My infertility struggle and TTC journey

I have wanted to have kids since I was a kid. I loved the sequel to "Little Women" called "Jo's Boys" about Josephine who opens an orphanage. I decided that I wanted to have my own orphanage, or at least, have at least nine kids. During high school and college, I plastered pictures of cute babies and Anne Geddes calendars all over my walls.


I met my husband in my late twenties and we got married in July of 2007 (so almost two years ago). We discussed children before we got married. I wanted kids right away...he wanted to wait at least two years so that we could travel. I agreed to wait but I think I was a little resentful...in my head I was already calculating the time frame. I was twenty eight when we got married... that would mean...32 when pregnant....33 with first baby...wait 2-3 years until trying for second baby. I know health risks go up with age so I want to have all my kids before 35. hey, that won't give us much time. So I wasn't too happy...but then six months into marriage...he not too excitedly said we could start trying.


December 2007 (MONTH 0)-stopped taking BCP (birth control pills) about a week before New Years Eve already started dreaming of having our baby in the fall

Jan 2008- Nothing. It hasn't even been a full month...but my sister got pregnant after just missing one of her birth control pills.

Feb 2008- a little disappointed after getting my second AF.

April 2008 (MONTH 4)-still no pregnancy. Now I'm just crying when I get my period. My husband doesn't understand and we inevitably have a fight whenever I do finally get my period. One time I got it right after we had sex so from then on, I didn't even want to have sex near the end of my cycle. I am convinced that sex can bring on AF. My husband and I argue...he feels like I care more about having a baby than him. I feel that I'm the only one making it a priority and putting it on our calendar and thinking about when a good time to try. He agrees to make more of an effort.


May 2008 (MONTH 5): the first weekend of may, I take a pregnancy test in the early morning. I've been taking them on exactly day 28 of every cycle. I'm super regular since I got off my birth control pills. I am always get my period on day 28 so I figure I ovulate on day fourteen and we have sex three days before and three days afterward. Seriously, its exhausting. I pee on the stick and 3 minutes later....the faintest smudge of a line I have ever seen. I let it sit for another ten minutes and the line look slightly darker to me...I think.

Doctor's visit two weeks later comfirms POSITIVE for PREGNANCY.
The next morning I had an early miscarriage.

June 2008 (MONTH 6)- they said to take the next three months off so we avoid having sex during fertile period but we still don't use protection.

July-Dec 2008- I decide not to wait three months. It took us four months the first time so I figure it will take the same and that will be beyond the three month waiting period. Doesn't seem to matter. No baby. And worse, now my regular periods of exactly 28 days have started fluctuating from 24 days to 36 or 37 days. The stress is driving me crazy.

Jan 2009 (MONTH 12)-I schedule an appt with my gyno. I know they expect you to try for a year but I'm not sure if it is a year total or just a year from the miscarriage. They tell me to come in right away so I guess it is a year total. She asks me if I've been temping (taking my waking body temperature every morning). Um, no!!! She asks me to chart it for three months and then come back to her. WHAT!!! Great...so now I'm three months behind the curve.

March 2009 (MONTH 14)- Doctor looks at temps. I also bought a fancy digital ovulation predictor kit that cost like $150. Between the seemingly hundreds of pregnancy test I've bought in the last year, trying to get pregnant is freaking expensive. It appears I am ovulating, my ovulation day just changes from month to month. I have a rotating shift work schedule that changes every two months and sometimes I have to sleep during the day.

She asks if I want to keep trying or be more agressive and try Clomid. Hell to the yea!!! In fact, I really want to go full force, do the full exams and tests...in vitro...adoption. anything and everything. She says she's not really gearing for that since I did get pregnant once before.

Meanwhile, my husband and I are now fervently praying. Our prayer is to have a baby in 2009, not just get pregnant in 2009. I count off the possible due dates in 2009 as each month brings me AF. And the hard reality hits when we realize that there will be no baby making it into our home by the end of this year.

April 2009 (MONTH 15)- So here I am. If I get pregnant now, my baby will have a due date exactly a year after the baby we lost at six weeks. We would become parents in January of 2010. I know our prayer was for 2009, but honestly, you just want a baby...even if it wasn't in your time frame.

There are some hard ships. You feel like you're getting better at it...at being honestly happy for other people who get pregnant. Sometimes it just hits you though. My old coworker had a miscarriage four months after me. I remember thinking how hard that was and thanking God that I had endured my own and that I was bound to get pregnant any day now and she was having to start over. Lately she's been hammering to get me to meet her for lunch and I honestly have been putting it off...hoping to get a positive pregnancy test in. Silly, huh? She finally emailed me pictures saying she couldn't wait but she's already 5 months pregnant and due this September.

Another girl I know got pregnant after my miscarriage and despite everything I've heard about waiting until after your first trimester...told everyone in the word the day after her missed period and positive home pregnancy test. I held my breath but the hammer never fell. She had a seamless pregnancy and then hired me to take pictures of her newborn son, born in March. It really hit me, she managed to begin and create a baby in the time I've been waiting since my miscarriage.

My husband had his sperm analyzed. Perfect. It was a huge relief but sometimes when I'm driving, I realize....that means it is all me. All me. I'm the the only possible reason for our failure. And this is where I am. AF is due this weekend...absolutely no symptoms. I can't even dredge up the energy to imagine any. Worse yet, at my clomid check, they did a pap smear and found some abnormal cells. So I have a second appointment in two weeks. I cried hard that night. I hated my uterus. It was letting me down.

11 dpo and I feel healthier than ever

So, I can suck up time like I have no life reading through TTC (trying to conceive blogs) so I figured...maybe I just need to write my own. It's amazing that each month, I am googling whatever day past ovulation I am on...to find other people and their experiences on that day. I look at those that resulted in negative or positive pregnancy tests...looking for some sign to indicate which one I might look forward to. Today...I'm 11 dpo...and I feel healthy as a horse. It seems the farther I get into my TTC journey, the less "imaginary" symptoms I feel every month.

A few months ago, my breasts, out of nowhere, started getting tender right after ovulation and stopped a few days before AF (monthly period=aunt flow). Should have seen how excited tender breasts were making me. I was poking myself every five minutes trying to figure out if I was imagining it. I think I made my breasts even more tender with all that poking. Now, I'm on my second cycle of clomid and I never feel anything. I never get PMS symptoms. No breast tenderness. No cramps. No bloating. No nausea. Frankly, I've never felt healther. Everywhere I ready, people are lamenting their possible symptoms and whether they should take a HPT (home pregnancy test). I don't even have imaginary symptoms anymore.

What would a TTC girl do? You got it. I start googling to read how much people have no symptoms and still turn out pregnant. There's no way to win. Symptoms? Maybe you're pregnant. No symptoms? Maybe you're pregnant.