It’s funny how life can be. I’m sure at some point most of you who will read this will remember moments when you have said ‘when I have kids…’ , or ‘I want to have my first child at the age of…’., ‘I think I want x amount of kids’.
And if you’ve never been the kind of person to engage in such conversations… the fact is (more so for women) we are nurtured into preparing for pregnancy and motherhood.
Next time you walk into a supermarket you will always see at least one little girl or maybe even a boy (that’s how it goes these days) pushing around their doll in a toy pram.
What we don’t know until adulthood comes knocking at the door, is , the journey to becoming pregnant and motherhood may not be as simple for some as it’s played out.
That was the case for me:
The diagnosis or should I say lack of diagnosis of ‘unexplained infertility’ (what a ‘catch22’ term) was hung over my head unintentionally. It all started shortly after being married in 2014 to my amazing husband, I stopped using birth control as it was causing a negative impact on my body. Of course at this point we came to an agreement that the risks of becoming pregnant earlier than we wanted to are higher, because I wasn’t keen on any of the alternative methods.
Fast forward 9 months – a year later my menstrual cycle had not started, but after countless checks I was also not pregnant. Finding this a little strange I was aware that my body needed to adjust after being fed with false hormones, but equally it just didn’t seem right due to my history of irregular cycles (that’s for a later post).
So I made a visit to my GP, and the first thing they checked was my bloods. Everything came back fine however there was only one flag and it was my progesterone hormone – which is necessary for ovulating. The normal level should be around 30, but mine was 0.3 in other words it meant I wasn’t ovulating…
This would have been around June 2015 when all the prodding and poking began, to investigate my reproductive health.
I was told that it wasn’t healthy for me to not have a cycle every month. In fact I learnt that a build up your unshed womb lining can cause further health problems like obesity and even encourage aggressive diseases like cancer etc.
My GP prescribed a drug that forced a cycle to appear however to no avail I had officially gone a year without a cycle.
At this point my only option was to tell my GP I was trying to conceive in order for me to be referred to a fertility clinic.
Before I was referred , I was given the option to try a fertility drug that would help me to ovulate every month , but would also cause a pregnancy as it gives your reproductive ‘bits’ a real boost.
I Was on this drug for 6 months but unsuccessful . In fact at times I didn’t even ovulate let alone get pregnant. My GP was shocked and couldn’t understand why at my age (27 at the time) as well as with my health record there was no success.
I was officially referred to a fertility consultant led clinic later that year in 2015.
From then until now I will summarise what happened as I prefer to give more detail about the procedures I took get where I am today.
Trying to fit this all into one post will not do any justice for what I’m trying to achieve or help someone with in their own personal journey.
Anyway I finally met my consultant in December 2015. He went through my record and simply said;
“I can’t understand why you cannot conceive”. Unfortunately you come under the category of ‘Unexplained infertility’.
Based on your preliminary tests and health record the only way you may be able to conceive is by assisted reproductive technology i.e IUI / IVF!!!
Thats where the proper journey began: To put it into perspective all the treatments I had in this clinic started in February 2016 and I became pregnant with my first (angel) baby in November 2016. My beautiful son Sebastian was conceived (unconventionally) in May 2017. Up until this point my body has not proved the diagnosis wrong that I can conceive naturally. However one way or another I am now a mother.
I’m still on this journey. I still think about how I’m going to have this second child (if it’s God’s will).
My next post I will give more detail about what these procedures were and what it involved.
In the meantime, whoever is reading this…I hope you now are aware that you are NOT alone.
I’ve finally broken the silence.
V
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