My period started today.
That makes 12 months in a row of being acutely aware of each time my period begins.
My husband and I have hit the “one-year-of-trying-to-conceive” milestone, which also means we get the consolation prize of getting to join the infertility club.
Infertility is defined as not being able to get pregnant after one year of trying (depending on your age, the timeframe for qualifying as “infertile” may differ a bit.)
I never imagined I would be here. With my first child, we got pregnant in the second month of trying. Afterwards I literally said out loud, “I can’t imagine having to try over and over, month after month…”
Maybe I jinxed myself.
It’s weird to hit the point where you’ve been trying to have a baby longer than it actually takes to have a baby.
Around the 10-month mark of trying for a second child, I went to my annual gynecologist appointment. I mentioned that I wanted to start looking into why we weren’t getting pregnant. This meant doing some testing on my husband and I, and coming back in a month to have the doctor review the results.
A month later we found out there was a reason why it wasn’t happening quickly. We also found out it was something that (at this point) we couldn’t really do much about (we have some more follow up appointments, so we will see). Basically we were told we were doing everything right, but that there was an extenuating circumstance that made our chances of conceiving much less.
In some ways this was validating – I had been doing stuff right. The timing of intercourse, the charting of my cycles… I understood how my body worked, and in *most couples, it probably would have meant a pregnancy by now.
It was also frustrating to me because there was nothing to “do.” If the problem could be solved by taking a pill, I would do it. If I needed to change my diet or quit caffeine (which I already had for the most part), I would have done it.
But no, this is one of those, “just keep trying and see what happens” situations. Except now, I know not to expect anything to happen. We are not infertile, like literally unable to have another child, but from what I learned at the doctor’s office, our odds are low enough that we need to realize it’s going to take much longer for it to happen, if it happens at all.
I’m not sure I’ve fully wrapped my mind around the idea of it really never happening. I think I’m waiting to get there to process that, hoping I don’t have to.
We’re still in the “figure-out-what-our-options-are” stage of infertility treatment, and then my husband and I will have more decisions to make. Do we want to pursue fertility treatments? How much money are we willing to spend? How much longer do we want to keep trying? What are the chances of the treatments actually being successful? Is it worth it?
Each person would answer those questions differently – and there’s no right or wrong answers.
This is a hard journey, and one I’m not excited to be on. But I know I’m not alone. I’m SO not alone. If you’re dealing with this, or have already gone through it, I’m sorry that you had to experience this. You’re not alone.
If you think this post would be helpful to share with someone else, it would give me great joy for you to do that.
I hope to write more updates soon, and continue to share my story.
Thanks for reading.
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A few other posts I’ve written about my trying-to-conceive journey are below:
So You’ve Decided to Try to Get Pregnant… A Saga
Threads of Anxiety 