The Long Road to Nowhere

Put on your comfy sweats and settle in people... this is going to be a LONG post... And for those of you who have an aversion to womanly topics, you might want to skip this one. I tend to ramble a little and do use the word Period, quite frequently.


Okay internet, I have a confession to make. I have been keeping a secret from you. And trust me, I am not the type to keep secrets. For 21 days I have been wanting to post about this but I have yet to find the right words.

Hold up... I just got a flash back to Sandra Bullock in 28 days. No, I'm not in rehab... there that myth dispelled, moving on....

Eleven days ago my sister-in-law had a baby. He's adorable. (No, I'm not going to post pictures. Sorry, but he's not mine to post pictures of. I don't mind posting pictures of adults, but I won't post them of children without prior parental consent. Sorry... them's the rules.)

Anyhow, I'm stalling, can you tell? So, eleven days ago this little boy was brought into this world and I can't look at him. Every time I see his picture it hurts. It hurts in every fiber of my being. I did not have any idea the ache I could feel until now.

Ever since I was little I knew I wanted children. I was one of those people who just thought, I'll grow up, get married and then have babies. So, I had a plan. Two years ago we got married, and then we thought, we'll wait at least a year to start trying. After a year, we thought, hmm... let's give it another year, plan around tax season and get a few more things paid off.

So, here we are, almost two and a half years later and people, I don't ovulate. Up until this point, I had tried to convince myself that maybe it was normal. Some times it takes people a year to get pregnant. I tried to ignore the fact that my periods were, as my doctor puts it, "not normal." Hey, nothing about me has ever been normal, so why should this.

When we first went off birth control my first period came at 28 days, just like clockwork. The second month 28 days came and went and we thought... "It worked, we're pregnant!!" (I know delusional aren't I?) I think it was in that 5th week, when all the pregnancy tests kept coming back negative that I knew something wasn't normal. Finally on day 35 I started.

At this point, I talked with our family physician. She said that to some people, 35 days is normal, and since I was just two months off the pill my body was still trying to figure its self out. Yet, in the back of my mind, I new something just wasn't right. The next month was 37, then 46 and finally 43. It was on that day 43, January 31st when I had my appointment with my doctor.

I have to digress here for just a brief moment. Some of you may remember this post, where I said that there has always been a possibility that we couldn't have children, but I was okay with that. What has changed you ask? Nothing really, I just think that with anything there is always a grieving period. It is not that we are SOO dead set on having biological children that we blocked everything out of our minds. It just feels like, for us, the logical step at this point is to try the minimally evasive treatments first and then make the big decisions later. Also, as I said before, thinking you can't have biological children and being told that you are not ovulating are two very different things. Before it was just a concept, now it is a reality. And I'm having a little trouble dealing with the reality, that's all.

During my appointment he basically told me that given my irregularity there was a high probability that I was not ovulating and even if I was Jake and I would have to be going at it like rabbits for 6 weeks straight to have a chance of catching the right time. Now as appealing as that sounds to my husband I do need to sleep SOMETIME!!

So, on February 2nd I started down that long infertility road with my first dose of Clomid. Like a little school girl, I was giddy with excitement. I thought for certain that this would work. I was convinced in 28 days I would be staring at two pink lines. In fact, that's the reason I did not write about it.

I was so certain that we would be pregnant, and then I would just feel stupid for writing about "infertility" when I wasn't infertile at all. Then, today came. Today was day 21. Now as all of you who have ever been on Clomid know, day 21 is the day of reckoning. This is the day you have your blood drawn and they tell you what your progesterone level is. This basically tells you whether you ovulated or not.

Mine was a not. At 4:30 this afternoon the nurse practitioner called to give me the news. "Well, your progesterone level was a little low. Your level was 0.4. We normally like it to be above 10." A little low? Lady that sounds sub-zero to me!!

So, here I sit, having done absolutely NO work since she called and wallowing in my own self-pity. I don't want my sister-in-law to feel bad about sending me pictures of Jackson, I want to see him. I'm SOO happy for her. However, that said, it is just SOO damn hard to be surrounded by all of these fertile women. Three of my good friends have all had babies within the last year and a half and all of them got pregnant on their first try.

When I walk through the skywalks downtown I find myself drawn to all of the pregnant women. I keep wondering in the back of my mind, did they have troubles? I just feel like I'm in a fog. Like no one understands what is going through my mind. After all, as much as I love my friends, they are not exactly "experienced" in this area.

Do you know how tired I am of hearing people tell me to just relax? Relax and it will happen. I'm sure any of you who have struggled with infertility have heard the same thing. Where do people come up with this? Is there some unwritten rule that says if you come across a women who tells you that she is having fertility problems, tell her to relax? Well, let me tell you, it doesn't work. My most relaxed, carefree months got me 46 and 43 days respectively.

So where do we go from here? Well, now there is more waiting. The doctor will be in the office tomorrow and then he, or his nurse most likely, will call me and tell me if they want to do more tests, or start another higher dose of Clomid. Then there is more waiting for my period to start. I'm hoping not another three weeks, however I am crossing my fingers that perhaps within the time that I am waiting my body will miraculously wake it's self up and I will ovulate.

Hey, a girl can dream can't she?