I've always had a gut feeling that I would never have biological children. When I was a teenager (admittedly not interested in reproducing) I remember thinking one day that I was never going to be able to have children. Crazy. I ignored it. The feeling popped up several times over the years and I just ignored it because I thought it was silly and I wasn't at a place in my life where babies were even on my radar. Then I met the man who would be my husband. We fell hard and fast for each other. We decided early on in our relationship that we were going to get married, have babies, and live happily ever after. I confided in him early on that I had a gut feeling that I'd never be able to get pregnant and we both agreed that it was silly. Three years later we got engaged and four years later we got married. Hubs wanted to start trying to conceive a couple of months before we got married. I said no because I couldn't face writing a dissertation, interviewing for jobs, and being pregnant at the same time. So we waited. I finished grad school and told him I wasn't ready yet. I landed my dream job and told him I wasn't ready yet. We moved half way across the country and I told him I wasn't ready yet. I was scared that my gut feeling would be right and wanted to save us from the heartache. Finally, I ran out of excuses and we started trying to have a baby.
The first six months or so was fun. We figured that we'd just have a lot of sex and I would get pregnant. Nope. At about six months I started to get worried. I started temping. Hated it. But kept doing it because I thought it would help. It didn't, and I hated it. Then I started peeing on OPKs. They didn't get me pregnant either, and hubs HATED the pressure of being expected to perform as dictated by a peestick. I started to get worried. I saw the writing on the wall and started to get really worried that it wouldn't happen for us. Hubs reassured me that it just hadn't happened yet. Around Thanksgiving of last year my period was late. I thought that this was maybe, just maybe it. It wasn't. My period came on the day that we hosted Thanksgiving for both of our families. Fun. Then it came again on Christmas Day and I lost it. When we got home from being out of town, Hubs said that we should go get tested because it would make me feel better.
In January of 2014 we started the testing process. Meeting with doctor and complete medical history. Physical for me. Semen Analysis for him, blood work, HSG, and ultrasound for me. I was nervous, but excited to get answers. We knew that that there could be several different outcomes: unexplained, something wrong with both of us, or something wrong with one of us. His results came back in before mine and I had him call and get the actual numbers. While I'm no RE, I do know enough to know that as soon as I looked at his numbers that we could cross something being wrong with him or something being wrong with both of us off of our list. We scheduled an appointment the doctor on March 7th to go over everything. The night before the appointment I had a dream that the doc told us that the only way we were going to get pregnant was to use donor eggs. We met with the doc. My fears were confirmed. My gut instinct was confirmed. We left in a daze, our world rocked. I was broken and it wasn't easy to fix.
I'll probably write another post about the emotional parts but I wanted to get some background written down.
I had the gut feeling, too, and I wish I didn't ignore it so we would not loose so much money on treatments. Unfortunately, the hope to be parents trumped all gut feelings in the world :(.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually nice to hear that I'm not the only one who had this gut feeling! I've told people about it before and they looked at me like I had three heads. Fortunately we opted not to spend the money on treatment. Had the outlook not been so grim we may have, but honestly we didn't have the mental fortitude to put ourselves through IVF nor did we feel that it was a smart move to invest that much capital into something with a low probability of success. While I hate the prospect of never having children I am also 100% at peace with all of the decisions we have made through this process.
ReplyDeleteYour series of "I told him I wasn't ready yet" sounds very familiar to me. In the end I left it too late - but I didn't know that at the time - and as you say, as long as we can be happy with the decisions we've made, based on the information we had at the time, then we can be at peace.
ReplyDeleteIn a sense, we put having a child off for too long too, not necessarily in the age category (I'm 33, he's 37), but in the "my ovaries think they're a whole lot older than I am" category. It's funny how I wasn't ready until I was ready, and then I wanted a baby yesterday. We're completely at peace with when we started trying and with the decision not to pursue treatment, and we wouldn't change a single thing.
Delete