The Beginning: Trying to have a Baby

After I had lost some weight and was getting fairly regular cycles, I was reasonably confident that we could conceive a baby in a few months on our own, without any medical help. We didn't even actually think about medical help at that point. In the fall of 2010, when both of us felt ready, we started trying. I bought a few ovulation predictor kits and a few home pregnancy tests and we were ready. That first cycle, the ovulation kit gave me a positive test result on cycle day 14. That little dark line means that you are supposed to ovulate in the next 24 to 48 hours. We did our part and waited for two weeks. I did not want to take a pregnancy test too soon and be disappointed just because it was too early to get a positive result, so I waited until I was about five days late. And then I could wait no longer. Those tests all say that you're supposed to test first thing in the morning, but one afternoon I could wait no more and I just made sure it had been about four hours since I last went to the bathroom and I tested. This one was a digital test, not one where you have to squint and see if there is a second line or not. And after the two minute wait, during which I tried to distract myself by doing household chores, it read "Pregnant." Clear as day. Without a doubt. I called my husband at work and he got so excited that he wanted to call everyone he knew right away. I told him to take it easy and wait for a bit, at least until we had another positive test. I actually wanted to wait until we had at least one appointment with a doctor and heard a heartbeat on a ultrasound, but I didn't want to be a complete damper to his excitement at the time. I thought we could talk about it later when he was a little more calm.

I was still a little disbelieving but I called an OB-GYN's office and made an appointment anyway, since I figured that it is usually easier to get an appointment for a more convenient time of day if you call well in advance. I took another test about three days after the first one. Negative. Another one the next day. Negative. And the next. Negative again. I was about ten days late at this point and I remembered what my first gynaecologist said that the time period between ovulation and getting your next period is usually fairly predictable. So basically, if I was pregnant, the test should say so. If I wasn't, I should get a period about two weeks after I ovulated. And I thought I knew when I ovulated.

Meanwhile I did have some nausea and mild headaches like women sometimes do in early pregnancy. I was also more hungry than usual.

After a few days of confusion, I went in to see the OB-GYN. By the time I actually got to her office, I was bleeding. Not heavy bleeding, but definitely bright red blood. I thought I knew what that meant and didn't really need to go to the doctor, but they wanted me to come in anyway. I had to see the on-call doctor. I had a long wait before I saw her because she had to rush to a patient who was delivering a baby. So there I was, in a waiting room full of evidently pregnant women, waiting for a doctor to come in and tell me that I was not.

When she did finally come in, she did a physical exam and told me that what I was experiencing could possibly be the result of an incorrect result on the pregnancy test. That can and does happen, although false negatives are much more common than false positives. It could also be what is known in medical terms as a chemical pregnancy. I had come across that term for the first time in the few days just before this, in my attempts to search the Internet for a possible resolution to the confusing results. What that means is that the egg gets fertilized but does not implant or attach to the uterine wall properly. The pregnancy is detectable with chemical tests like urine and blood tests but does not progress to a stage where it can be detected on an ultrasound, which is when it is termed as a clinical pregnancy. Another possible explanation would be an ectopic pregnancy, which means that the embryo implants somewhere other than in the uterus, generally in a fallopian tube. That kind of pregnancy, if allowed to progress, can lead to the tube bursting since a tube obviously cannot expand like the uterus can, to fit a growing baby. That would lead to decreased fertility and can also be life threatening because there can be a lot of internal bleeding. The fourth possibility she talked about was that everything was just fine, I was still pregnant, and there was just some bleeding going on. Some women have bleeding in pregnancy for no good reason and everything turns out just fine anyway.

So she told me that they would run a blood test for the pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) that day, and if it indicated that I was pregnant, they would repeat it after two days to see if the levels were going up or down. Meanwhile, I was not to do any strenuous physical activity and was to go straight to the nearest hospital if I had very heavy bleeding or significant pain. I would get a call from her office the next day with the test results.

The next day, I tried to keep myself occupied at work as I anxiously awaited the call. It came early in the day. The doctor's assistant told me that I was not pregnant. I asked her if I needed to follow up with the doctor. She said that wasn't needed unless I had unusual pain or bleeding or anything like that. I told her the bleeding was lighter than a normal period, but nothing else unusual. She said that was fine, I would probably just need to wait for two cycles to help the uterine lining develop and thicken before we tried again.

So I got home in the evening and told my husband everything that the doctor's assistant had told me. He was quite disappointed, just like I had been, not just at the fact that I wasn't pregnant, but that they wanted us to wait two whole cycles before trying again. The latter part was more distressing for him than for me. He is the kind of person who, once he puts his mind to something, just wants to get it done right away. He does not put his mind that passionately to a lot of things, but this was definitely something he wanted to achieve as soon as possible.

