Once when we were in high school Lucas asked me, “If we can’t have kids, how do you feel about adopting?” I was sick a lot so the question had merit but I remember saying, “I feel great about adoption, but can we talk about this later? I’m going to be late for class. Also, I’m 16.”
Fast forward to almost 6 years of marriage…
After a year and a half of trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, Lucas and I decided to visit a fertility specialist. From several test results, the doctor concluded that everything appeared to be normal except my irregular cycles, lack of necessary reproductive hormones, and lack of ovulation. Meaning the only way for me to get pregnant would be to use fertility medication. But you never know for certain until you try. We also learned that PCS (polycystic ovarian syndrome – what I have) is the most common form of infertility.
My health has never been top notch but 2018 was an especially rough one for my body. Since I spent the year trying to figure out exactly what was wrong and fix it, my specialist doctor strongly advised that I wait until my health was good before taking any fertility medication. It was good advice, I was just tired of waiting. But I listened anyway and am glad that I did.
Lucas and I try to not let the status/behavior of our friends/peers affect us, but being surrounded by SO many people with kids (seriously almost every single one of my married friends have at least one kid if not two or three already) when we are trying to have kids of our own, is sad and frustrating. I recognize we only tried for 2 years while others we know have tried for 10 but the experience is still hard and not something I’d wish for anyone.
Since I wasn’t yet allowed to use the fertility medication that I was told I needed, I thought I couldn’t get pregnant. I also worried that there might be more issues we didn’t yet know about and wouldn’t find out until we at least tried the first fertility assistance step. After 6 months of slowing down and another 4 months of exclusively dedicating time and attention to my health recovery I finally started to feel like myself again. Then I started to feel sick again… but in a different way than before.
My cycles have always been abnormal but since stopping birth control they varied anywhere between 35 and 75 days long. Part of my new sick feeling included intense cramping. I’d been told that ovulation can be painful if your body hasn’t done it in a long time so I thought maybe for the first time (since I was aware of it) that I might actually be ovulating. Sunday evening I took an ovulation test and sure enough it was positive!
My older sister JeNelle is a nurse and I call her with health questions ALL the time. Monday morning I called her and complained about all the weird stuff my body was doing and expressed confusion as to what could possibly be happening because other than cramping all these symptoms wouldn’t come with regular ovulation. She (and her husband who was on the phone too) said…. “I think you’re pregnant.” “No way, I can’t be.” “Yeah, I think you are. Go pee on a test and call me back.”
The first pregnancy test I took showed a more faint line than the “control” line so I took several more. I think I took 7 tests total. I even drove to the store and bought a different brand (other than the 2 brands I already had) just to be sure. The same day I called my doctor and requested a blood test to be extra sure. JeNelle and Joe were right.
An hour later, Lucas came home unexpectedly. He rarely comes home for lunch so although I was glad to see him I asked why he came home. “I have to impregnate you! Are we still in the ovulation window??” I was still in shock from finding out the recent news so I just laughed and said, “We can still do it but we don’t need to because…” and showed him the most recent positive test.
We both sat on the couch and laughed (when Lucas said “can you please pee on something?! I don’t care what. Just pee on something!”) and cried and shook our heads in disbelief. We thought this couldn’t happen?! We also wanted it to happen but were trying so hard for so long not to get our hopes up that we didn’t actually think about how it would feel to get this news. We thought due to fertility medication that we would be controlling exactly when conception would happen and somehow it happened without us knowing!
As is expected for someone with a health history like mine, I was told that I’m a prime candidate for a miscarriage. So we kept the news a secret. Now that we are one week away from finding out the baby’s gender (20 weeks) it feels okay to share the news of the best Christmas gift we’ve ever received.
Brook Family, party of 3 – Coming June 29, 2019
October 22, 2018
