An update from Infertile Myrtle

-- The following is a guest post from our secret lady friend who chooses to remain  anonymous until a baby kangaroo is officially put into her mama pouch --

You know what’s weird? Seeing a guy in army fatigues walk into a doctors office and know exactly why he’s there: dude’s about to get his swimmers tested. Today I sat in the waiting room of the U of M Reproductive Medical Center and watched the couples coming in and wondered what their stories were. But a guy there on his own? Semen analysis. 100%.

 ***** 

Hi, friends! Maybe you were wondering whatever happened to Possibly Pregnant Polly. It’s more likely you didn’t give me a second thought. But hi! I’m back. And still sans enfant. Please allow me to fill you in on what’s happened (and hasn’t happened) in the past seven months.

What hasn’t happened is my period. After Flo came to town in July, she abandoned me, seemingly for good. I was expecting this, since I had gone for long… er… periods of time without menstruating the two times I went off the pill during my decade- long Birth Control Bonanza. Both times my gyno prescribed me a hormone called Provera to kick start a period so I could get back on the pill.

Anyway, back in October I had a physical with a new GP who seemed completely unconcerned when I told him it’d been many moons since I’d had my womanly courses. He told me not to worry.

But worry I did. I started a routine of taking pregnancy tests every three weeks or so, because I couldn’t be sure if I wasn’t having a period because I was pregnant or because I was broken. (One of the notes in my pregnancy tracker app says, “Today I answered the question of bloated or pregnant with ‘bloated.’”) Each time I promised myself I wouldn’t be upset when I got the inevitable negative. Each time I cried a little bit, and left the test out where my husband could see it so he’d know why I had The Sads that day.

By the time December rolled around, I confided in a close gal pal that I was coming up on six months without a period. She made me promise to see my regular lady doc, which I did in January. She ordered a bevy of hormonal tests, put me on Provera to force a period, and referred me to the clinic’s infertility specialist, Dr. K. I saw Dr. K the next week, and he told me that based on the results of my blood tests he suspected I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

WHICH TOTALLY SOUNDS LIKE CANCER.

I freaked out and started blubbering while he asked me if I had noticed an increase in acne or male-pattern hair growth on the face, chest, or belly (no to all). He explained that it was a genetic disorder that causes an imbalance in the hormones, leading to cysts on the ovaries that cause women to menstruate infrequently or not at all. It’s also associated with diabetes. All I heard was: YOU HAVE MALE HORMONES AND YOU’RE GOING TO GET DIABETES. He ordered more tests and I went off to work, trying (and failing) to keep my shit together.

My health provider lets you check test results online, but the only information they give you is your value and what a normal range is. No other context. According to my results, all of my hormones fell within the normal range. This led me to convince myself his diagnosis was wrong, which made it all the more crushing to return to Dr. K’s office, this time with Hubs in tow, and have him say, “I was right. You have it.” He launched into an explanation of the hormone treatments he wanted to put me on— Provera to stimulate menstruation and then Clomid to stimulate ovulation—but I barely digested any information. I was spiraling way, way down into The Dark Place, and all I could do was sob uncontrollably. 

We went home. I sobbed. I called my mom. I sobbed. I texted my close friends. I sobbed. I had never cried this much in my life. I cried so hard I puked—and I NEVER puke. All the while I tried to synthesize why this news made me feel so devastated. It’s not like I had cancer. No one was dying. But I felt the pain of discovering that something you spend your whole life thinking is a given, something that is obviously in the cards for you, suddenly… isn’t.

I think the reason I felt that way is that infertility is not something you hear about unless someone close to you is going through it. Facebook, at least at this stage in my life, is a constant deluge of pregnancy and birth announcements. Not one of my friends has posted a status about the rigors of IVF, or the tragedy of a miscarriage. If people talked about it more, maybe it would normalize it, just a little. Maybe it wouldn’t feel so devastating. 

 ***** 

Flash forward to today. I saw a new doctor at the U’s Center for Reproductive Medicine, one with whom I felt more comfortable right away. Dr. L talked me through my previous lab results and explained everything to me, making sure I had my questions answered. She did an ultrasound to confirm the PCOS diagnosis, and sure enough, I’m a “classic case.” She ordered a few more blood tests for me, including a genetic screening, and had some special tests for the Huzz as well. We’ll be back in a month to review the results before I go on the hormones, which I feel much better about. It sure would suck to put my body through so much stress only to find out that there’s a problem on his end too.

The most important thing I left the office with is a new sense of confidence about my chances of conceiving. Dr. L told me that if I had to be infertile, this is the kind of infertile I want to be. I’m young, I’m healthy, and I have plenty of eggs; I just need a little help coaxing them out so they can become behbehs.

For the first time in months, I have a positive outlook.

This Friday, Husband will be going into the RMC by himself, and I bet you can guess why. Please send happy thoughts that his swimmers will swim straight and true.

