Losing something you never had.
That’s how I can best describe my infertility journey. When you are a planner like me, you have this unrealistic way of life that everything will work out exactly how you have planned. I’ve always wanted kids. I quit college because I knew the career I was going into would pull me away from my family-yet here I am with no family. My husband and I have been TRYING to conceive for almost 3 years now, but married for 5 years and never used any sort of contraception. Honestly for the first two years, we just thought we had a good pull-out game — jokes on us! (You should laugh about that. We do.) When I finally broke down and called a specialist about not being able to conceive I really just thought they would tell me we have had bad timing…every single cycle for 3 years and I would be on my merry little way. When it became more than that, I was speechless. There was so much about it that was familiar to me. Almost like I had always known this would a trial for me. But then I was devastated.
I had all the feelings in the beginning. Why doesn’t my body do what it was made to do? Am I going to be such a terrible mother that God won’t give me a child? I actually prayed that if that was the case that I would never get pregnant because I did not want to be a bad mom. Then there was the morbid thoughts of, will something happen to me? Will something happen to one of our siblings and we will need to raise their children? These thoughts flooded my mind and quickly started to be the only thing I could think about.
We took it very slow in the beginning, with minimal medication to figure out the root cause. Nothing was working. For nine months in a row I took 150mg of clomid, had ultrasounds and blood work each month. I was told-almost like a broken record-that I was not ovulating and the follicle I did have was too small. One of those months they offered us the option to do an IUI. With all the hope in the world we tried it. We knew the chances were slim, but worth a shot. My husband had a semen analysis in the very beginning and we were told “lots of swimmers,” so we figured maybe we would get lucky with the IUI and the right timing. It failed. I was depressed. I hate admitting that but it’s the truth. Confidence had NEVER been an issue for me, until infertility. I hated myself. I could not even look in the mirror without hating my body. This hit me fast and I was scared. These feelings were very foreign to me and I was angry at myself for feeling that way, but I could not stop. Knowing that I could not let this get out of hand, I quickly started working on myself. Meditation, writing it all down, anything I could do to get my emotions out I was doing it. I had to teach myself to push past those thoughts and literally think happy thoughts. It was so hard for me. I’m still learning how to do that! Not sure it ever gets easier just something we have to make a habit.
The monthly appointments kept rolling around. Disappointment each time. While we were not getting the results we were so desperately hoping for I could not get over the fact that something was not right. I kept pushing it off as just being upset that we were still not pregnant but the feeling never left me. I started doing more of my own research-something I could not do in the beginning because it just made me more upset. The farther I got into it the more I realized what we were being told really did not make sense. The cycle days when certain things happen were not matching with what we were being told. The blood work they were doing seemed to be irrelevant. Now I am no doctor, but it suddenly hit me that we needed to see a new physician. I found a new specialist and made an appointment. The waitlist was long so we continued with the current doctor to hopefully not lose any momentum. I switched to femara for two months. Same results.
The day of the consult with the new doctor was finally here. I was scared. I had seen the cost of this specialist and the treatments that I may need. It was all just overwhelming. As we sat in front of a desk telling a new doctor all about our sex life, medical history of parents, siblings, aunts and uncles-it hit me. For the first time in this entire journey of infertility I was completely overwhelmed with peace. The new doctor had just gone over all of the records from our previous doctor and I was shocked. The lab results and ultrasounds all showed ovulation. Every. Single. Month. He looked at us a bit confused because we had just told him that we were struggling to get me to ovulate and all the juicy details. Turns out the quality of my eggs (shown in FSH levels) is not great, as well as the quantity of eggs I have being very low for my age. As tears of frustration filled my eyes, I laughed. Like, can’t breathe, hyena-like, basically on the floor laughing. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be so mad that we had just wasted so much time and money with our previous doctor just to have been given false information, but all I could do was laugh.
That same day, they took us in for multiple tests. I had an ovarian assessment. My husband had a test for A1C levels because of family history. All the things. Things that probably would have take the previous doctor months to fit in, this doctor did not even flinch. Right down to business he went — literally right down if you know what I mean! (Laugh at that too! If we are going to get this comfortable with “wands” and sitting on a table all wide legged and vulnerable, we get to laugh about it!) All jokes aside, I knew this was where we were supposed to be. 
We went forward with another round of femara for that cycle. We got better, detailed information on cycle days, ovulation test kits, timing, you think of it, they covered it. The femara was successful in helping with ovulation but unfortunately we did not conceive. This current cycle, we stuck with femara and will have our second IUI. I am so full of hope, even though I know how heart broken I could be, yet again, next month. That is all part of this journey though, right? Staying hopeful while being angry, disappointed and heart broken. I guess that is just a new special skill we can all add to our resumes.
I did not know it at the time, but when I look back at the last few years, I know deep in my soul that we were led down this path on this journey for a reason. As much as I hate going through this and watching my husband stay strong even when I can see in his eyes how disappointed he is, I know there is something greater that will come of this. I did not come to this realization over night and I still have bad days. Horrible days even! Just ask my husband. I truly believe this journey is something that almost needs to be mourned. Sounds crazy probably, but like I said in the beginning, we all have lost something we never even had. It is okay to feel that. It is okay to have bad days. It is okay to cry. It is okay to be mad at God, and screaming at Him wondering, why? Why me? Why anyone? It is okay to feel like no one understands. It is okay to be upset when every sister and sister in law you have announces a pregnancy right in the middle of your infertility journey. (Yep, that happened to me!) it is okay to have a great day today, when you told all your friends and family how upset you were yesterday. It is okay to feel any kind of feeling we want through OUR journey, and it is okay to fall down along the way, but we have to get up. It is not easy. It is devastating. It hurts. Literally hurts, because some of these procedures are painful! Your heart will be broken. Your mind will be exhausted. Your body is going to be tired. But when we are ready we stand back up. No matter how that looks. Maybe it is taking a break because this is just too much. Maybe it is telling your doctor you don’t want to take the small steps and jump right into the bigger ones. Just stand back up.
My best advice to anyone on this journey would be that it is okay to laugh. I think sometimes we hurt so much that we forget it is okay to be happy, to laugh about things still. Just laugh! There is nothing funny about what we are all going through but it’s okay to laugh about it every now and then.
I pray for each and every one of you! I don’t know if we will have find out why we were given this trial, but I know it makes us some of the strongest women (and men- BLESS every single man that has to get frisky with himself in an empty room and hand it to a female nurse!)! We can do hard things, and we will!
– Mariah Price
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