The last week in April is dedicated to National Infertility Awareness Week. When my husband and I got married 15 years ago this May, I never expected that we would have to struggle to begin our family. I don’t really speak much about the difficulty it was to get pregnant and when we were trying to get pregnant, we didn’t tell anyone in our family what we were going through. So all of those appointments, consults, ultrasounds, early morning blood tests, phone calls, and waiting, we did it all by ourselves. Sadly one in eight couples struggle with infertility. I was one of the lucky ones.
Our Story
The hardest part was when I was first diagnosed with Henoch–Schönlein Purpura (HSP). It was a very difficult time because we got married in May and wanted to have a family right away. Then we were told that I was going to be put on a chemotherapy drug that would not allow me to get pregnant while on the medication. I struggled with getting the disease under control and finally getting a confirmed diagnosis of what I have after two kidney biopsies, medication, and steroids.
Our Infertility Process
After a long five years, I was finally cleared to go ahead and try to get pregnant. Well come to find out, it wasn’t so easy. After many months without success, we had to meet with a specialist. We met with the UCONN fertility center and had our first consult with Dr. Schmidt. The staff was great and we felt very hopeful after meeting with them. After several tests, we learned that I had unexplained infertility. Which basically meant, there was no particular reason why I was unable to conceive. But they were going to try a simple approach first of inter uterine insemination (IUI) before going to any extremes with egg retrieval and IVF.
Our first attempt was unsuccessful. I was very disappointed. I also hated having all the blood tests, and going early on the weekends to Farmington to get the blood tests done. The waiting for the phone call that it was time to count how many follicles we had via ultrasound, and then booked the day to do the insemination. I was getting very frustrated and upset. But I knew that if I wanted this, I had to do this.
We were very fortunate that with our second attempt we got pregnant with our son and I had a healthy pregnancy with a long, yet successful delivery when it came to wanting to grow our family, I happened to learn that I was pregnant before we went to the fertility clinic to work with them for our second child. I had what was called a chemical pregnancy. It meant that my hormones were high enough to produce a positive result on a test strip, but the numbers in the blood test were not rising to a level that would be a viable pregnancy. We had to wait the entire weekend to return to the doctor for another blood test and sure enough, that afternoon I got my period.
So it was off to the fertility clinic again in early January (6 months after our son was born), to do our third round of insemination and thankfully, we were fortunate again to have a healthy pregnancy and a baby girl completed our family.
How I Can Help
I realize that not all stories work out as ours did, but everyone does have a story and I never shared mine with my readers before. So if you are going through the challenge of trying to get pregnant and need someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out to me! I know I spent countless hours on forums reading everything about ovulation kits, temperatures, blood levels, numbers and so much more in hopes that someone’s situation sounded similar to mine and I’d gain peace of mind.