not know what the future holds for us, but we are taking this time to celebrate! And for those who know the infertility struggle all too well, we are praying for you. I am no expert, and everyone’s situation is different, but know that we are here to support you and encourage you.

XOXO,

#Infertility #PCOS