Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Tick Tock

After the blood test in December resulted in the assumption that I did not ovulate, I spent a few days just kind of doing nothing. I considered not pursuing any sort of further information or treatment. I considered closing the baby door and throwing the key away until I was thirty (for some reason I expect thirty to bring a new understanding of this world). I spent a lot of my time making note of everything in my life that couldn't happen with a child. When I slept until ten on a Saturday, I celebrated the uninterrupted rest. When I hung out with friends past midnight, I celebrated the freedom. When I booked a vacation, I celebrated the extra money. When I came home from work to a quiet house, I celebrated the silence. Unfortunately, when my friend had her first child, I couldn't shake those little toes or the little noises he made. When I spent time with another friend's baby, I couldn't quit thinking about how much I liked holding her and smelling her and wanting to teach her things (namely for fear that the baby's mother will not provide adequate athletic wisdom). Nonetheless, over the few weeks that I focused on all of the things in my life made possible by not having a child I was also forced to focus on all of the thing in my life missing without one. 

I eventually realized that doing nothing was silly. I have watched my own mother face three separate cancer diagnoses without flinching. I could walk into a doctor's office and discuss my eggs...or lack thereof. 

After the next doctor's appointment, our plan of action involved taking a prescription drug called Clomid designed to increase a woman's likelihood of ovulation. The drug is taken on specific days during the cycle followed by a properly timed amorous few days in hopes of scheduling conception. The whole process is very funny when you stop and think about it. Certainly drugs and "properly timed intercourse" (their words, not mine) are not my idea of the best month of my life. However, in the big scheme of things if this was all that it took to get pregnant I realized it would seem barely a blip on the radar in the future. 

Along with Clomid, I was also scheduled for a day 13 ultrasound to actually look at my ovaries to determine whether or not I had follicles (medical term for eggs before they are technically eggs). I walked away from the appointment feeling good about the plan of action. I had a couple of weeks before I would actually be required to start taking the medicine. I honestly still wasn't sold on the idea.

Cody and I talked a little about not taking the Clomid at all. Again, we are both so very happy with our current existence. We revel in all of the time we get to spend together and how in love we are with just us. We do not spend our days trying to fill some sort of baby void. We do not feel like something is missing. I literally feel like every day with Cody as my husband is a little more rewarding than the one before. I think the satisfaction we both feel with our current situation makes us both a little worried that we don't want this child bad enough. The internet is full of people spending their life's fortune and years of their time and going to limitless ends to conceive a child they have wanted for so long. Cody and I are not those people. 

My decision to go ahead and start the Clomid came from a gnawing fear I have had since the beginning of this process that involves Cody and I turning into those people on the internet. The weird thing about infertility is all of the not knowing. There is often not a clear diagnosis. There is often not a finish line. There are just months that slip by faster and slower than you ever imagined. There are just days that get filled with all of these ways to make your body do the most fundamental of all processes. There are just months and days that can turn so quickly into years that never get filled with little toes and little noises of your own. I couldn't help but feel like every month I let slip by without conceiving a child is one less month that I get to play the baby lottery. It's as if my biological clock not only started ticking for the first time but also made its entrance with the volume indicative of someone much older than myself. 

Katy vs. Her Ovaries - Child-Bearing Hips

Every day that passes I accept my most recent reproductive issues a little more. I am still not sold on actually wanting children this very minute, but I am sold on wanting them eventually. The eventual desire that I assume will show up one of these days is what motivates me to move forward with some sort of medical intervention. The weirdest part about this whole situation is that I am supposed to (and have) felt an immense sense of loss or disappointment over not being able to have children sometime in the future. It's not like I had a child and lost it (unimaginable pain). It's not even like I got pregnant and miscarried a child (also really awful). Both would be much more tangible, real experiences. Yet, somehow the past few weeks have felt something like losing someone. I have experienced a hypothetical, maybe someday loss of a person I've never met. A confusing thing to process.

