trying to conceive
I got married at 24 to the boy I’d been with since we were in middle school. I had always said that I was okay waiting until our late 20s/early 30s to have kids because I wanted to enjoy being young and married before we started a family. This also made sense to me because my parents didn’t have kids until that timeframe and I only saw the upside. My husband at the time came from a family where his parents had him and his sister in their early 20s, so he wanted to start a family at a younger age as well. To compromise, we agreed to start trying a year into our marriage. I was in the middle of my master’s program and knew I didn’t want to have a baby before finishing, but I figured that if we started trying and I got pregnant right away, I would still have enough time to complete my degree before the baby arrived.
As we very quickly found out, life had other plans. I had been on birth control for more than a decade at this point. I knew that when coming off birth control it can take a bit for things to even out again cycle-wise, but otherwise most doctors say that if you are under the age of 35 it could take up to a year to conceive.
For me though, things were going haywire almost immediately. I was getting a period almost every two weeks, then a cycle where it was nearly 60 days. I had purchased at home ovulation strips, but nothing ever showed up. At six months, I knew I needed to call the doctor, so my OB/GYN referred me to a reproductive endocrinologist. Of course, the first appointment was over two months away, but by May of that year, we were talking to the specialist and he was telling us the various steps we would take initially to see what was going on. This would include a full hormone blood panel and then a hysterosalpingogram (HSG), which is a specialized X-ray procedure used to examine the uterus and fallopian tubes. A contrast dye is injected into the uterus to check for blockages or abnormalities that could affect fertility. It’s commonly used to diagnose issues like blocked tubes or uterine irregularities.
The bloodwork was done in just a routine office visit and then we went in for the HSG. When we arrived for that appointment, the nurses told me I might experience some mild discomfort but that it’s usually over in about 5-10 minutes and then the doctor can pretty much tell you right away what’s going on after he finishes the procedure.
As I got up on the table with my husband sitting in the corner in the dark, I remember feeling so optimistic. The doctor started the procedure with me flat on my back and both he and the nurse were chatting away. Then he asked me to rotate to the left, and suddenly they were chatting less. Then he asked me to rotate to the right and they became silent. He had me stay there for several minutes before having me rotate again. The silence continued. He then abruptly finished the procedure, told me to get dressed and left the room. At this point I’m panicking but think he will tell us what’s going on when we walk out. However, after I was done getting dressed the nurse came to tell us that the doctor won’t be seeing me and that he wants us to make a separate appointment to discuss my results.
We walked out into the spring sunshine with our heads down not saying a word to one another. Our drive home was silent. When we walked through the door of our home I finally allowed myself to cry. Only I didn’t yet know what I was crying for, but I knew my whole world was about to change.
Stay tuned for the results of the HSG and the continuing journey in my next post!
Honestly,
Theresa