Road to pregnancy

I've had this written up for a while, and I think it is fitting to post since Caden turned six months this week!

I've always wanted to be a mom- that was all I wanted to be ‘when I grew up’. At the same time, I knew that I wanted to make something of myself; I hadn't worked my ass off in school for all those years for nothing. When I met my husband, I was getting ready to leave for college, and when we got married, I was in my second semester at UofA. We would talk about wanting to start a family, but we didn't have an answer for when we wanted it to happen, so we agreed to wait until closer to my graduation.

Our decision became a little clearer when I was diagnosed with endometriosis in March 2011 during surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. For a few months after the diagnosis, I would burst into tears at the thought of what the disease could be doing inside my body. I continued to tell myself, as well as my husband, that we weren't in the right place in our lives to have a baby, but really I think I was just terrified of the thought that I couldn't get pregnant. I kept pushing the thought to the back of my mind, but there was always some kind of reminder that would come out of nowhere. Although I had never even heard of endometriosis until the day before my surgery, somehow it was everywhere in front of me.

Things became even more clear one morning when I was watching The View while drinking coffee. The last segment was about a woman whose mom was her surrogate for her unborn child (crazy, right). The woman was in her late 20's and had been diagnosed at 22 with endometriosis. By the time she got married and began trying to start a family three years later, the disease had made her infertile. I literally felt my stomach drop. Three years. That evening, I told my husband about the story. I was too afraid to say the words I wanted to say, so when he grabbed my hand and said, "Let's have a baby," I felt like I could finally breathe.

So, I went off birth control. I felt like it was perfect timing because I had an appointment a few weeks later to follow up with my doctor after going to pelvic floor physical therapy. At the appointment, I was ready to talk to the doctor about my endometriosis and getting pregnant, but I was sideswiped with another diagnosis: fibromyalgia. At the end of the appointment, Chris and I explained our desire to want to start trying for a baby, and she tried to discourage us. First, she told me that my body wasn't ready for pregnancy- I needed to learn how to manage my fibro pain first. When I insisted that I could handle any extra pain it caused and that I was worried I would become infertile if I waited, she threw another punch: with the pain I was in and the stress of Chris's looming deployment, I would not be able to get pregnant in the next few months. I felt like I had just reached the top of a hill, and she pushed me back down. I cried on the way home because I could not wrap my head around the fact that not only did I have to accept that I have another chronic pain disorder, but I had another strike against my chances of getting pregnant.

When we got home and talked about what we just learned, Chris kept saying that he was nervous about the toll that pregnancy could put on my body, but I just kept telling him that I could handle anything.. No amount of pain could stop me from having a baby. There was no way I could even consider listening to the doctor and waiting until I got my fibro under control, because I didn't have time. Chris was leaving for deployment in 6 months, and I had no idea how long until my endo got bad enough to make me infertile (or if it had already). So we agreed to continue trying.

I knew I wasn't going to get pregnant that first month, but when aunt flo visited, I couldn't help but be upset. I had downloaded an ovulation calendar on my phone, which was really difficult to use and really inaccurate for someone who had been on continuous birth control and only had 4 periods a year, so I knew it wasn't going to work for us. About three months in, I decided to take another pregnancy test because my period was only two days late, but I knew that I was going to see a negative sign. When we were down to the last three months, I bought an at home ovulation kit, but once again we got a negative signs. I had spent the past eight months hoping and praying, and being off birth control put me into so much pain- I felt so defeated. Two weekends before Chris left for deployment, I got a positive sign on the ovulation stick, but I honestly had given up at that point.

When Chris left for deployment, we decided that he would call on the second Friday so I could tell him the news, good or bad. A week and a half passed, and on Tuesday I was standing in the living room when a terrible cramp hit me, and I doubled over onto the couch. The next few hours I spent curled up in a ball in pain, thinking that I was about to start my period. My cramps had been terribly painful the past two years; it was nothing new for me, so I took a vicodin like I normally did, but this time I was distraught because it meant I wasn’t pregnant. When my cramps went away that night, I was so confused, normally my cramps put me in bed for three or four days before they start to get better. The next two days, I couldn’t stop thinking, “What if I had been pregnant but had a miscarriage?” I knew that I was supposed to wait until Friday morning to take the pregnancy test, but something was telling me not to wait, so at about 11pm on Thursday I did. Unlike every other time I had taken a pregnancy test, this time I felt oddly calm. After the two minutes, I checked the test and saw two lines.. not pregant.. my heart dropped because I thought for sure this was it. As the tears came, something didn’t feel right, so I reread the pamphlet that came with the test, and sure enough, I had read it wrong. Two lines meant positive, I was pregnant. It was a moment of relief, happiness, and loneliness at the same time. I wanted so badly to share this amazing news with my husband, but I had to wait who knew how long for him to get the ok to call me.

When Chris finally called the next afternoon, I was bursting at the seams to tell him the news. I will never forget the way he choked up and said “I’m so happy” in the sweetest voice.

My 'I just found out I'm pregnant' mirror picture

 

If you actually made it through reading this whole thing, thank you for listening! And if you have written your ‘road to pregnancy,’ I would love to read it!

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