My baby struggles began many years ago when my husband and I were newly married and decided that we wanted to go ahead and start our family. I was so eager to have children that I could hardly wait but a year went by before I finally found myself pregnant at last. It was the only time I have gotten pregnant without “help” and carried it to term.

It was a joyous pregnancy, very smooth and simple and it was truly the happiest time of my life as my husband and I planned and waited for our new arrival and when he came it was the most incredible experience of my life. I knew the moment I gave birth that I couldn’t wait to do it again!

When our son hit his first birthday we decided it was time to add a brother or sister to the family. We knew it had taken longer than we had expected to conceive our son, so we didn’t hold out hope that we would get pregnant right away but little did we know that it would take us 6 years to add another child to our family. Those 6 years were so frustrating and difficult as my life was consumed with infertility. Getting pregnant became nearly an obsession to me. My life revolved around it, especially when we finally decided to seek treatment. First, we began simple. I was put on 3 rounds of Clomid. They all failed. We moved to a new state and a new doctor who also tried the standard 3 rounds of Clomid after weeks of enduring all the standard, sometimes uncomfortable testing. Nothing. I was making lots of eggs but no pregnancy. I had a Laparoscopy and a bit of endometriosis was found but not to the degree that it should have been hindering my fertility. So we then went through 3 rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination), where my husband had to give me shots of Hcg in the hiney before the big day. The third try resulted in a chemical pregnancy. I was so thrilled to finally have a positive pregnancy test after years of negative ones. I got all the congrats from the nurses at the RE’s office and even a big congrats from my RE himself as I awaited confirmation of a blood test. I was on top of the world until the nurse called that afternoon to inform me that it wasn’t viable. My heart broke that night like it had never broken up to that point and I decided I could no longer continue with the treatments. Our only option left, anyway, was IVF and we just weren’t ready for that.

Soon after we gave up on the treatments we began to feel like maybe we should look into adoption. I won’t go into all the details here but we suffered through a failed adoption attempt and more heartbreak. I began to ask God to take away my desire for another child so that I could move on. By now my son was 6 years old, anyway, and it just felt hopeless. I still had the desire, so I asked Him if he would take away my ability to have children completely so that I never had to wonder again. I told Him that if it was not His will for me to have any more children would He please just take away all possibility. The diagnosis of “unexplained infertility” was just too much to bear. It meant that there was really no real reason to be found why I couldn’t get pregnant. I just wasn’t. I could no longer live with that. My periods soon began to be very terrible. I was having horrible cramps and bleeding to the point of being scary. I went to my OB who did and ultrasound and found I was full of fibroid tumors. She told me that all we could do was do a D&C and then stay on birth control pills. I reminded her that I wanted another baby and I’ll never forget her looking me right in the eye and saying, “You are never going to get pregnant on your own. You can’t get pregnant without some serious medical intervention.” I was crushed. I guessed that this was my answer to prayer and that God was making it impossible just like I asked. I had my surgery and started my pills. It was horrible. I was so out of whack with those pills that not only was I miserable but so was everyone around me and within a few weeks I knew that I could not continue with them.

Around that time, though, I stumbled upon the best forum thread that I have ever read. The funny thing is, I cannot tell you the name of the website or any information about how I found it and, in fact, I could never find it again. I thank God that I printed it out when I found it and the copy still lies protected in a file in a safe place in the house. It is precious to me. The thread was started by a woman who had gone to see a Naturopath in Canada to seek treatment for her “unexplained infertility”. He had put her on a regime of supplements as well as a change in diet. I had tried SO many natural remedies during those years that, at first, it just looked like the same old routine that I had read over and over. There was a supplement that I had never heard of using before, though, and I was intrigued. It was called Indolplex. This doctor had also written a book about curing common health problems through our diets. It really doesn’t address infertility but had some useful information about basically detoxing our liver. I told my husband about all that I had read and told him that I would like to read his book if I could find it anywhere. This all happened right near Christmas and guess what I got for Christmas that year? The book! We decided to make one more real attempt at conception and so I read the book and starting the first of Januaray we went on the diet and began the supplements. That is, I was doing all the supplements except for the Indolplex because it was so difficult for me to find and I had to order it. It didn’t arrive in time to start it at the beginning of my cycle. My cycle that month was incredibly different. I had no pain and no PMS which was so unusual for me. I also had no pregnancy, but I felt really good about what I was doing in my body and I knew that, if nothing else, this diet and these supplements were making me feel so much better and I wasn’t suffering through all the pain normally associated with my period. When my period did come that month I had my Indolplex in place and started it along with the other supplements. It worked! I got pregnant that very month after 6 years of infertility and all kinds of so-called remedies and tests and treatments. 9 months later our second son was born and his name means “God has heard”. God had heard and when I finally gave up my obsession and stopped making my desire for a baby the most important thing in my life, when I truly laid it down and said to just take it…I give up…then He allowed it to happen and led me to the solution. I had to totally surrender my will to His, though, and it took me so long to finally do that.