I have had enough time to sort of step back and analyze this whole situation. In some twisted way the concept of me being infertile is actually kind of funny ironic. I spent my entire life convinced that I possess the most fertile womb on the planet. The women in my life periodically passed down reproductive wisdom to me growing up. My grandma (who is also about 5'10" and shaped very much like me) used to tell me that I had "child-bearing hips." I hated this description. I hated my hips. I hated having a body useful to a woman, when I was very much a kid still. Today, my grandma is a no-frills ninety-year-old. She's lived through the Great Depression, had three boys, and was married to a WWII veteran who was absent for long stretches of his children's lives. My grandma probably got pregnant by magic. I doubt my grandfather even had to be in town for the event. She just looks like a mother. She's big and strong, yet feminine in every way. She can cook a meal unlike anyone else in our family and never misses a beat despite her age. I have always been under the impression that my grandma just knew things that the rest of the world didn't. I believed her when she told me I had child-bearing hips. I believed her when she told my long torso would make for easy pregnancies. I believed her when she told me I would have lots of kids. I believed her because I had no reason not to.

After years of "child-bearing hips" references, I think I adopted the same belief about myself. In college I was convinced on a few different occasions that I was pregnant. The catch was that I hadn't had sex with anyone to actually get pregnant. Immaculate conception I suppose. I've spent my life convinced of my inevitable future motherhood. I've never once doubted that getting pregnant is anything other than simple. I believed that I could control pregnancy to the point that I could choose a birth date. I never imagined to be in this situation. Why would someone be cursed with child-bearing hips and not be able to bear children?

I have slowly started to rewrite my story over the past couple of months. I have let go of preconceived notions about who I am and started to accept that whatever story unfolds in the coming years will be the real story. It's easy to rely on the words of those who have come before you to narrate your own experiences. It's easy to buy into the wisdom of people you love, people you trust. It's easy to predict your fate based on your reflection in the faces of those before you. Nonetheless, every person is responsible for finding their own story and their own reality...no matter how big your hips are.

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - The Backstory

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have spent the past few months writing about having babies. The main reason for all of this philosophizing about reproduction has stemmed from my own entertainment of the idea of having a kid. Now, I feel like it's important for you to know that my willingness to have a child started out as some sort of half-hearted experiment in fate. Let me explain... About a year ago we stopped taking precautions to not get pregnant. Being the obsessive planner/control freak that I am, I decided with the input of my dear husband that we should try to get pregnant in May, June, or July of 2012. Why those three months you ask? Because I teach school and the ultimate goal of any female educator is to have a child in March. March allows teachers to take the 12 weeks of maternity leave available and not ever have to come back to school before summer break. It is the Holy Grail of life as a female educator. Because I wanted to be reasonable and accepting of the unpredictability of getting pregnant, I allowed for a couple extra months just for good measure. Needless to say, I did not get pregnant. We closed up shop and continued to make fun of all of our parent friends and their exhausting existence as parents of young people. I tried really hard to not worry with those three months of no pregnancy. It was THREE MONTHS. I heard all these mothers recount trying to get pregnant for 6 months or 8 months or over a year even. They all had kids, so why in the world would I be any different? But for some reason I couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. I started learning more about pregnancy and ovulation and cycles and cervical mucous and ovaries. I read articles about basal body temperature readings and biphasic months. I completely over-saturated myself with pregnancy information. I felt like I needed to equip myself with all of the knowledge available to be prepared for the next time we decided to try. Over the next few months I did notice that my cycles (periods? Why are both of those words so icky?) were not regular. Some were 31 days and some were 33. I even had a 53 day cycle somewhere along the way. It seemed a little weird to me and naturally only fed my feeling that something wasn't right. Thankfully, the school year started. I was so busy with volleyball and teaching that I didn't even think about having a child. Cody and I were never really sold on the idea in the first place to be honest. In fact there were a lot of days when I was thankful that those three months hadn't resulted in me being pregnant. I convinced myself that there is so much time to have kids. We are so young. Cody felt the same way. I never did get back on birth control. I used my new-found reproductive knowledge to avoid getting pregnant. After volleyball ended, i did flirt with getting pregnant. I kept telling myself that if I was healthy and viable then maybe I would just get pregnant. I always felt like it would be so much easier to just turn up pregnant. No planning. No thinking ahead. No scheduling a birthdate in March. Just get pregnant. People do it all the time. i mean people get pregnant ON ACCIDENT. In December of 2012 I went to see Dr. Bell for a regular check-up. Everything went fine during the appointment. He told me I seemed completely healthy. I did ask him about my irregular periods. He was literally walking out of the door when I explained what was going on. His response was a simple one: "that probably means you're not ovulating." I sort of felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. My reproduction 101 lessons flooded my brain. Panic set in as I wondered how in the world people get pregnant without ovulating? I never imagined that would be the answer. I was looking for a "oh, there's nothing to worry about," or " almost everyone has irregular periods." I did not expect the answer he gave me. I walked out of his office that day with an appointment for blood work that would definitively say whether I had released an egg. I also walked out of his office with a premonition that hinted that this was only the beginning of a completely unexpected journey. The blood test revealed that I had not ovulated. It took the doctor's office forever to call with the results. I was cooking dinner when the phone rang. The nurse told me so nonchalantly about the results. I asked what exactly the results meant. She beat around the bush about there being a lot of different options, and she listed a few different treatment plans. She ended the conversation by telling me that the ball was in my court as to how aggressively I wanted to treat my infertility. I remember being shocked at how calm and cold the nurse sounded. I remember wondering how one month of not ovulating suddenly classified a person as infertile. I was hurt. Upset. Stunned. Confused. Frustrated. Scared. I felt like what started as an innocent question to ask only because I wouldn't talk to Dr. Bell for another year had unexpectedly opened the flood gates of infertility...I was suddenly involved in a fight to have a baby that I wasn't sure I even wanted.