This was the first time we got an inkling of the fact that everything along this journey did not happen according to our plans, things sometimes just happened for unexplained reasons that we were not yet wise enough to understand. At this point the agreed upon opinion was that I had had a chemical pregnancy. Doctors said that that was fairly common and that around half of all first pregnancies turned out that way. Most of them ended before the woman even realized that she was pregnant. These usually ended because of genetic abnormalities in the embryo, so they were supposedly a good thing. At the time, I thought it was a little too much information to take in. Now it seems like a little teeny tiny bit in the grand scheme of things, after all of the information we have had to take in along the way.

If that pregnancy had worked out the way pregnancies are supposed to work out, the baby would have been due on my 29th birthday. I had been a little excited at the possibility of sharing a birthday with my child. But since the pregnancy ended at only six weeks, my birthday is now an occasion for me to reminisce and yearn.

At this point there was no reason to think that there was anything wrong with either of us that would make it difficult for us to have a baby. The medical professionals made it seem like this was just so normal and it happened to every other woman, so it was no big deal. We did our own research and we decided that we would wait one cycle instead of the suggested two and then try again. I had given up drinking coffee every morning years before, and drank it only occasionally, but I cut back even further. I had arrived at my goal weight on the Weight Watchers program but I still followed the program and attended meetings regularly to keep my weight in check. We gave up eating products containing soy, since we had read that it interferes with the reproductive hormonal balance in the body.

We did not try again the next cycle, but the cycle was still about six weeks long. I did not think too much of it at that time. The one after that, the tests predicted ovulation around day 14 again, like before. My period was late again, but this time I refrained from testing until 6 weeks, which was the point at which the first pregnancy had ended. And then I tested. Negative. No nausea or headaches this time, just some breast pain. I tested every few days and got negative result after negative result. For a while, I was holding on to hope because the tests could give false negatives, but with every subsequent test, there was less hope and more denial. I was trying to tell myself that the results were all wrong. That since it had been three, four, five weeks since I ovulated, not getting a period meant that I had to be pregnant. A few weeks in, I noticed I was feeling out of breath more easily. I had read that that was also a possible pregnancy symptom. Meanwhile, the breast pain was becoming more and more bothersome. Now, like I mentioned before, I do not like going to doctors and I hesitate to make appointments with them, but, once again, I realized that I had to.

And so, once again, I went to see the original gynaecologist, the one I had seen about a year ago, the one who had told me that the time period between ovulation and getting the next cycle was supposed to be constant. Interestingly, I got my period the day I was supposed to see her. She did a breast exam and said she could find nothing wrong, no lumps or abnormal growth or anything, so it was probably just hormonal. It would probably go away with the end of my period. I then told her about the way my cycles had been of late, and how the time from ovulation until the next period had not even been somewhat constant. She said that it meant that I was probably not ovulating when I thought I was and that my hormones levels were not where they were supposed to be. She knew, since I had told her earlier, that I had had irregularities before and that I had been overweight for many years. She also noticed that I had some excess facial hair. She said that all of these symptoms pointed to poly cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and that I was the textbook picture of PCOS. This was, once again, a term I had come across only in the last few days while looking on the Internet for a way to explain everything that I was experiencing. She ran some tests to check my hormone levels and they were all normal to somewhat poly cystic, but she said that the patterns I had been seeing indicated that I was definitely not ovulating every cycle. She said she could do two things for me. One option would be to use a medication called clomiphene citrate, commonly referred to by its brand name, Clomid, to induce ovulation. The other would be to send me to a reproductive endocrinologist, a specialized OB-GYN who would be better equipped to deal with fertility related issues. She said that the choice was mine, but if we tried Clomid for three cycles and I was not pregnant by then, I would have to go to a reproductive endocrinologist at that time.

My husband and I did some research on PCOS and tried to gain a better understanding of what it really meant if someone had PCOS. I found out, among other things, that PCOS is related to weight gain, though it is not completely clear if weight gain causes PCOS or the other way round or if there is an underlying cause that leads to both of them. I did know, however, that having PCOS makes it harder to lose weight. I found out that having PCOS increases your chances of developing type II diabetes and also of developing gestational diabetes. I found out that it is often hereditary. I knew that my mother did have some irregularities with her cycles, but I also knew that she had become pregnant with me quite easily.

I had a dream around this time. I dreamt I had twin daughters, and they were the chubbiest little girls I ever saw.

I guess I was not worried about the possibility of not being able to have children. I don't know if I was in denial or was just plain optimistic. But I was worried about having a daughter or two and passing on the weight problems and the PCOS to her.

I guess I was sort of counting my chickens before they were hatched. I didn't even really know if I had PCOS yet. Maybe I did, maybe they would give me medication and get me pregnant, but all I ever had were sons. I wouldn't pass on my female hormone issues to anybody.

But one thing was certain in my mind. If I did have a daughter (I hoped I would) then I would definitely educate her on healthy eating and weight issues early on in life. So that she would be in a better position to take care of her own health than I ever was.