Most girls dread that monthly visit from Aunt Flow but not me. From day one there was something that just didn’t sit well with me about my menstrual cycle.
Turn back now if this is TMI
My period would only come every few months and it just seemed like something was wasn’t right. Of course I shared this information with my OBGYN but he didn’t seem concerned in the least. In fact, my doctor at the time made me feel like I was lucky. Although I tried multiple forms of birth control to regulate my cycle in my teens and early 20s, there was never any impact.
After having this unsettling feeling for years and years, I began to fear that my inconsistent cycle would affect my ability to have children. Thinking back, it’s eerie that this thought even crossed my mind as a teenager.
Before my husband and I started trying to have kids I would feel torn each month, thinking about my fear of being pregnant before we were ready (since my missing period was not a good indication) but also my fear that we were wasting our most fruitful years of fertility.
After about a year of marriage I started to pressure my husband to have a baby. I couldn’t really put my finger on a rational reason for the timing but I kept saying that if we waited, then age could cause us problems on top of my concerns about the affects of my missing periods. Although we disagreed on timing for months, we finally decided to stop using birth control. After allowing a couple of months to pass by I made an appointment with a new OBGYN to talk about “officially” starting to try to conceive and to formulate a plan for tapering off of my SSRI.
I told the new doctor that I’d been trying to proactively track my ovulation but was having a hard time. After looking at the information that I had written down and discussing my past menstrual cycles, he warned me that I may have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. There were multiple (less obvious) factors that he was able to recognize that supported this diagnosis as well:
History of depression
Acne/oily skin
Unexplained weight gain
He shared that I could very likely have a difficult time getting pregnant without introducing medication and shared information about that option with me. Although the medication (Clomid) would be effective, it had a high chance of producing multiples and we certainly wanted to try naturally for awhile first. So that’s where we left it.
As soon as I told be husband the news I think he realized that this was a fear that I’d had for years and now it was like a nightmare becoming reality. He became very supportive and ready to do whatever we needed to do to make this baby.
“When you’re in the thick of it, even one month can feel like an eternity to wait while trying to get pregnant.”
As optimistic as I felt in the doctor’s office about trying naturally, that attitude didn’t last long when I realized that nearly all tracking methods to help with fertility and conception wouldn’t work with PCOS. So we essentially just had to do the deed and periodically take pregnancy tests. There was no way to know if I was going to ovulate until after it happened and also no way to know if I missed my period or just didn’t have one due to a lack of ovulation.
After a month of trying, my husband started to preach that conception would happen when it was supposed to and I should stop attempting to control the situation. I couldn’t just have that mentality though. Since I was “officially” trying to get pregnant I was abstaining from drinking or eating foods that a pregnant women shouldn’t and I was taking a super low dose of my SSRI. The stress of the situation paired with my lower dose medication felt like a disaster waiting to happen and I was SO done waiting. The “go with the flow” attitude that my husband wanted for me was nowhere to be found.
Please tell me you can sympathize?
Additionally, it was so difficult to keep this major life challenge from my family and friends. I’d told a few people but it quickly confirmed for me that I couldn’t tell anyone else because the optimism they had wasn’t helpful (no offense to them). The positivity just seemed unrealistic and belittling to what I was actually experiencing. I imagined that if I told my parents or in-laws they would eagerly ask for updates and I didn’t want to keep sharing bad news. It was challenging enough to run through the million scenarios in my own head, let alone add in more opinions.
Speaking of scenarios, I googled and read books like a lunatic and although I felt very informed, I think it became an OCD issue. I felt like since I couldn’t control the situation, the least I could do was be as informed as possible. I figured that by the time I did get pregnant I would be super prepared and know exactly what to expect.
When you’re in the thick of it, even one month can feel like an eternity to wait while trying to get pregnant. As each month passes by your hopes get so much bigger before you take the test and your heart just breaks harder with each negative result. There is no good advice for this situation because no one can guarantee you anything in the end- it’s just a matter of having faith and trying to keep sane while you wait.
Best of luck to all of the women who long for that perfect moment of looking down and seeing a positive test result. I’m sending hugs your way!
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