Today I am starting something new. A blog. Hopefully it will help me vent my frustrations, anger, sorrow, grief, and eventually the most joyful part of my life. I've also decided to create a blog so I can share my experience with anyone else going through the same situations. Someone who has experience may be able to help me with things to come. Someone starting the same journey may be able to learn from me and feel they are not alone. I hope one day I can share my most wanted joy with the world.... a baby.
My husband I decided we wanted a baby a couple months before we were married. Sunday, March 26, 2006 to be exact. Mother's Day. So far, to this day, we have been trying to conceive for 3 years, 9 months, 19 days. That's 1390 days total. 198 weeks. 33,360 hours.
Anywho, I was 18 at the time. My husband was 23. We were married on May 26, 2006. Just as we got back from our honeymoon, my husband got slapped with a DNA test. He was (or should I say is) the father. His daughter is now 4 (going on 24).
My husband was in the Army Reserves when we got married. He also worked various jobs while I held a job at ConAgra. In October 2006, he re-enlisted to go active duty. We are currently stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.
Our first duty station was in Fort Bliss, Texas. Paul left immediately after re-enlisting. I stayed back home in Iowa for about a month. Then took my first long drive all by myself to El Paso. We lived there until March of 2007.
After moving to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, I decided to see a doctor to find out why we weren't able to have a baby. After all, it had been about a year. The doctor on post ordered an ultrasound from the hospital off post. I asked the lady during the ultrasound what she saw. "I don't know. I just take the pictures and show them to the technician." Okay, I thought. Well, I hadn't received a call back so I figured that no news was good news. Six months later I go for a checkup at the OB-GYN and he asks "By the way, did you ever get the results for your ultrasound?" No. "You have a teratoma near your right ovary." Great! I get a referral to an OB-GYN off post.
I got an appointment to see this new doctor fairly quickly. A week after meeting him, I have surgery to remove the teratoma. Both my current doctor and the doctor that referred me had no clues as to why I had it. A few weeks after surgery, I go to my off-post doctor and tell him I want to take the next step to having a baby. He sticks me on some medicine, Metformin to be exact, and tells me I'll be pregnant by the end of the month. That was it. Literally. I was gung-ho and ecstatic that this drug would bring me a baby. Wrong.
I hate Metformin. I attempted to take it after he prescribed it to me. A few days into it, I quit. I would get so nautious I would start shaking and get cold sweats. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I called it quits for a few weeks and decided to go to the doctor again to see what else I could do. He tells me the exact same thing. "Just take it and you'll be pregnant by the end of the month." Ugh! Fine. Whatever. I got another prescription for it. I finally found a way of taking it (eat a HUGE meal before popping the pill) without getting near as nautious as I was before. The end of the month, or should I say prescription, rolled around. No baby. What the hell??!
Before I could go back to the doctor to figure out what was going on, we got stationed here at Fort Hood. I immediately choose a primary doctor from Tricare that is off-post. She right away refers me to a local OB-GYN. After waiting two months to get an appointment with this doctor, she does an initial exam and sets up an appointment for me to go to the hospital across the street to have an HSG (hysterosalpingogram) done. I also get another prescription for Metformin and have diabetes testing done. No diabetes. I'm normal. I did good taking the Metformin this time. I got all the way through my prescription. The first week or so was filled with nausea and cravings. Each day thereafter was okay for the most part.
I believe it had to be day 9 of my cycle to have the HSG done. So I go to the hospital with husband in tow, and strip down (below the waist) for the radiologist and an unknown OB-GYN. I layed on the x-ray table, freezing my butt of, not sure of what was to come. I meet the OB-GYN. Nice guy. He tells me to spread 'em. I spread 'em. He inserts a catheter into my uterus and injects dye. He was checking to make sure nothing was blocked in my fallopian tubes. The right one looked okay but the left appeared to be blocked. What does he do? Pushes my dye in a little harder to try to unblock it. OUCH! The most agonizing period cramps ever. Not cool. And of course it didn't fix the problem. Then he needs a better view. "Turn left. Raise your pelvis. Turn right. No, you're too far. Go left again. Raise your pelvis." Really?! I let out a few tears on the table. Not enough to stop this crazy act from happening inside my body. He tells me we're all done, to hop off the table, get dressed, and he'll send the results to my doc.
I walk to the waiting room, get my husband, and we start heading to the car. The cramps started again. Little at a time. By the time we got to the car and pulled out of the parking spot, I couldn't stop crying. It hurt so bad! It felt like the worst period cramps I'd ever had in my life. Luckily I had some Excedrin Extra Strength in my purse (for what reason, I don't know because I don't take it) and downed them as fast as I could. Five minutes into the drive back home I was fine for the most part. Little cramps here and there, nothing major.
A few days go by and my Mom and I decided to go shopping - well, she did. I was broke so I just tagged along. We don't see each other too much but when we do, we spend an entire day together. We had fun getting to do girl things and catch up on each others' lives. Our last store of the day was Best Buy where she bought a new tv and a Rockband game. We get to her and Dad's house and attempted to get the tv set up as quickly as we could before Dad got home (he didn't know she bought it). We got it out of the box and unpackaged for the most part. Then my phone rings. It's my OB-GYN. She tells me that since the results to the HSG showed my fallopian tube was blocked, she couldn't do any more and would have to refer me to an actual infertility doctor. I got off the phone, sat on the couch, and cried. I felt like my whole world had stopped. The carpet had been pulled out from under my feet. Mom helped to console me. But when Dad came home and Paul came over to pick me up, and I had to share the news, I cried again. Why me?
So I waited about three weeks to finally get my referral from Tricare to go to the infertility doctor. We know the Army. "Hurry up and wait". I finally make an appointment... for another two months down the road. That appointment was this last December 7. He does an inital exam and tells me he wants the images of my HSG and Paul's semen analysis results. We gather the results and show up for the next appointment which was a week ago, January 7.
The doctor thinks my tubes are only blocked a little bit, nothing too major. The HSG looked like a little bit of dye may have come out the end of the tube. And he thinks since the doctor who removed my teratoma didn't give me any bad news and expected me to get pregnant right away, was another reason he though things were okay. Pauls semen analysis didn't look too great. The count was low. Since we took the specimen to the Fort Hood hospital, the doctor ordered another test to be done at the hospital in Temple. He didn't prescribe me any more Metformin (yay!) and did some blood work to check hormone levels and whatnot. My testosterone is high so therefore I get some hideous facial hairs and hair on my tummy. Nothing a pair of tweezers or a razor won't fix, though.
And that's where we are today. Tomorrow we're going to drop off the new semen analysis and find out more from there next week. Hopefully all goes well and the results are better.
In these 3 years, 9 months, 19 days, I have been on an emotional rollercoaster. I never have a doctor's appointment anymore that doesn't require me to undress. I get upset every now and then (a LOT less than before) at the fact that my husband has a daughter and I have nothing. I skip around every which way through the 5 stages of grieving (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). It started at denial, went to anger, then depression, then bargaining, then depression, then anger, and now I feel I'm at denial again. One day I'll get to acceptance somehow... whether it be pregnancy or adoption. I'm not sure if I want a surrogate mother. Luckily I have some loving friends who have told me they'll volunteer. My best friend just had a baby and didn't get her tubes tied just for me. In case I needed an egg. That's love.
Anywho, I'll try to update every time something new happens. They day I do become pregnant, or maybe even simply become a mommy some other way, will be one of the happiest days of my life. I feel this is a calling in my life and I need to do it to feel complete. I need to do it to end this chapter.
