You spend most of your young life trying to avoid getting pregnant. You use one, sometimes two methods of contraception and hold your breath each month waiting for “Aunt Flow” to show up. When she does, you breathe a huge sigh of relief. This is drastically different from how you feel when you start trying to conceive.
It seems as though, as soon as you make the decision to start procreating, everyone around you gets pregnant. At first, you don’t mind and it makes you smile thinking that you will be there soon. As the months go by, you start to silently curse these women and pretty soon the sight of a pregnant woman makes you want to crawl up in a hole and cry your eyes out for days.
Trying to conceive is one of the hardest, most heartbreaking things I have gone through in my 25 years of being alive. My husband and I started trying to conceive in March of 2007. Surprisingly, I got did get pregnant that first cycle. I thought, “Well this is no sweat! I’m young and healthy! My husband can just look at me, and I get pregnant!” Sadly, the pregnancy ended far too early and I miscarried on the night before Easter. I remember feeling so devastated. I had already told my mom and sisters and I felt like I was letting them down and even more devastating, letting my husband down. My doctor told us to wait two months to start trying again, so we did. We kept trying throughout the summer of 2007. I kept expecting it to happen so quickly again since it had happened so quickly the first time, but as the months went by I realized it wasn’t as easy as I thought.
I joined a message board on ivillage.com which ended up being my saving grace. There, I met tons of other women who were going through the exact same thing I was going through. We traded tips, offered support, and just kept each other sane through the whole process. In September of 2007, the day that I got my period after many cycles of trying, I found out that my sister in law was pregnant with her second child. She had only started trying that month. I was very happy for her, but also discouraged by the fact I still wasn’t pregnant. Two weeks later, I found out that I was.
I hadn’t even ovulated yet, but for some reason I had the urge to take a pregnancy test. This “women’s intuition” could have actually saved my life, or at least my left tube. The pregnancy test came up positive, and very quickly. I stood there in shock staring at it, thinking that it couldn’t be right, but I know these things rarely lie. I called my doctor and he scheduled an exam for the next morning.
I felt very optimistic when I got to the doctor’s office. He said that the bleeding I had could have just been implantation bleeding (what happens when the egg implants into the wall of the uterus.) He sent me to the lab to get blood work done. After many, many tests, I found out that the embryo had implanted in my left tube and was not viable. The news unfortunately came on the day of my 3rd wedding anniversary. We had planned a trip to Quebec City for our anniversary which we had to cancel due to concerns about the tube rupturing. My doctor had me come in the day after and did a “D&E.;” I will spare you the details, but it was extremely painful. The doctor had me take Ibuprofen before hand which was about as useful as a using a band aid to heal a broken leg . The next day I had two methotraxate shots (a chemotherapy drug use to treat ectopic pregnancies) in each butt cheek which left me feeling ill and exhausted. My HCG finally dropped to 0 a week and a half later, and we were back to square one.
Trying to conceive was put on hold, yet again for another three months. I absolutely hated the times where we couldn’t try. I wanted to be proactive and I would count down the days until we could try again. It was so nice to be able to turn to my online friends as a source of support. Not many people in my “real” life knew what we were going through and not many who did really understood. Having a hard time with trying to conceive cannot be understood unless you have or are actually going through it.
The weeks following my ectopic were the hardest. I would cry for no reason and I was extremely moody. My poor husband didn’t know what to do with me. I have heard that sometimes women who have miscarriages go through the same post-partum depression that new moms often face. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what I went going through.
I longed to have a baby so badly. It seemed so unfair to me that there were girls that were getting pregnant so easily when they didn’t WANT to be. I know so many women that did drugs, smoked cigarettes, and were very unhealthy that ended up with beautiful healthy babies. Here I was, being as healthy as I could be and I still couldn’t get successfully pregnant. The unfairness of it all was dumbfounding to me.
Many of the women I met, tried (and some are still trying) to conceive for a much, much longer time than I have. One of the girls has been trying for four years. It is so heartbreaking for me to watch these girls go through this because I know how heartbreaking it was for me to try for a year. Trying to conceive and pregnancy loss is one of the most taboo topics there is. Women are just expected to suffer in private, which is often why there is a misconception about how easy it is to get pregnant.
I found out in February 2008 that I am pregnant for the third time, and so far, everything is going smoothly. We even got to see our peanut’s heartbeat! I pray every day, and I keep believing that everything will work out, but I know there are no guarantees in pregnancy or in life. This whole experience has taught me so much about myself and what I can handle. I have also become a much stronger person and I realize that children are a blessing and a miracle and should never be taken for granted.
