{October 14, 2016}
The Infertility time warp continuum … where every month feels like two, yet somehow all of a sudden the years go by and you still aren’t pregnant. Can I get an amen? I am a firm believer that somehow, some way, there’s an altered time/space relationship for women struggling with infertility. I’m kidding. Mostly.
Mine went something like this…
Months 1-3 of TTC: Super fun. Kind of flew by. Lots and lots of intercourse. Maybe some of the most fun in terms of intercourse that we’d ever had because we kept thinking (and hoping) we were making a sweet baby together. Nothing seemed strange about these months.
Months 4-6: Time started to slow down. The intercourse became timed. If we could have a penny for every time I used the word ovulation during these months, it might have paid for IVF (ha ha). Ovulation predictor kits purchased. I started living life in two-week cycles. My husband didn’t. The first two weeks of the month were spent trying to figure out when I might ovulate and match that up with my husband and my work schedule so we could then squeeze in five minutes and hope the swimmers and the egg could meet up. The second two weeks were then spent dreaming of a positive pregnancy test or missed period. Neither of which happened. The worst.
Months 6-12: Time was funny here. It felt like it crept on, yet how had six months already gone by since we started trying? It was during this time that I knew deep down something wasn’t happening the way it was supposed to. The fun started to abate from the whole intercourse thing. I started counting down for the next six months just so my OB/GYN would talk to me about “options”.
12 months: Wait had it really been a year already? Somehow, I felt five years older. But hey, my OB/GYN was finally on board to prescribe a little Clomid. Okay, he wrote me for a lot of Clomid. This is about the time we started living life in 1-week cycles. These months became a blur of hormone-induced crying, ultrasounds to scan for a follicle, then a follow-up blood draw to see if ovulation occurred, and ultimately, an unwanted period a week or so later. Super fun. In fact, I am getting a little bit sad thinking about it even now (and it’s been five years).
Year 2: I can’t even tell you what happened to time during this year. I see pictures we took, so I know I was alive. Yet, somehow I wasn’t really there. It was during year two that I came up with this really awesome math equation where I could actually reduce the amount of time we’d been trying back down to only a few months. It went something like “well March didn’t count because we didn’t have sex at the right time” or “December didn’t count because I flew that month and you can’t get pregnant if you fly right?” (I was totally wrong. You can absolutely get pregnant if you fly.) I had an excuse for most months. It was a way for me to cope. It was a way for me to talk to people about our trying to conceive without feeling like a failure. It was a way for me to try and shake that feeling of being less of a woman. I’m so grateful for the magic math because I needed it.
Then one day, time and space aligned in all the right ways. It was on a spring day in May of 2012 where I’d had enough of losing years … losing my life to infertility. I thank heaven everyday for hearing about Fertility Specialists of Texas. I am even more grateful they had an appointment on the one day and the one time slot I was going to make myself available. That one hour with Dr. Jerald Goldstein got me out of the awful time warp I had been living in. The day began to have just 24 hours again, and I just lived. Not in two-week cycles, but lived like everyone else did. Five years later, it feels like a blur. The wounds have healed, but the scars are still visible. I have moments where I start to feel the months ebb just a little too long (usually as my baby approaches 1 year of age and I haven’t gotten pregnant), but I pull myself back to reality and remember that there is help. There is hope, and it’s just a phone call away.
#Iam1in8
#FSTIVFMom
#FertilitySpecialistsofTexas
Hi! I’m a proud IVF mom of two amazing boys, thanks to the expert care at Fertility Specialists of Texas. I know, first hand, how lonely infertility can be, which is why I write personal entries for the FST blog — it’s my way of helping break through the isolation. To let you know you’re not alone. And, neither am I. If you ever want to chat with someone who’s had empty arms, who knows the heartbreak of this journey, I’m here. And, I’d love to connect: fstivfmom@gmail.com.
