There has been no journey that I have embarked on that has been more difficult, all encompassing and exhausting than the journey of trying to have a baby.
And it has been a long year and couple of months of disappointment and plenty of money spent and tears shed. Disappointment, loneliness and depression have lurked around me off and on since the journey has gotten to about the 4 month mark. It is so very hard to hang on to hope but I continue to do so as I am chasing our first child. I hope we can catch him or her and catch the little one before my hope is completely expired.
When we started this journey I was 33 years old and had been on birth control off and on since I was 19. Mostly on. I took the contraceptive pill and I had never experienced a pregnancy before. I wanted to be married before I had a baby and so after my husband and I got married (and my 6 months post the acne drug accutane expired) my husband and I embarked on the journey of trying to conceive.
At first I thought it was going to be easy and go quickly. I joined a few trying to conceive groups on Facebook and checked out some forums on the app Glow and I thought the women on there seemed pretty obsessive. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just relax and try to enjoy the process of getting pregnant. These women were taking multiple tests, stressing themselves out trying to spot every single symptom and were constantly buying new gadgets and supplements trying to get pregnant.
I was very confused by them, and had no idea eventually I would become them.
I predicted it would only take us about 6 months to get pregnant. I am from a family with a lot of children and all my siblings who have tried to have children have been pretty successful at it so I saw no reason I would have fertility issues at all. I just knew if my husband and I just had sex on the right days we would be expecting our bundle of joy in no time.
Well no time quickly passed and I became everything I saw on those forums along with extremely depressed and angry. I have become resentful as well. The longer it takes to get pregnant the more I wonder if it is even worth all of this worry and testing and the money. I have been from the general practitioner to a OBGYN who did nothing but hand me Clomid without checking me with an ultrasound and wish me good luck. I tried that for a month and of course that didn’t result in a baby either. This was at the 10 month mark and by then I was a wreck. I had spent money on expensive fertility monitors (Ovacue) and I had purchased the Ava device as well. All in all I think I had spent over a thousand dollars on test and kits and anything that looked like it was going to possibly give me a chance at becoming a mother.
It was after all, all I have ever wanted. It began to weigh on me and I began to wonder if I was even worthy of motherhood. So many people bragged about how easy it was for them to get pregnant to where they didn’t even have to use ovulation predictor kits and here I was buying the expensive ass Clear Blue Advanced ones. Where is the fairness in any of it? For six months I quit drinking period even and made my husband quit. I allowed him to start drinking again after that because clearly my way was not working and why should we both be miserable?
In any event hope was all but gone until we finally decided to give the Fertility Center a try. I have been going there since October and while here it is January and still no baby at least I saw them doing things that seemed to be trying to help me to get pregnant. They tested my husband’s sperm (it’s in great shape) and we knew I wasn’t ovulating which as why I got put on Clomid before so they switched me to Letrozole. We gave it a good shot around the fertile window but still: no baby.
We took December off to enjoy the holidays and came back and now here I am in my two week wait in January. Waiting again to see if I am pregnant or if I must go through the misery that is starting all the way over again in Chasing Baby Mayr.
You see, I am a hard worker and pretty goal driven and oriented. I feel like if you do certain things then you should get results. So this struggle in getting pregnant has stripped me to my very core because I feel like we have done these certain things repeatedly. For 14 months we have done these “certain things”…more things than a lot of people do to get pregnant period and yet where is our baby? What do we have to show for it?
I have come to think of attempting to get pregnant as running a race. Every month at the beginning you get everything together and you do what you are supposed to do and you take off at the starting line and you run. You run and you run until you get towards the finish line. And when you get there there is either a positive pregnancy test or there is your period mocking you. And as your period mocks you you wind right back at the starting line. You have gained nothing for all your hard work and you have no idea what you could have done differently or how to win the race so you just run it again. And again. Until you get your baby. And the longer you run it the less you begin to believe that anything is at the end but Aunt Flow. Because it becomes all you have ever known.
This month my Letrozole was increased to 7.5 Mg and I had four healthy follicles and my husband and I had sex at what appeared to be the right times according to my ovulation predictor kits and my Ava bracelet temperatures. So I am hopeful as I am sitting here about a week into my two week wait. Tomorrow I get my progesterone drawn and we will see if I did indeed ovulate. I hope I did. I need that much to go my way.
The struggle with the Two Week Wait is how not to go insane. It’s 14 days where you don’t know what your body is doing and you won’t find out for sure unless you get a positive pregnancy test or you get your period. I never used to even think about this time period before I was trying to conceive. Now it looms over me in a way, and never the first week.
It’s the second week that is absolute torture. You are dreading the potential that you will get your period and so every symptom seems more severe and like a foreboding of doom. Or it does when you are this far out trying to conceive and you don’t think they all mean you are pregnant.
No symptom means pregnancy to me. Nothing short of a positive test will make me think I am pregnant. That is just how jaded I have become during this journey.
If I can say anything else about it the journey is lonely. It never feels like your partner understands because it isn’t happening in their body and they aren’t getting probed or filled with the disappointment that they can’t carry the baby for whatever reason. If anything has been most hard it is knowing that it is something wrong with me. That I don’t ovulate without help and I also feel like I do not produce enough progesterone in the luteal phase but nobody is listening to me about that and helping me by supplementing it. I hope after this test tomorrow if it is low that I will get that help. I have long suspected that is why I cannot get pregnant, just as a hunch.
I started this blog so I can write freely about how I am feeling and what I am experiencing. It was impulsive on my part but a necessary thing for me. I have found the Facebook Support Groups the most helpful but I am taking a break from Facebook. Sometimes seeing a page full of positive tests when you are struggling is just as hard as any of the other bombardments from other people’s pregnancies can be. Hell I am watching a Dynasty rerun right now and had to pause it when Krystle was talking about her pregnancy because I got a little bitter. This far along it can become that triggering that even fictional pregnancies bother you.
All in all I wouldn’t wish infertility on my worst enemy. It is a terrible battle to be in and it makes you feel a level of anxiety and unworthiness that I have never experienced before.
That said even as I am here on Cycle 14, Cycle Day 20 I still refuse to give up. I will never stop chasing you, Baby Mayr. Not until I am at the finish line with you. I love you already. Please don’t make me chase you much longer
Chasing Baby Mayr 