When our second son was 2 we began wondering if we should try once again. I still didn’t feel “finished” and neither did my husband. I was ready before him, though, and had to wait for him to tell me that he wanted to try again. I don’t initiate those things. I never want him to feel like I forced a decision of such magnitude on him. I want us to always be in agreement. He told me that he wanted another one on Christmas Eve and I was thrilled. We worried, though, that we might be in for another long row to hoe after our last experience but decided that we were up for it. After all, if it didn’t work this time we still had a nice family with our 2 sons. In January, we began eating well again although not as strictly as we had the first time we went on the diet. I also began a couple of the supplements but not all of them for different reasons. When I started my period, I began the Indolplex again which had since had a name change to Estrobalance. This time I only took it until I ovulated because it was giving me a terrible upset stomach. I didn’t hold much hope that it would work only taking it half of the month but it sure did! We got pregnant again on the first month of taking it! 9 months later I gave birth to our beautiful daughter! Her name means “whole, complete” because with the addition of her our family felt very whole and complete.

So that sounds like the end to our story…our happy ending…but the story is still in prog
ress. After so many year
s of infertility and only conceiving while taking supplements and dieting we found that the one silver lining to it all was that we didn’t need to worry about birth control. We just don’t get pregnant on our own! When I began to have pregnancy symptoms last March, I really just took a test because I had one under the sink and I thought, “why not?” even though I knew there was no way. After all, I had just had my period 2 weeks before and hadn’t even ovulated yet. I about fell over when it turned very brightly positive. I had to take 4 more tests just to believe it! I called the midwife and they wanted me to go in right away for an ultrasound since there was no way to know, otherwise, how to date the pregnancy since I hadn’t missed any periods. Unfortunately, it turned out that I was 10 weeks along at that point but had lost the baby when I thought I was having my period at 8 weeks. There was just some tissue left at that point that was causing me to still feel pregnant and to turn the test positive. So weird. I had been walking around pregnant for 2 months and didn’t even know it! I had begun taking Red Raspberry Leaf the month that I must have conceived trying to rid myself of PMS that had been back to plague me. I decided that must be why I got pregnant. We were still, though, amazed that I had conceived and we were deeply saddened that it had not survived. We realized that even though we thought we were done having babies that we had really wanted that pregnancy to go to term and that we must still not be ready to completely give up. We decided at that point that we would just be open to whatever God wanted to give us. I continued taking the RRL but didn’t get pregnant again. The due date came and went for the baby we miscarried and a few weeks later I found out I was pregnant again. No RRL, no nothing. It felt like the most amazing miracle to have conceived without any help at all and it felt so right! I didn’t have to feel like I “forced” anything…it just happened and it happened right after my husband, once again, decided he really did want to try for another baby and he wanted me to order some Estrobalance again. I did and I was waiting for my cycle to begin so I could start it and it never came. Instead I found that I was pregnant again and it felt so good to know that we didn’t even have to wait through another cycle. Life was good and we had baby #4 on the way. We could not have been more thrilled. Well, we lost that one nearly a week ago at 10 weeks. We are grieving the loss but it has prompted me to begin this blog as a way to journal through all of the feelings involved. Through my experiences over the years with all of these baby struggles, I thought that maybe I could help someone else out that is going through the same sort of things.

Everyone’s story is different but there is a commonality among all of us who have suffered through and survived infertility or miscarriage or both. My husband and I are not sure where this journey will take us next but I’m hoping that having a place to sort it all out in writing will help to guide us there. So that is my story and this is my blog.

Welcome.