Family Ties...

Today I was at a social event with my sister (who has two children despite her severe endometriosis) and several other women. My sister mentioned in casual conversation that my husband is going into medicine and should be a pediatrician because he is so good with children. "Oh, so I guess your own will be good practice, eh?" a woman asked me. I smiled and agreed, knowing that this woman had no idea what I was going through and didn't mean the comment to be rude, but inside I suddenly felt like the biggest failure. I felt this overwhelming guilt that I can't give my husband the child he (and I) want so badly. I know logically that I might become pregnant next month or in six months or next year and that I shouldn't feel guilty for what my body is doing, but I couldn't help but feel like the most inadequate woman in the world. Then I thought back to a comment made by my sister a few days ago. I know, like the previous comment, that it was totally innocent in nature, but it still stung:

"Mom mentioned that you might have to take fertility drugs..."
"Not yet, the doctor wants to try a different medication first, but I might need to do that in the future."
"Don't take fertility drugs, you're risk of multiples goes up so much. Besides, no one in our family has ever had to take fertility drugs."

I'm not quite sure what she intended by the comment, but I quickly excused myself from the phone before I broke into tears. I felt like saying, "Thanks for the helpful reminder of how defective I am compared to everyone else!", but I restrained. I just don't think my family understands this right now. I really don't think that they believe that I have a problem. They keep telling me to keep trying naturally and it will happen.

It's Always The One You Least Suspect...

My whole life I've been told that sex causes babies. Everyone, from the high school sex ed teacher, to my parents, to television sitcoms teach us that "all is takes is one time." So we take birth control and use condoms and all sorts of other methods to prevent pregnancy, under the assumption that all we have to do is have one or two little romps under the covers to make a baby. And for most of us that might be true. But it occured to me today that I never imagined that I would ever have trouble conceiving. When we decided to have a baby, I sat down with a calendar and figured out the exact week I expected to conceive, and happily looked forward to those two elusive lines on a pee stick two weeks later. It was a total shock when I was finally told I couldn't get pregnant without help. I think it finally hit me today, at work, in a patient's room, and I got teary eyed. I just kept thinking "I never imagined it would be like this." My tears weren't out of rage or anger. I just realized how misinformed I had been, and I was sad for myself, not in self-pity, but the kind of sadness I would feel if I had heard the same news about my sister or a friend. I guess you're always the one you least suspect...

The (Not-So-Rocky) Slope...

I've been really horrible at charting my BBT over the past year. Really inconsistent. So this month, I determined that I will, for the first time, actually complete a full charting cycle, which is lucky because 11 days into this cycle, my doctor told me to start charting, which lucky for me, I had already started!

But now, the stupid chart (ok, I know it's not its fault) is completly monophasic. Today is day 14. My fertile eggwhites have withered to a mediocre cream, and I am left with a chart that confirms my both my high hopes and deep fears - that Dr. H really knows what he is talking about: I am not ovulating. I was convinced that I would exultantly burst in his office next week with a beautiful thermal shift to show him, but now I'm beginning to understand that getting pregnant might be harder than I ever imagined.

The Discovery...

So it turns out it is not endometriosis, as I suspected, but another problem called PCOS. Women with PCOS have insulin resistance (IR) which is caused by their bodies constantly producing too much insulin, regardless of when they ate last or any other factors that usually apply to diabetics. This insulin overload affects the levels of testosterone production, which in turn affects estrogen production, which causes lack of ovulation. So that explains why I can't get knocked up.
Getting told I had PCOS was odd...I was eerily calm. I listened to everything that my doctor told me, and was actually focused enough to ask relavent questions. But when I called and told my husband and my mom, I almost lost it.
My doctor, Dr. H, ordered an endocrine panel, which measures all sorts of hormones like LH, FSH, testosterone, and insulin, among others. I had the labs done the morning after the appointment. They are usually supposed to be done on day 3,4 or 5 of your cycle, but Dr. H told me to go ahead anyway, even though I was on day 12. He said that he would see in the lab results that I was mid-cycle and that we might run them again next month, but that he didn't want to wait that long to run the initial labs. So like a good patient, I fasted that night and had the labs drawn the next morning. At 3:00, Dr. H's nurse called me and told me that all the labs were within normal limits, but that it doesn't necessarily mean something's not wrong. Dr. H wants to see me next week. I have an appointment on Thursday, October 11, but am going to try to move it up to Wednesday so that Dave can go with me.
Speaking of Dave, Dr. H recommended that he get a sperm analysis, which will run us about $100 and which our insurance will not pay for. Luckily, we have good insurance which will cover most of our costs this early in the game, but I have a feeling that this will only be the first of many hundreds that we shell out trying to get pregnant.

So It Begins...

I think I might have endometriosis.


I say "I think" because I haven't yet been to the OB/GYN- my appointment is tomorrow at 2:45. I was scheduled to see a different group (I'm a new patient), but couldn't get in for a month. I called another group yesterday and they scheduled me in for tomorrow. Talk about good timing! I'm familiar with both groups, as they both practice out of the hospital that I work at, and I was comfortable being seen by either, so I went with the one that could get me in soonest - me being the impatient person that I am.

It's kind of ironic, because my mom has been telling me to get checked out for ages. Her and my sister have both had severe (and I mean SEVERE) endo since they were teenagers. When I was 14, I started displaying the same symptoms (heavy periods, intense cramps) and the doctor put me on propholatic birth control. "It doesn't make sense to do surgery to see what it is, when the treatment will be the same either way" he told me and my family. He said that this was the best course of action until I wanted to conceive. I was 14 and didn't really think too much about making babies, so I took the pills for a couple years, then quit. My symptoms never came back, so I figured that I was the lucky one in the family (endo has a genetic link - women whose sisters or mother had endo have a 7x higher chance of developing the disease than someone without a family history).

That was until a few months ago. I started displaying endo symptoms again - only this time it's like they've come back with a vengence. And although I've been married (and not using contraception) for over a year, I've never gotten pregnant. Something is definetly up...