Maybe I shouldn't get upset because I know that parenting can be hard. I use to be a nanny for 5 children...ages 5 and under. Two of them being a few months old. I use to get to "work" at 8 and leave at 4. Some days I was grateful to leave at 4. Most days didn't feel like work. I LOVED being around those babies and even today I still LOVE to be around them. It's not very often that I do but I cherish it. In fact I recently saw them for the first time in 3 years. Anyway, it wasn't always easy and yes I got to leave at the end of the night but never did I want to give up or quit. In fact the only reason why I still don't nanny for them is that they didn't need me anymore.
This is where the story gets incredibly private and personal:
Jake and I have been trying to have kids for a little over 2 years. It hasn't been easy and there has been heartbreak and more heartbreak. We starting "trying" to have kids end of May/beginning of June 2012. I had seen my Gynecologist at the very beginning of September and told her that we had started trying to get pregnant. We had several friends who were getting pregnant after just a couple of months so we were kind of expecting the same thing. She said well it usually takes the average person 3 months to get the birth control out of their bodies. If you don't have any success after a year then we need to look further. I got pregnant in September and lost it October 17th after 5 weeks. That was such a devastating time for me. I had people tell me don't worry at least you can get pregnant or everything happens for a reason. While both of those things are true they are also incredibly insensitive. Especially for someone who has never been in my shoes.
Fast forward to September 2013. Still not pregnant. I had to switch Dr's because mine didn't do any pregnancy which is really sad because I absolutely loved her. She was/is amazing! I went to a new Dr and he started me on Clomid. Now he wasn't a specialist but wanted to try and see if this works. Most don't know how this works but they start you on 50mg to see how it works and you have to go in and have an ultrasound done to see if you are ovulating. My Dr told me that they need to see a follicle around 20-24 for anything to happen. I would go in and I was told I was at a 4, a 5, or a 9. So after 5 months of taking this medicine and having a ultrasound done and not ovulating they upped my prescription to 100mg. I went in and was at 16. My biggest yet but still not where I needed to be. The next month they upped me to 150mg. I went in and was at a 32. Holy cow right!
Around this time I found an add on KSL about Infertility and how the University of Utah had a seminar that explains a lot about infertility on both males and females. I signed us up to go to one and we received a TON of information. I ended up switching to the female fertility specialist as my Dr because I felt like we needed a little more help. 7 months of fertility drugs and nothing. That can't be right.
I went to my first appointment in March and had several blood test done. We also had Jake tested to see if anything was wrong with him. 1 in 7 couples have trouble with infertility. 50% of the time it is in both male and female. We wanted to make sure that we had everything checked out. Jake's test came back that everything was normal. Mine not so much. Not only did I have tons of blood work done I also had a sonohysterogram done. That is where they put a catheter in your uterus and inject a saline solution and look at it. Not a fun process. Well it came back that all of my hormone levels are way out of whack and I have a very low egg count for someone my age. Not exactly what you want to hear when you are dying to have children. Not only that but because of the results of the blood test he told me I had about 2 years left to have kids while most women my age have 8-10. I called another Dr and he told me that based off the the blood test levels that I gave him I had about 2-4 years left. That was a little better.
My Dr decided to go with a different medication and put me on letrozole(also know as femara) He tried me on 7.5mg(which is the same as 150mg on clomid) Most Dr's will not give you anything more that that. Anway, we tried that and it didn't work. So next thing we wanted to try doing clomid and letrozole together. 5.0mg of letrozole and 100mg of clomid. So essentially 200mg of fertility medicine. Both of these medications have side effects that make you crazy! So both of them together were a nightmare. I was cranky, short tempered, and irritable for several days. I'm surprised people still talked to me. I hated feeling that way. It was a very rough week at our house. A week after I finished I went in for another ultrasound it was kind of the same thing I was at a 16. So my Dr ordered a blood test to check my progesterone level the next day. It came back that I had actually ovulated. He told me that if I didn't start my cycle to take a home pregnancy test the next week. So after a week I did. And much to my surprise it said pregnant. I had been so use to taking them and them saying negative it just figured this one would as well.
He had me come in the next day to check my hCG level. It was at 97 which is a positive test! He wanted me to come in and have it checked again. I did a couple more times. The first time 144 and the next 633! I was so excited. It seemed like it had been forever and there was just bad news all the time so I was excited that there was finally some good news. That didn't last long he asked me to come in for a viability ultrasound. We went in and he said that he couldn't find anything and told me that it was an ectopic pregnancy but that he didn't have the equipment to really see. We had to schedule an appointment at the Big University of Utah hospital downtown.
We went down to the hospital and had another ultrasound and they found a sac in my uterus. We also had blood work done and it came back as 1977. As you can imagine after 24 hours of stress we had some relief. we had to come back in a couple of weeks and have another viability test. We came back in a couple of weeks and he said that he was about 80-90% sure that we were going to lose the baby. It was not a good day for us. We held on to that 10-20% as much as we could but it wasn't easy. We were suppose to come back a week later but we had a trip to California planned and that wasn't going to work out.
We got to California for my beautiful best friend's wedding and it was a beautiful wedding! She looked stunning and I had so much fun seeing her. However, while I was there I started bleeding and we left. I ended up going to the worst hospital that I have ever been to and waited 4 hours for the worst service ever and ended up losing the baby. It has been a heartbreaking couple of weeks and I am looking forward to having hope again. In the meantime I am thanking my stars that I was able to get pregnant and have a little bit of hope.
One thing I encourage anyone who doesn't have infertility problems...BE SENSITIVE to those that do. Or don't ask those questions if you don't really know. Don't say God has a plan for everyone and it just wasn't in his plan right now. WE KNOW THIS! You saying it doesn't help us one bit! Imagine if it were you do you really think you would want to hear it over and over and over. Yes I know not from the same person but it gets old really fast!
This is us at my BFF's wedding.
I seriously have the best husband ever!
The point to my whole story is no matter how hard your day is with your children TREASURE the time you have with them. While I don't know the ending to my story there are several people who can't have their own kids whether it be because they can't have children, they don't have the funds to adopt, or any other reason be grateful you have those beautiful babies and cherish every moment that you can spend with them.
