I met my husband in 2005; he was about to be 30 and I was 22 and trying to finish school. It was instant attraction although not an instant romance, I believe what really glued us together was our shared love of family and children and our desire to build a family of our own.
We were married in the spring of 2009 and although we decided to give it a year of marriage before "trying" to conceive, I still pulled the goalie immediately and never refilled the birth control script after the honeymoon.
Even though we were not aggressively trying until about 2012, I always had the thought that something wasn't quite right. We also had to contend with my family history of the genetic condition SCA1 which is autosomal dominant (meaning you cannot simply be a carrier; if you have it you have and will have a 50% chance of passing it on to your children). My mom has SCA1, as well as 2 out of her 4 siblings and various cousins of hers. She came to us with the idea of possibly using IVF to negate the possibility of passing it on, if I were positive. I spent a long, long time debating whether I even wanted to know - onset is usually not until at least middle age - and if I was positive, I struggled with the idea of "playing God" and whether I would've been ok knowing that someone could have made the same choice about me.
By mid 2012, I had yet to become pregnant and my periods had never seemed to even out after stopping birth control; with cycles ranging from 14 to 60+ days, it was impossible to track anything. I finally went to my OBGYN with all of this information: the "not trying but not trying not to", the weird cycles, plus the family history. His immediate reaction was that we were dealing with infertility and that I should meet with a reproductive endocrinologist(RE) specializing in genetics immediately.
My OBGYN and RE both convinced me that I had to get genetic testing immediately; the biggest impact was when my OBGYN said "you may think it's fine to deal with SCA1, but what if you have a child who can't?" Done. I met with one of the oldest geneticists in the country and four weeks later he called me with the best news I could have heard - negative. With the fright of passing SCA1 thankfully behind us, it was time to move along and get to the bottom of not being pregnant after almost 4 years. It was decided fairly quickly that we'd do IVF with ICSI since our main concern ended up being Male Factor Infertility(MFI) This blog is my Infertility journey from that point on.
Infertility is painful; it is in no way glamorous - as some reality shows may lead you to believe -, it is lonely, and there are many, many obstacles and disappointments. The emptiness infertility leaves upon a couple is impossible to describe to anyone who has not dealt with it first hand. I hope to convey the journey to those who are lucky enough to avoid it and to offer a place for those who are dealing with infertility to feel less alone and to hopefully laugh at as much as we can along the way.
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