National Infertility Awareness Week

This week (April 24 - May 1) is National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW).  The goal of NIAW is to raise awareness about the disease of infertility which affects 7.3 million Americans.

In honor of NIAW, I have decided to share my story, so that I can provide hope to the millions of Americans currently on this journey. 

In May 2003, after nearly nine years of marriage, we decided it was finally time to start a family.  Back then we had no clue about infertility and the struggle it caused for so many couples.  I thought I would end up pregnant right away once I quit taking birth control pills.  Boy was I wrong!

The first three months my cycle was normal.  I don't think I had another "normal" cycle for years.  A few months later my doctor recommended I try out the ClearBlue Fertility Monitor to see if I was ovulating.  Once we established that I was not ovulating, she referred me to a specialist within the same practice.  I saw him for the first time in August 2004.  Since I had been a patient in the practice for so many years, he felt I was the problem and opted to not test my husband at all.  Big mistake.  We started Clomid right away, each cycle was more monitored than the next...it got me to ovulate but all the timing and monitoring caused so much stress on our marriage.  In January 2005 we decided to put the baby making on the back burner for a while. 

Eight months later, in August 2005, we decided to see the other fertility specialist in town, for a second opinion.  This time he tested my husband right away.  It turns out I wasn't the only issue in our fertility struggle!  Bingo, that helps to explain why we were trying so hard yet getting nowhere!  The bad news, we were told we had less than a 1% chance of concieving on our own.  The best option for us was IVF.  We were also given payment options and a penciled in date of September/October 2006 for our first IVF cycle. 

In November of 2005, we decided it was time to explore other options.  Since November is Adoption Awareness Month, we got to attend a local adoption seminar.  We met parents who had adopted, we talked with representatives from various adoption agencies etc.  By December we had signed up with a local adoption agency and started training to become certified to foster/adopt local children. 

Fast forward to April 2006...All our training was complete, paperwork was turned in.  We were waiting for our homestudy.  I went to the doctor on April 7th for my physical to clear me to adopt.  It was at that appointment that I found out I was pregnant for the first time!  Imagine my surprise considering we "couldn't" get pregnant on our own! 

April 15, 2006 I had my first miscarriage, I was 7 weeks pregnant.  We were crushed.  We went thru so many emotions that week.  We were not sure what our next step would be, so we put the adoption certification on hold.  We felt it was best to ride out the summer with no decisions.  We told the agency we would be in touch in October to decided if we wanted to go ahead with the certification.

On October 31, 2006 I found out I was pregnant again!  Of course you can imagine how scared we were.  First off we had less than a 1% chance of getting pregnant on or own...and here we were pregnant for the second time!  Not to mention how scared I was of having another miscarriage.  The ironic thing, we got pregnant the same cycle that we originally had planned to do IVF!  Amazing how things work out!

Our beautiful daughter was born July 12, 2007...her middle name is Hope. 

We found out we were expecting again in August 2009.  This time it was a complete surprise.  Sadly we had another miscarriage a few weeks later.  We have since made the tough decision to get off the infertility rollercoaster.