Wow. After reading my two posts from last year, I feel older and wiser. I've had to learn a big lesson for myself, and had to dig deep to find patience and trust. I've had to change my attitude and belief about working hard for something and expecting it to happen. Things don't always go as planned (even if they seemingly have your ENTIRE adult life), and that was a big pill to swallow for me.
I foolishly believed that things would work out just as I had hoped they would in my first blog post. It would be PERFECT: getting pregnant in 2011, having a baby in 2012...following my trend of cool things happening to us every year.
Except that God's plans are MUCH bigger than mine, and are more perfect.
The first couple months we started trying and ended up empty-handed, I wasn't too worried. I figured it would take a little time. When October hit, and still nothing, I started freaking out. As in, "Why is this not happening yet, what are we doing wrong, I can't believe it didn't happen this month, it would have been PERFECT timing, we need to have a baby in the summer" etc., etc., etc. And of course, when you want something so badly, it seems like every person around is getting that ONE thing. Sigh.
Sometime in October/November, I calmed down. I HAD to accept that this wasn't going to happen on my time at all, and there was nothing I could do about it. I no longer had control over this. I actually never had any at all. I started to believe that I was bound to have children, but had to wait for the most perfect time, even if it didn't follow my "perfect" timeline. It was helpful to think that after a year of trying had passed, I would get the opportunity to see my Dr. and seek out her help.
Thankfully, I didn't have to go a whole year. Strange things started happening to me in December. I ended up having a period/bleeding for almost the entire month. I made an appointment with my Dr., who prescribed me some pills to take for a week to stop the bleeding, and who also, after hearing about my trying to get pregnant for 7 months, scheduled me for some preliminary blood work in early January. I was happy to get the pills and be taking the next step toward conceiving, but at that appointment, she also found what felt like a lump in my right breast. I went on Christmas break not really knowing what all this could mean.
The month of January was filled with Dr.'s appointments. First, I had to have a mammogram and an ultrasound to find out if I did have a lump in my right breast. Luckily, it was absolutely nothing. And I'm glad I (hopefully) won't have to have another mammogram for another 10 years! I started to get a lot of blood work done. After my first appointment, they noticed one of my hormone levels was elevated. It was my thyroid. Did this mean I had hyperthyroid? That's what I assumed "elevated" meant. Needless to say, further testing needed to be done, and I was put on a synthetic hormone to balance out what was going on in my body. I had more blood work, plus an ultrasound on my thyroid, to make sure there were no growths. When those results came back, I learned that my thyroid antibodies count was EXTREMELY high (normal is from 1-9...mine was over 1300), and that my antibodies were attacking my thyroid, causing what I think of as beyond hypothyroidism. I was told that I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, and that I could expect to be on medication and monitor my hormone levels for the rest of my life.
MEANWHILE, my Dr. wanted to monitor if I actually was ovulating or not, so I went in for an ultrasound and appointment to check if any follicles were present around the time I expected to ovulate. Luckily, there was a healthy sized follicle at each of my (ovaries? fallopian tubes? I really don't know) that should be released at ovulation, and hopefully fertilized. My Dr. told me theoretically I should conceive that month...then she told me the ultrasound showed something else that they hadn't been looking for. It appeared that my uterus is heart-shaped, which is called a bicornuate uterus. She told me that a bicornuate uterus can't be corrected with surgery; it's just something you live with. She said it would put me into the "high-risk" category if/when I became pregnant, because there are higher odds of miscarriage. Sigh again.
I left that appointment feeling hopeful, but still pretty discouraged. When you're not even pregnant, it's hard to hear that one day you might miscarry because of something you can't change within your body. However, Russ and I went along through January like normal, still trying to conceive, with me thinking that nothing was gonna happen anytime soon. Russ was more optimistic, and convinced me we should keep trying that month. My Dr. had actually said at the end of our appointment that I should give my thyroid medicine three months to kick in, and that I should come back and see her in April. She actually said I would be pregnant by then and was extremely hopeful sounding, so I didn't worry about things too much.
I had one last appointment to get blood drawn. The purpose was to check if I had actually ovulated in January. I received a phone call that my progesterone levels increased, which showed I did ovulate. :)
Since this post is already extremely long, I'll start another post right now.
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