I want to do something a little different with my blog this week. I've been thinking about sharing my story with infertility and recurrent miscarriages for a while now. This is something that is extremely hard to talk about much less write about, but its something that I need to do. So each day this week I will dedicate a post about 'our' battle with infertility and discuss the emotional and physical hardship of our six pregnancy losses.
With the thousands of woman and men who suffer from this condition, I felt that sharing my story could possibly help others that are experiencing the same thing we are. So if you know anyone that is, please feel free to share my blog link with them. My blog
It all started when I was diagnosed at age fifteen with stage three endometriosis. This is a condition in which the tissue that behaves like the cells lining the uterus (endometrium) grows in other areas of the body, causing pain, irregular bleeding, and possible infertility.
The tissue growth (implant) typically occurs in the pelvic area, outside of the uterus, on the ovaries, bowel, rectum, bladder, and the delicate lining of the pelvis. However, the implants can occur in other areas of the body, too.
This is a very painful condition and I wish this upon no one. My mother took me to a countless number of doctors who all said that I was just experiencing bad cramps from my menstrual cycle. HA !! Bullshit my mom would tell them too. I spent many nights in the ER because of these "bad cramps." A friend referred me to her own OBGYN, and thank God for that too because he said immediately that it wasn't just period cramps I suffered from. He ended up performing two surgeries on me before my 18th birthday to try and help with give me relief from the uncontrollable pain, but sadly it's only a temporary fix. There is no cure for endometriosis unfortunately. You would think that with all the medical breakthroughs over the years there would be too. Several months after the second surgery I was still in so much pain that my doctor decided to shut down my reproductive system by basically putting me through menopause. I was given a monthly injection of a medication called Lupron for close to a year. The side effects were horrible and just absolutely sucked, but I did get several years worth of relief. Now I was warned then by my OB that getting pregnant may be difficult for me as I get older, so if I wanted to have children to try and plan while I was young. This didn't even faze me at the time and I never even considered that I would have problems trying to have a baby later on in life. Boy how naive and wrong I was!!!
I always knew that I wanted to have children after I found my Mr. Right, and when I did, we wasted no time in trying either. Even before we were married, Chip knew about all my "female" problems. He's always saying that he has no patience but honestly his patience with all my medical issues is astounding. If not for this man in my life, I honestly don't know where I would have ended up. Our first pregnancy was probably like most couples. I was late with my period, pee'd on a stick, and BAM....positive. The excitement was immediate. We called everyone; and I mean everyone and told then our news. That same weekend we went to Barnes & Nobles and bought a baby name book and 'What to expect when your expecting' book. By early Sunday evening I started spotting so we rushed to the ER because we weren't sure what else to really do. After a few hours of being there, it was confirmed that I was miscarrying. It was an early stage of the pregnancy; maybe four weeks or so and was told this was actually really common with most first time pregnancies to miscarry. We were so devastated even upon hearing that. After a few days we had to call and break the news to everyone that we lost the pregnancy.
It was very hard losing that first one but we didn't let that get us down to much, so once the allotted time passed we started to try again. Sadly it took a very long time for #2 to happen for us. About two years actually. Since we were having such a stuff time getting pregnant again, my doctor prescribed Clomid to me. This is a medication you can take to help you produce more eggs at one time to increase your chance of one of your eggs getting fertilized. I think it was the second cycle that worked for us when we did get preggo again with #2. We called and got an appointment with the doctor a week or so after the positive result. They had us watch a cheesy movie first before the actual exam, but he confirmed the pregnancy. I was about 4-5 weeks along so he could not see the sac on ultrasound yet. But that was ok because we left with a due date, hug smiles, and a bag full of goodies. When we got home we made all those calls again to tell everyone the awesome news. The following week, I miscarried #2 :(
Tomorrow Part II-
#3 and #4
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