The Story of My Uterus

I recently got a call from one of my nephews. He said, “Daddy told me where babies come out. I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

November’s ICLW is upon us (http://www.stirrup-queens.com/2011/10/icomleavwe-november-2011/) so I wanted to say hello to any new readers and give you a brief overview of me, my uterus and its scintillating history. Please forgive me if I don’t get too clinical in my descriptions (i.e. medications, doses, dates and details). I’d much prefer to tell you our story as if you and I were sitting having a cup of coffee… so here it goes:

I started trying to get pregnant in February 2009. After several months of romantic interludes slowly becoming more contrived and monotonous, we tried two timed cycles using the drug, Clomid (which in my mind stands by Comical Lady Overly Moody In Distress). Neither of those were successful so we tried three IUI’s (again using Clomid): the first was around Thanksgiving, the second was around Christmas and the last one was on Valentines day (we like our inseminations to be holiday themed apparently). None of them worked.

In April 2010 (which is why I have a picture of the month of April featured on my blog), we did our first IVF using Gonal-F (the F standing for… well… you know). We had eight eggs and three embryos. Not only did it not work, but I found out right afterwards that I had a rather large uterine polyp we lovingly named ‘Jackson Polyp’, that might have been guilty of c*ck blocking our efforts. We’ll never know though for certain.

In July of 2010, we evicted Jackson Polyp and due to lack of funds, waited until January/February 2011 to get accepted into a clinical trial with a different doctor at a new clinic. On this cycle, we used a mystery hormone (how fun is that to inject yourself with some unknown hormonal fluid??? Woo hoo!) that produced ten eggs but only one embryo. Yup. One lone embryo. My husband named it Rudy after the famous underdog who ended up playing for Notre Dame (See the movie RUDY for details). Leave it to a man to make a sports reference out of a fertility disaster.

When the trial failed and we still weren't pregnant, we went to our now third clinic, our third doctor to try IVF for the third time in May 2011. We used our entire savings account to pay for it and all of my medications were donated, so it looked like a potpourri of drugs in my bedroom for awhile: Follistim, Menopur, Progesterone in Oil, Gonal-F, Estrogen Patches and needles galore! I was like an infertile in a hormonal candy store!

Between both the financial strain and the emotional, physical and psychological strain of the past couple of years, my husband and I began to forget that we actually liked each other around this point. We went into our third in vitro never having gotten pregnant once and wondering if perhaps it was time to give up on ever having kids or ever having a date night that didn’t entail talking about my husband’s sperm count or my cervical mucus.

Because the universe likes to try my patience, for our third cycle, we had thirteen eggs but again, somehow only yielded one embryo. Rudy Two - The Sequel! To be clear, one embryo is better than no embryo but when you're infertile... not only do you feel like you need more but you freaking PAID for more. I'm just sayin'.

It was then that my doctor said she suspected that, even though nothing had indicated as such in any of my tests, I had bad eggs. Literally, as I was standing in my hospital gown about to do my transfer for the cycle I was still in, she suggested what she would do differently on the fourth in vitro (How cute is she for thinking we could afford a fourth in vitro??? Simply adorable!)

In June 2011, I had every PMS symptom that I would typically have. The night before my beta, my husband and I made a list of questions we were going to ask the doctor for our “WTF” appointment but as it would turn out, this meeting would never happen.

The next morning, I took a home pregnancy test in preparation to get a negative beta later that day... only to find out that it was positive. As of today, I’m currently 27 weeks pregnant with a little boy and oddly enough, I’m due around the exact date in February that we started trying to get pregnant in the first place.

So, although my nephew is both very wise and thoughtful to warn me, I’m up for the challenge! The thought of labor, delivery, pain in general and pushing something the size of a watermelon out my already exhausted va-jay-jay frightens me but we worked hard for this and I’m just so grateful that we’ve made it this far.

To those of you who are reading my blog for the first time: stop by often, hang out, say hello, share your experiences and please join me as I, a pregnant infertile, slowly make my way to the finish line!

And of course, to those of you who have followed my journey since day one – I can never thank you enough for sticking with me, cheering me on, making me laugh and supporting me throughout all of this. It has meant more to me then I could ever begin to possibly express. And hey -- it IS uter-us... and we're all in it together.

Speaking of which, I’ve been seriously considering starting our own infertility movement called, “OCCUPY MY UTERUS!” C’mon people! Who is with me????