The Journey Part 1

The journey begins Part 1

I am a focused person and when I take on a project, I really take on a project. I am also a fastidious planner. I just love to see a plan come together (though God often seems unwilling to go along with my meticulously designed intentions).

We began discussions about when we would start the process of becoming parents the moment that lovely little diamond engagement ring had been slipped on my finger. We were married in 2002 and had decided that 2007 seemed just right. It would give us enough time to enjoy married life sans children and time to establish some financial stability. I would be 29 so I could pop out the first child by 30 and still have time to have at least one if not two more before I reached the dreaded “advanced maternal age” of 35. It was a brilliant strategy, pure genius.

I spent the year of 2006 studying and researching all things conception. Oh how I love researching! My favorite source of information was a book called “Taking Charge of Your Fertility.” I learned things I never knew. After all isn’t that the goal of any great research project? I was in information nirvana. I made up excel charts and purchased a fun multicolored pen set so that I could track my waking temperature and all signs which would alert me to my most fertile time. At my annual Ob/gyn exam I revealed my initial worries about becoming pregnant as there appears to be a history of infertility in my family (it took my mom 13 year to conceive me) and my cycles have never been regular. The doctor told me not to worry too much and instead of completing the usual year of trying I could come back in nine months if I wasn’t pregnant.

In January of 2007 we officially stopped trying not to get pregnant and in February to celebrate the occasion we took a dream vacation to Panama. We assumed that this would be our last big vacation together as a childless couple. I packed my sun block, hiking boots, bathing suit and my basal body thermometer, fertility excel chart and multicolored pens. It was an amazing trip and we had a spectacular time and although I knew it was pretty farfetched that I’d return with a very special souvenir, I thought it would have been awesome and maybe just a little possible.
Three months after the trip we still weren’t pregnant and I decided to step things up a bit. I concluded that it was worth the investment to buy one of those fancy digital ovulation predictor monitors. I must admit that it was fun each morning seeing the little blinking picture telling me at what stage in my cycle I was. It was here however that I noticed a problem. I would skip entire cycles without seeing the picture of the full blinking egg. I wasn’t ovulating at least not regularly and my pretty colored fertility chart was corroborating that fact.

We continued to “try” but at exactly the nine month mark I showed up at my ob/gyn’s office with nine months of fertility charting in hand. He agreed that it looked like I wasn’t ovulating regularly but stated that it wasn’t unusual or a big deal. He gave me a prescription for a medication called clomid and instructions on its use. The prescription included two refills. If I wasn’t pregnant after three rounds I was to return.
I hated the clomid. I took it for three months in a row and it only succeeded in making me grumpy, weepy and overall insane. It led me right back to the ob/gyn’s office. He decided that it was time to send me to the fertility center.