And the Infertility Story Begins…

I always knew I wanted to be a mom. From a young age, I loved children. I took the babysitters course in grade 5 and started watching my younger sister when our parents were out. I had several regular babysitting jobs. I loved babies and baby showers and kids’ birthday parties. I played house and carted around my doll. My favorite assignment in Home Ec was carrying around the egg and caring for it like a baby.

In high school, I remember having a conversation with a group of friends about pregnancy and how it’s not easy for everyone to become pregnant.  I’m not sure why, but I always had this feeling in the back of my mind that I could be one of those people.  Medically, there was nothing that concerned me.  I had a regular cycle, no family history of infertility or miscarriages, no fibroids or endometriosis or abnormally shaped uterus.  But I still just had this feeling. 

Because I was 28 when we got married, I wanted to start a family right away.  Not that 28 is old… but I felt ready to have a baby.  Six months after we were married, we moved to our acreage and I ditched my birth control.  I told my doctor we were trying, and she sent me for the necessary bloodwork.  We were good to go!  Three months after it hadn’t happened, I was panicking.  I went to a walk-in clinic and was told it could take up to a year.  A year!! So, I went out and bought ovulation strips and downloaded an app to ensure that we were timing this right.  I started monitoring my basal body temperature and all the tricks that people tell you to try.  I peed on sticks every 28 days only to see a single pink line.  One year later and nothing… 

For anyone who has struggled to get pregnant, you know that getting a referral to a fertility specialist is virtually impossible until you have had one year of frustration and tears and let-downs. But we were finally here. We were referred to a clinic in Saskatoon who sent us for a number of tests, ultrasounds, and labs. The HSG or hysteroselpingogram, is a particularly awful procedure where they fill your uterus with a radioactive dye to see if it is the right shape and to ensure your fallopian tubes are open. I would describe the pain of the procedure like someone taking a knife to your insides… I’ve had 4 of these over the last 8 years. All the results came back normal and they deemed us good candidates to start the IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) process. In an IUI, the female takes an oral medication (Clomid or something similar) to stimulate egg development. An injection of HCG is taken to release the egg at a certain time. The male gives a sperm sample which is cleaned, put into a solution, and then placed into the uterus via catheter. The hope is that the timing of the egg and the semen will align and BOOM! You will make a baby. Our experience with IUI will continue in my next blog post.