If you have been around for some time you may know about my fertility issues. I have done many posts about this over the years, but I will catch you up really quickly… When I was in my late teens, I went to the doctors because I wasn’t getting my period regularly. To be honest, I had always been the same. I first started my periods when I was 9 years old and from that moment on, they were irregular. I would get it one month and then I would miss the next 6. Because that was normal for me, I didn’t think it was an issue. Plus, as a teenager I bloody loved that I wasn’t getting it every 28 days like all of my friends.
But then as I got older, it dawned on me that it wasn’t exactly normal. That combined with the fact that I would get horrendously bloated and have period pains, yet no monthly bleed would come. So, I decided to go to the doctors and get checked out.
For a while, I had to do a diary. I had to document when I came on my period, how long they lasted, what the flow was like and how I was feeling. From there, I sat with the doctor, and we tried to work out trends. Next, I was referred to the hospital for further testing. Only a few weeks after, I was called to the hospital where they told me that my chances of ever having children naturally were incredibly minimal.
From what they could see I produced eggs, and I had a good store of them in my ovaries, but my body didn’t release them as it should. Whereas for any other woman they reduce an egg on a monthly basis for it to become fertilised, mine typically happened once every 6-8 months. My average cycle length was 168 days. Which means that my fertile window that I should have each month actually only occurred once or twice per year if I was lucky.
The doctor that I saw asked me there and then if I ever one day wanted to have children. I told him yes, that I wanted them one day, but not yet. But he advised me that it may never happen for me naturally. That the best course of action was for me to come off the pill as soon as possible and just go with the flow. It could then never happen, or it could happen tomorrow. He couldn’t make promises or give any assurances. Just that if I knew I one day wanted them, to try straight away.
But at the time I wasn’t even 20 years old. I had been dating my boyfriend (now husband) for a couple of years and we weren’t thinking about children. Damn, at that stage in my life they were the furthest thing from my mind. There was so much that I wanted to do before having them. I wanted to travel, get married, buy a house, splurge on expensive bags and everything else that you should indulge in before having children.
My boyfriend and I sat down and spoke about it. He was willing to give it a go straight away if it was in my long-term plan to have them anyway, but I simply couldn’t do it. If I got pregnant at 20 it would have altered my life and I didn’t want that. Instead, we said that we would give it a few years before chancing it and removing contraception from the picture completely. I still stand by that decision as being the right thing for us.
So, when we got married at 24 years old, we came off all forms of contraception. We weren’t trying to conceive straight away, but knowing that it could take years we decided that we were in a good place that if it were to happen instantly it wouldn’t be soul destroying.
Nothing happened.
If anything, things got worse. After being on the pill for so many years, my body went into a full blown melt down. My hormones were all over the place and my depression plummeted for the first time in a very long time. I was in a dark place and for a very long time I didn’t know how to crawl out of the hole.
When we got to 28 years old, we decided to actually start monitoring what was happening by analysing my cycle and trying to conceive around the time when I may be fertile. It was futile and nothing happened. So we headed to the doctors to begin proceedings to undergo IVF.
On paper to the doctors we had been ‘trying’ for 4 years as we weren’t using any form of protection, so we were put straight onto the waitlist. Apparently, we would just get a letter one day letting us know dates, times and where we needed to go. To be honest, we were dreading the whole clinical process of IVF.
Low and behold, we got pregnant naturally 6 weeks after getting the referral to the clinic.
The first thing I did when I found out was called the doctor. Because I didn’t expect it to happen, I had no idea how far along I was when I first saw a positive test. The following day, I went in for an ultrasound where they told me that I was around 6-7 weeks gone.
The weeks that followed were high anxiety. Just because I had managed to get pregnant naturally by some miracle. Didn’t mean that my body could sustain the pregnancy. Essentially, the doctors were unsure if I was battling something else in my uterus that would not allow the pregnancy to go full term.
Because of that, I have been monitored very closely. I get more bloods done than I thought was possible and I have an ultrasound every 2 weeks. It is the main reason why we decided to wait until we were passed the halfway point before telling people. Just through irrational fear that something terrible would happen.
It now is beginning to feel like we are in the safe zone. I am now loving every stage of the pregnancy. I know this may be my only opportunity after it took so long for us to conceive. And I am going to make the most of every single second.
