Our Infertility Journey, So Far

Recently Brice and I have decided to start testing to find out why we are not having children. We have been trying for 3 years with no success.

Our journey started about 3 1/2 years ago, soon after we got married. I was taking birth control our first few months of marriage, and I believe that the hormones severely messed with my body. I felt that my body was all messed up while I was on it, so I decided to stop taking it about 6 months after we were married. At that point we weren't really "trying" to have children, we just weren't preventing.

The summer of 2007 my cycle was becoming more normal again, after a year of being off birth control. We decided we wanted to start trying to get pregnant that summer. During the summer of 2008 I was introduced to the Fertility Awareness Method, where you chart your body's natural signals and temperature to find out exactly when you are ovulating. I tried it for three months that summer, and got pretty frustrated with it. My body didn't do exactly what the book was telling me it was supposed to, so I stopped charting.

In March of 2009 I went to get my yearly exam and found out I had high prolactin. It wasn't too high, only about 18 above normal, so the cause was unexplainable. I had to get an MRI to be sure I didn't have a tumor on my pituitary gland which is what produces prolactin, which makes a woman's body produce milk to feed a baby. The MRI came back completely fine, so I was referred to an infertility specialist. At this point my cycle was going about 40-42 days, which was abnormally long for me. He told me that my body thought I was pregnant because of my raised prolactin level, so I was not ovulating and that's why my cycles were going so long. He prescribed clomid and sent us on our way.

We started out on 50mg the first month, which did nothing. He then put me on 100mg, and that worked for a few months. Then I stopped having ovulatory pain in the middle of the month, and I tried to call the doctor to let him know I did not think the clomid was working anymore. I could not get a hold of him for 2 months. So in December of 2009 I stopped taking clomid and no longer went to that doctor.

Then there was a possible adoption opportunity in December, but unfortunately that did not work out. After the clomid my cycles went back to normal and we decided, for the time being, to stop pursuing medical assistance to help us get pregnant.

A few months later a friend of ours introduced me to the Lady Comp, which is a computer that helps keep you from getting pregnant by telling you the exact day you are ovulating. She told us that we could use it the opposite way since it pinpointed the day of ovulation. It works by taking my temperature and using my previous cycle information to let me know when I ovulate. It is basically a computer version of doing Fertility Awareness, just a lot less hassle.

We have now been using that for about 4 months. Through all of this almost every couple in our church has gotten pregnant and had children. Sometimes I feel really alone in the journey God has put us on. Thankfully God has blessed me with an amazing husband who is always there to encourage me and be there for me through all the ups and downs. God has also blessed me with a woman in our church body that struggled with infertility before she had her two children, and a family our pastor introduced us to who tried for 12 years before they recently had their two children. I've learned over the past 3 years that there are surprisingly a lot of women who struggle with infertility. It's been especially encouraging to me to read the numerous stories in the Bible of barren women who prayed for countless years asking God to give them children. God eventually gave each of them children in His timing and many of them turned out to be great men of God.

So, after all of that, we have decided to start testing. I went to my first appointment July 19th where we consulted with the doctor about our experiences so far. Brice was tested the week after and the results came back great.

Today I went to get some blood drawn to check my prolactin again and my thyroid and progesterone levels to see if I'm ovulating. I get the results back on Wednesday. I go back in two weeks to get a hysterosalpingogram to make sure my uterus and tubes are ok. I've heard it is painful so I'm not looking forward to that part. Our new doctor said that since he's been doing the tests instead of the radiologists people have not been complaining about pain, so that's very encouraging. We really like our new doctor. He was shocked that our other doctor just put us on clomid and sent us home. Usually the doctor is supposed to monitor if ovulation is happening each month on the clomid. I'm just more than ready to find out what's going on with my body and why we're not getting pregnant.

So this begins our journey through infertility testing after 3 years of trying. We are continuing to pray and seek God for the precious gift of children and patiently waiting for His response.