Tina

My husband and I met were married in 1999 and we waited a couple of years until trying for a baby. Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted a family, so having children was very important to me. The anticipation of having children started many years back for me; whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always replied “a mommy”.

My fertility problems actually started before I was even born as infertility runs in the family. My grandmother had my mom at 42 after trying for more than 20 years to conceive. From her three other sisters, only one had a child, the others never conceived.

My mom, apparently escaped the “curse” as she had the three of us (only one with the help of fertility pills) but I didn’t. From the very beginning of my “womanhood”, I had problems with my cycle as my body was apparently unable to keep my hormones in any kind of balance. So for 9 years I was on the pill simply so that I could have a “normal” cycle and not the every 10 days event…

Even though I was monitored half my life for my cycle anomalies, not once had my doctor mentioned I might have problems conceiving when I was finally ready to try, but knowing that my cycles were “whacky” and knowing about FAM, I went to my doctor as soon as we were ready to try for a baby, for some tests (by that time I had been off the Pill for 3 years).
My tests came back as “very abnormal”. I wasn’t producing eggs at all as I had a very high LH, no real cycle (I was bleeding every 10 or so days for a duration of 3-5 days) and although some “immature eggs” could be seen in my left ovary, the right one had completely shut down.

My doctor, an OB/GYN, did not want to take an invasive approach with a 25 year old, even with my history (btw, at the time he hadn’t even mentioned my cycle problems of old and my hormonal problems were connected, he just made the hormonal problems appear as if they were new to him), so he sent me home with instructions to try for 6 months and come back if I wasn’t pregnant by then.
So I did…

Six months came and went and I wasn’t pregnant but I was starting to become obsessed. I tried to read a fertility book about the woman’s cycles, but nothing in it really applied to me… I had no “fertile fluid” days and no “dry days” and no “luteal phase”… I never had “ovulation pain” or temps that spiked high for 3 days and stayed that way for at least 12 days… Nothing… I wasn’t really like the woman in the book. So I went back to my doctor with my temperature charts and a new pack of tests (that showed nothing new) and he sent me home saying I was obsessing and stress was the reason I wasn’t getting pregnant.

I got a second opinion… this time I was put on Clomid…. After 6 cycles on it, with absolutely nothing egg-like growing in there, I was put on Serpafar, similar to Clomid, for another 6 cycles, then on another drug and another… all with no success. All around me my friends were getting pregnant, some for the 2nd time. Every time the phone rang and my husband picked it up, I could sense when a pregnancy announcement was made and then I spent the next hour crying in my bed wondering why it wasn’t me. My husband often got praise on marrying a “youngster”. I was the youngest of all the Navy wives. I was 25 and everybody else was well into their 30’s. So how could they get pregnant first time trying and I couldn’t?