our story

When Paul and I decided to have children, I stopped birth control and hoped it wouldn't be too long and we would have a little one. After a year of trying, I knew something wasn't right. I had unusual bleeding/spotting between my periods, which I never had prior to the pill. (I should add, I was on the pill for the first year and half after our wedding). I went to my OB/GYN. He did not listen to us. Gave us the sex talk and how one gets pregnant and told us to keep trying for another year. I was not too happy with him and never went back. I think he wasn't listening because we were young and he is a popular doctor with delivering babies, probably didn't want to deal with us. It was probably just as well at the time we didn't have the money to seriously pursue any treatment. I was done with college and Paul was still in school.
Another year past and we decided I needed to do something other than just being stressed out over getting pregnant. So I went to graduate school. While earning my MFA degree, I found a new doctor. This one listened more. He had me chart my BBT (Basal Body Temperature). I did this faithfully. Some of the months, my temperatures were right, a true triphasic. He tested my progesterone and decided it was low. I took progesterone suppositories for a year. We also tried IUI (Intra-Uterine Insemination) twice with him. Both failed. Every test he had us do came back normal. We were then classified as unexplained infertility. Any form of infertility is just plain awful. Being unexplained is frustrating because there always seems to be roadblocks but no answers. After seeing this doctor for almost 2 years he referred us to a RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist). He told us we needed to be prepared that IVF is probably what the RE would want to do.
We knew we would have to wait both emotionally and financially. Emotionally, we are reluctant to accept the possibility that IVF would be the only way. We kept hoping that we would have a miracle and get pregnant on our own. Financially, I needed to finish grad school.
We are now both done with school and have been working for a number of years. In late 2007 we decided to go see the RE. First Paul did a Kruger test, a more advance sperm analysis. It came back as normal. So then it was my turn. He had me do CCT (Clomid challenge test), which showed I had an elevated FSH for my age. This is a sign that there can be egg problems. It can also be an indication of endometriosis. The only way a doctor will diagnose a patient with endo is with surgery. (a topic for another post). He recommended that even with surgery my chance for conceiving was 2% each month. Not very good considering it’s 20% for a normal couple. And with the high FSH we only have a few years more to try. We were glad we were finally getting some answers but I was also saddened by the news. It meant our best chances would indeed be IVF.