the day has come...

Tonight is my first appointment with the specialist!   While, I am going to see this doctor, in hopes of having a baby, I'm also glad that the office is not just a fertility center.   They specialize in endocrine and reproductive disorders/conditions, as well as fertility.    Because, after all, women have those issues and need to treat them, but aren't always desiring to have children.   I guess I get the best of both worlds in that way.

Of course, I'm still dealing with the Period From Hell.    I'm on week #3 right now.   I know most of you will gasp in reading that, but it's actually not that shocking to me.  I've dealt with that for so many years.  If I wasn't taking a birth control pill, to regulate my cycles, I would get a period for months at a time, or I wouldn't get one for months at a time.   And yes, I've always wanted children, so taking the BCP was hard for me to consider.    But without it, it left me open for so many other issues.

I'm very hopeful about the doctor I'm meeting with - and I'm nervous too.    I know he'll be thorough and will do all in his power, to get down to the root of my problem.  Hormonal imbalance, thyroid?    So many things it could be.  In my 20's I was told "PCOS with anovulation"... so I walked away with that diagnosis.   I always had the option of trying medical intervention, in the form of ovulation drugs or metformin, but I was stubborn.    I wanted to be a "miracle" case, who just ended up pregnant by the Grace of God, and without taking any drugs to manipulate my body.

My ultimate hope is that I will have the HSG done on my remaining tube and it will be clear, and then I can try Clomid again.  (because, after all, it did work for me)
We'll see what the doc says; he is the expert after all.  But I can still voice my thoughts.  He's gotten really great reviews and came recommended by a coworker, so I'm going in with a positive attitude and an open mind!

baby steps

That was the name of this blog, when I first started my Clomid journey, last year.  Knowing, in my heart, that it was going to work!   And it did.   But then, other things happened and the blog went silent.  I'd been trying to get pregnant for years before that, but I never put it out there publicly and I'd also never tried any medical intervention.   Which is why I was finally starting to chronicle it in a blog.   It's been a rough road, emotionally and mentally, since my little ordeal.  But, now, I'm revving back up and getting ready to go full speed ahead.   Again.  

I made our first appointment with a fertility specialist, and it's already next Monday!  I'm so many "things", with this new endeavor.    I'm nervous, excited, scared, apprehensive, optimistic.   How can I be such an even split of negative and positive emotions?    I'm guessing it's totally normal.   Infertility kind of takes you on that path of so many different feelings, emotions, theories. 

I'll be posting as soon as I get in from my appointment next week, which also falls on Jeff's birthday! What a fun way to celebrate your birthday, right?   Talking about the possibility of becoming a daddy!   Again.  OR finally!     We both want this so much, and maybe more than we ever thought or knew we did.       

Filling out my pre-appointment forms online, was really exciting and sobering at the same time.  I got to the box where it asked if I'd ever been pregnant before.   It was sad to mark YES and then continue to check the ECTOPIC box, but at the same time, I feel like it is a reminder that I actually got pregnant!   See, there can be a silver lining to all that's dark and cloudy sometimes.

So, wish us luck, and send lots of positive vibes!

Pregnancy & Infant Loss

Back in April, I read an article where Derrick and Jill Dillard were interviewed. If you don't know who Jill is, she's one of the Duggar girls, of the once popular 19 and Counting, reality show.

The article spoke about pregnancy and touched on Jill and Derrick's decision to announce theirs very early on.    Jill said something, in that interview, that struck me really deep and further confirmed my own thoughts on the subject.  She said:

"Believing that life begins at conception and that every life is precious no matter how young, - we would — even if there were to be a miscarriage — we would still want that child to be recognized," she told Us at the time. "So it was something that we thought about and went forward with."  -- Jill Dillard

This spoke volumes to me, having lost my first and long awaited pregnancy, in January.  I found out I was pregnant on December 13th and we immediately decided that we'd tell our families on Christmas Day.  (just 12 days later).     I knew, with my age, and having taken fertility meds, that there were risks associated with my pregnancy.   BUT, we also felt that, no matter what, we wanted our families to know.  We had close family members and some friends who thought that we announced it too soon.   There's that theory of "being out of the woods" before you tell everyone, because WHAT IF the pregnancy fails and you miscarry?    Oh, so if we were to handle it that way, and I miscarried, with none of our family knowing I was pregnant, then we'd never tell them I was pregnant in the first place?  Wrong. Pregnancy is not like interviewing for a job, when you're afraid to jinx yourself by telling people about it, before you get it.  People out there actually think "well, you don't want to get your families' hopes up and then the pregnancy fails".  Oh, right, I don't want them to have to go through that.   Well, how is it any different for me, for us?   I'd rather my family be there for me every step of the way, no matter the outcome.   My sister was actually at my OB appointment that day with me, thinking all was well, and it was just a follow up for some minor spotting a few days earlier.    In the room with me, waiting to see the ultrasound.  Knowing all we'd see was my little bean, but nonetheless happy and excited.  Only to find out later, after 4 office ultrasounds and 2 at South Jersey Radiology,  that it was an ectopic pregnancy.   Yes, it was awful and heartbreaking and so disappointing, but I wasn't sorry that we told our families.   

I don't regret anything.    I don't even regret getting started on my Pregnancy Journal that my 9 year old niece bought for me, with her own money, at Barnes & Noble.   I don't regret saving all the pictures of the positive tests.    I just pray that someday, I get to do it all over again, and carry a baby to term.  I was always just a statistic with fertility struggles and now I'm a statistic with pregnancy loss too.   I never knew what anyone meant, online, when they referred to "rainbow babies"..... and now I do.    I never knew what ectopic pregnancy was... and now I do.    I never knew what it was like to be pregnant... now I do.      I never knew what it was like to lose a baby/pregnancy........now I do.    I will never forget hearing a heartbeat, when I was in the ER, having an emergency ultrasound, the day I was admitted for my ectopic rupture.    The tech jumped forward in his seat to silence it, but I'd already heard it.  It was too late.    And had I not heard it, my baby would have been no less a life, in my eyes.      The day he/she was conceived, was the day WE gave him/her LIFE.   So, imagine 12 weeks later.... YES, you were very much real to me, to US.  Maybe not in the right place, to be carried and delivered,  BUT, in our hearts from beautiful beginning to sorrowful end.