Guest Post: "There’s an App for That"

-- The following is a guest post from our secret lady friend who chooses to remain 

anonymous until a baby kangaroo is officially put into her mama pouch --

We are currently on Month 2 of our Journey to Procreate, now that Flo has decided to pay a visit and I can more accurately gauge my cycle length (and thus my most fertile days). This time around I’m armed with the knowledge of an even greater arsenal of scary pregnancy articles and, most importantly, a better app. My mom thinks I should just relax and let this happen naturally,  but there are but a few things one can control during this process, and knowing that I’m doing everything possible to achieve success on my end is very relaxing. So there. And dammit if I’m not going to be the Valedictorian of Pregnancy.

So this app. A reader of this very blog contacted my Lady Bits buddy Anna to suggest it to me. It’s called, “My Days,” and lets you chart all manner of lady data, from the dates and level of your menstruation to the consistency of your cervical mucous (in my opinion one of the most disgusting phrases on this Earth), from your weight and temperature to the days you make sweet, sweet love (this you mark with a little heart, which is adorbs).

It even lets you graph your weight and basal body temperature. Science! The reason you’d want to do this, by the by, is that your basal body temperature will be a sustained degree or two higher once your egg drops, and you’ll probably put on a couple post-implantation. Fun fact: my normal body temperature runs a cool 97 degrees on average, and this morning I was a frigid 95.6. Am I even alive?

While I wait for the sparkles in my eyes to manifest in human form, I’m keeping myself busy by revisiting all manner of pregnancy blogs I’ve become acquainted with over the years:

• I spent great gobs of time that I should have been working at one of my first post-college gigs following Jeff Ruby’s blog Push on Chicago Magazine’s website. He wrote a riveting, no-holds-barred exposé of his wife’s first pregnancy and taught me what a mucus plug was.
• I started following Dooce, one of the original mommy bloggers, a year later, and read about her pregnancy with her second daughter in real time after devouring her account of her bout with post-partum depression after having her first.
• More recently, I’ve been following the blog of a friend of a friend of a friend who gave birth only last week. She's hilarious—her pregnancy posts are tagged “My Body is a Wonderland”—and her truthy scribbles actually helped me decide for certain that it was time to create life.

Do you have any require reading or app-ing you think pre-pregians should get into? Share in the comments below!

Guest post: "Rocket Go Boom, but Still an Empty Womb"

-- The following is a guest post from our secret lady friend who chooses to remain 

anonymous until a baby kangaroo is officially put into her mama pouch --

Every month when Flo showed up I had a ritual of triumphantly telling or texting my husband, “Not pregnant!” and he would usually respond with some form of, “Atta girl!” At one point I reflected that someday soon I would have the opposite reaction upon learning that my oven had stayed un-bunned.

Reader, today is that day.

I’ve read ad naseum about pregnancy symptoms—the lower back pain, the swollen and tender bosom, the nipples of unusual color and size, the tendency to hork when encountered with the odors of things like persimmon and beef jerky, odors that used to be so pleasing—and I have none. I’d also long thought that if I was preg I would dream vivid prophecies of my unborn child. Last night I dreamed of dragons. I was fairly certain I wasn’t Khaleesi, but to be more sure I took this quiz on The Bump.

It’s very similar to those quizzes you used to take in YM or Seventeen that tell you if you’re a good friend or if you’re totally stressin’ or if maybe you’re a bit of a sloot, in that there is a very obvious right answer. I forced myself to stay truthful, and got the following result:

“Well, you’re probably not pregnant, but there’s only one way to find out. Hormonal shifts and an increase in blood volume usually cause a woman’s body to change pretty early on in pregnancy, bringing on (annoying) symptoms like nausea, frequent peeing and fatigue. But since you’re not experiencing many of these symptoms, it doesn’t really sound like you’re pregnant.”

The quiz suggested I confirm their totally scientific results with a test, so after a brief consult with Doctor Google I headed to Walgreens to get a three-pack of First Response tests (on sale!), which can be accurate up to six days before your missed period. I stick-peed this morning, when the pregnancy hormone would be most concentrated. After one minute, I was probably not pregnant. After two, it was pretty durn sure I wasn’t pregnant. Minute three rolled around and I was definitely not pregnant.

I allowed myself a few minutes to spiral. “You definitely miscalculated your ovulation. What were you thinking? Obviously you don’t have a 28-day cycle. Way to be dumb, DumbFace.” “Maybe you don’t even ovulate anymore because you were born with only 60 eggs and the last one dropped years ago. Maybe you’re going through menopause. Is this bathroom just really hot or are you HOT FLASHING??” “This is the first milestone on a road that leads to fertility treatments and soon you’ll have sextuplets and you’ll have to buy a new house and you’ll have to become a YouTube sensation so you can go on Ellen to try to get free diapers.”

Then I thought, “Maybe it’s for the best. Your dinner last night was white cheddar popcorn and a s’mores blizzard. If there had been a child in there you would have reduced its IQ by at least half a point.” And also, “Stop being dramatic. Make offerings to a few different fertility gods to cover your bases and just keep trying.”

The injustice of it all is all those years I went to ridiculous lengths to stay barren. At one point with my first boyfriend I was using three forms of birth control! Three! Ridiculous. After watching all these documentaries it seems truly impossible to get knocked up. Even if the stars align and the rocket goes boom within the 2-3 day period when magic can happen, it STILL might not work! How are all these unwanted pregnancies even happening?! Seriously! Tell me your secrets, Teen Mom!

Also, maybe you should try using three forms of birth control.