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.