April ICLW

I know, I know. This post is a day early, but tomorrow is set to be a busy day at work so I figured I would get a head start on the ICLW fun.

My name is Katie and I am infertile. My journey with infertility begins nearly two years, on our wedding night: May 24, 2008. Like the naïve little 23-year-old I was, I thought we would get pregnant right away.

I was wrong.

By February 2009, our lack of success made me bitter and jaded. During my routine gyno exam that month, my doctor asked if we were trying to get pregnant. I said yes, and she agreed to start testing. I will never forget the moment when she placed her hand on my shoulder and said the word “infertile.” My heart broke into a million pieces.

In October 2009, we saw our first fertility specialist. Other than a full blood work-up, we underwent no further testing. Two weeks after our first visit, we launched straight into medicated IUI cycles.

Two failures, in October and November, and our doctor’s refusal to do a LAP to investigate my pain, spotting, and cysts led to us switching clinics in January of this year. It was with Dr. Lovely where we finally found the answer(s) to the question that had been plaguing us for so long:

Why can we not get pregnant? Well, take your pick: annovulation and stage 1 endometriosis for me. My husband’s diagnosis changes from sample to sample. The most consistent issues seem to be volume, motility, and morphology, though there have been issues with count as well. Right now, we are in the midst of our 2WW for our third medicated IUI cycle.

I should mention that, during this time, my husband lost his job, his grandfather died, we moved from Nashville back home to Orlando, we bought a house, my husband went back to school, I am in the process of going back to school, and I had a benign tumor removed from my breast. Life, contrary to what it feels like to me, still goes on outside of infertility.

At the same time, infertility has changed my life. To be honest, it has changed it in mostly positive ways. I am a stronger, better person because of it. My marriage is more meaningful and rich. I am more careful with my friendships and less careful about questioning my doctors and what goes into my body. I am thankful for the little things. This journey has made me a better wife, sister, daughter, friend, and future mother. And for that? For that, I am grateful.