Katy vs. Her Ovaries - Part 1

When I was in Mrs. Loyd's third grade class, we were required to write a paragraph about what we wanted to be when we grew up. As a nine year old, I explained (in near perfect penmanship by the way) that I dreamed of being two things as an adult: an NBA player and a mom. My mom still has this assignment tucked away in a box somewhere. In high school she used to mention this assignment if ever I found some success as a basketball player. I think my mom loved the dichotomy of her child. She appreciated the relentless athlete mixed in with something as cute as a little girl wanting to be a mom.

I remember wholeheartedly thinking that I could make it to the NBA. I dominated kids at Nancy Orr Girls Club as a child. A head taller than most with a bit of coordination equaled some pretty impressive Saturday afternoons on the hardwood. Nonetheless, the older I got the more reality set in. I eventually shed the impossibilities of the NBA, and I altered my goals to include much more realistic athletic achievements.

However, over the years I never faltered in my second dream. The idea of being a mom has always been something I want. I think this is only natural as the daughter of Patsy Schrodt. My mom has always made evident to my brother and me that being a mom is the best thing she's ever done. I was never one to imagine my wedding day. I didn't envision a perfect husband. After my NBA hopes were dashed, I was never particularly sold on a professional path (still not sold). I've never known a whole lot of what  I want to do...besides be a mom, like my mom.

What's funny about all of this is that I have never been very motherly. I don't exude maternal instinct. I have never spent much time around babies. I don't even like kids a whole lot for the most part. I have just always assumed that I would like (love) my kids. When I met Cody, I had an even stronger desire to have our kids. I am mesmerized with the idea of creating life. I am fascinated with the idea of having a baby that might look like me (or Cody) or talk like me (or Cody) or laugh like me (or Cody). Literally, I think reproduction is the most mind-boggling part of existing. It is bound to be why we are here. Right?

I realize you're wondering what I'm getting at here...Recently, Cody and I have found ourselves at a bit of a reproductive stand still. We are still trying to sort out all of the specifics, but in very general terms we have determined that getting pregnant for us will not be as simple as we both once thought it would be. I will eventually communicate the actual medical issues that we (I) am facing. It's still a little early in the process to start explaining a whole lot.

At first I was extremely hesitant with the idea of sharing fertility details. I realize that we are all a little uneasy with words like "ovary" or "cervix" or "uterine lining." In turn, we are naturally hesitant to share stories about getting pregnant. However, I have spent the last few months dipping my toe in the infertility waters and have found that it can be a lonely place. (i.e. my infertility comfort has mainly come from Khloe Kardashian and Guiliana Rancic. Not acceptable.) Since I don't have a reality TV show, I figure I will do my part in using my words (even the uncomfortable ones) to talk about something that unfortunately impacts a lot of people.

I will eventually tell my story.