I knew I wanted to be a mother from the time I was a tiny girl and Taylor knew he wanted to be a father from an early age too. On our first date we talked about how many kids we wanted and his response was "10" and he wasn't kidding. I am one of 4 and I loved it. Both of my parents are 1 of 6 and I have tons of cousins. I love family and I want my kids to have that too. I want 4-5 ideally (if we can afford it of course). We initially decided we wanted to start a family right after we got married, or at least didn't want to prevent one from starting. But we quickly learned things were just not happening the way they should. After 6 months we saw my regular OB/GYN and she did a workup for infertility! WHAT?!? This can't be happening? Our moms never had trouble getting pregnant and we wanted this so badly? Why?! We were filled with lots of confusion, sadness and fear. I had tons of bloodwork and a sonogram done and I was diagnosed with PCOS or Polycystic Ovarian syndrome. It's a genetic syndrome that messes hormone levels up and prevents ovulation, thus preventing pregnancy. The sonogram also showed I had a membrane dividing my uterus in half that would need to be surgically removed so that when we did get pregnant our baby would have plenty of room to grow.
We were sent to an infertility specialist that is an expert in PCOS and treatment of it. She did my surgery last January and then a month later we were cleared to start moving forward with starting our family. We tried several rounds of infertility drugs and different combinations and doseages with absolutely not one hint of success. The meds were not working at all. We were heart broken and wondering if we would ever get the chance to be parents at all. We had a meeting where our options were discussed. The choices were basically to try a round of a mixture of drugs that included several very expensive hormone shots I would have to give myself each day with the risk that it may not work or that it would work too well and we could end up with high order multiples. We did not want to be the next octomom. So our other option was to try IVF: In-vitro fertilization, which is more controlled. We decided that IVF was the way we felt we needed to go but this process is extensive, somewhat dangerous and costs several thousand dollars. As we were saving up money we begged our RE (reproductive endocrinologist) for a new drug that is not used very often to mix in with our cocktail of meds. Over the past year and a half I have googled everything there is to google and even have done some medical research in the KUmed library. Our doctor told us it wouldn't work if the other drugs we had already tried didn't, but we were persistant. We had nothing to lose at this point. This medicine is actually used for post-menopausal women with breast cancer and has a side effect of causing ovulation. It has been found to work very well in women with PCOS and we tried it and it worked! It only took 2 rounds of this combination of meds and we found those 2 beautiful pink lines and now a flickering heartbeat....and yes....just one.
I know infertility usually is a very private and painful journey and not many people know what we have gone through this whole time. But If we can help even one couple get to see that tiny flicker that we saw today, then it will be worth sharing our story.
We fought very hard for this baby and we are so excited to share our journey of pregnancy with you all. Thank you to our family and friends for all of your prayers and love and support. We are so blessed to have all of you with us in this happy time in our life.
