Fast forward to when I got married...I thought that people had sex, and got pregnant. I didn't know how MANY people had fertility issues. A few months before I got married I started birth control. That was the first time I had been on birth control and in my mind that's just one of the many things that was on the list of things to do before your wedding day. Needless to say, birth control made me feel psychotic...and my husband (Ricky) was probably wondering what he was getting himself into...lol. After being married for a month or so I decided that I didn't like feeling like a psycho and decided to get off of it. I thought it would take a couple of months to adjust, but figured that maybe I would start having regular periods...nope.
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| This is a picture of me on our wedding day-June 2006 |
This was before my "crunchy" days when I knew about healthy eating, fertility, birth, pregnancy and so on. I finally decided that I should probably bring it up in my yearly exam and made an appointment. This doctor came with excellent recommendations and I was excited to see what they could do to "fix" my problem. I went to my appointment and my dear friend (Shannon) gave me an idea to ask the doctor some questions about her philosophy on birth and her birth and c- section rates.
When I let the doctor know that I had some questions for her she acted irritated but started answering 1 or 2. When I started asking her about her birth philosophy she said to me: "Don't you think you are putting the cart before the horse." She talked to be about PCOS...basically just saying: "It sounds like you have PCOS, we will test you for it" and suckering me into getting a STD test that was completely unnecessary, but I did it because I didn't know better. A couple of weeks later I got the call...from my doctor? No, doctors don't have time to make calls. It was from her nurse. She told me "You have PCOS, what is the number to your nearest pharmacy?" She didn't tell me what PCOS was, if the drugs were going to fix me, or anything else. She offered no explanation in helping me understand what was going on or what all of this meant.
Thankfully Shannon had introduced me to her doula Louise and she spent some time explaining things to me. The drugs the doctors wanted to put me on were not a fix for my problem, just a symptom and really wouldn't make a difference in the underlying issues. I started to research PCOS to find out what it was, but at this point still didn't understand that I could (possibly) reverse my PCOS or really anything about my body.
I've read that a woman's response to finding out she has fertility issues can be very similar to someone who finds out they have a terminal illness. I know that for me it was fairly stressful at first, but became increasingly difficult to deal with month after month of knowing that my body was not working right. There is so much I "know" I should be doing, but it's really hard. I've cried thousands of tears, and every time I find out a close friend or relative is pregnant it hurts in a deep way. Seeing others having what you so desperately desire is very painful and hard. It's also confusing because you are so truly and genuinely happy for the person, but knowing that your body is still messed up is really hard. It makes it even harder when people tell you, I wasn't sure if I should tell you or not, but I didn't want you to find out later. I don't want to be treated differently from other friends, and yes it's hard, but I still celebrate and am happy for those who do get pregnant. I also have heard countless times, "So and so couldn't get pregnant and then adopted and got pregnant right after" or "So and so finally stopped trying and found out they were pregnant shortly after." BLAH...
I feel like the Lord has taken me through all of this for a reason. I have done a lot in the past 5 years, including getting my college degree in education, and the Lord showing his provision through providing me with a job in a horrible economy. We also started fostering in December of 2010 and would not have had these precious kiddos if we had started our own family. I don't know what will happen, or what the Lord still wants me to learn, but even though I deeply desire to get pregnant, I am ok with where I am at now. This is my story, thoughts and feelings (the short version, lol)...
Christin
