Opening Up About Our (In)fertility Journey

My husband Kevin and I have always known we’ve wanted kids. Perhaps we were premature and way ahead of ourselves, but from the first months we were together, we had already talked about our future dreams and set a “plan” and timeline for how our life together would unfold. One of the reasons we’re great together is that we both share a commonality in “making shit happen” — we’re planners, organizers, list makers, and ultimately, doers. Buy a condo and move in together by 2015? Check. Get married in 2017? Check. Focus on career growth and increase our salaries by X%? Check. Sell our condo and buy a house in 2018? Check, check, and check. But we were in for a treat when we were faced with something we couldn’t necessarily “control” — infertility. For the longest time, I hated that word. Yes it’s just semantics and yes it’s a real thing to be diagnosed “infertile”, but to me, I refused to think I was incapable of anything, so I always dropped the prefix and called it our fertility journey.

I’ve always been pretty aware and sensitive to the fact that getting pregnant is not always easy peasy for everyone, despite what they teach you in school. My periods were never really regular (unless regulated by birth control) which was my number one red flag that something might be off. Right after getting married, I went off birth control (after almost a decade of being on it) and we decided to pull the goalie and “hope for the best”. Several months later, I started actively tracking: ovulation apps (highly do not recommend if this is your only way of monitoring), tracking my basal body temperature (BBT), monitoring cervical mucus, and religiously peeing on ovulation strips twice daily. It became pretty clear that my body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to and I didn’t seem to be ovulating— not regularly, anyways. 

Getting Started with a Fertility Clinic

After begging (oh yes, begging) my family doctor to refer me to a fertility clinic instead of encouraging us to “keep trying, you’re still young!”, we finally had our initial consultation meeting with Mount Sinai Fertility after a three month long wait list. We were immediately sent to do a plethora of tests and monitoring to rule out any obvious issues, but while this sounds great and necessary, keep in mind that the series of initial tests can take a couple months to complete, depending on your body! Because my periods weren’t regular, we “wasted” a lot of time waiting for my period to come or wondering if we needed to induce my period with a drug called Provera before being able to start the next phase of testing. 

The initial testing focuses on these main things: sperm, eggs, fallopian tubes, and hormones. Most testing consists of blood tests, cycle monitoring (the start of many early mornings), but the most painful of all: SHG (sonohysterogram) or HSG (hysterosalpingography) which are painful procedures to check if your Fallopian tubes are open. Usually you only need to do one of the two, but lucky for me, I had to do both.

Eventually, almost three months later, we were back in the clinic waiting to hear our diagnosis. Kevin’s sperm? Volume, count, motility, and morphology were apparently great (thanks doc, for ruling it down to the fact that this was a problem with ME). My eggs? I have plenty, apparently… phew! But what it all chalked down to, was the fact that I had a bit of hormonal imbalance and something called PCOS — Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, a common hormonal problem that can interfere with the reproductive system and potentially cause your body not to ovulate.

How We Eventually Got Pregnant

Once we had our diagnosis, it was finally time to start trying out different combinations of ovulation meds and timed intercourse. Although this is normal and quite early in the stages of “infertility treatments”, the hardest thing about the entire experience was how it effected me mentally. The daily blood tests, early morning cycle monitoring appointments (nothing like getting poked and prodded down there by a stranger everyday!), and all the drugs and hormones were nothing in comparison to the mental toll it took on me. After each morning appointment, you wait to be called in to discuss whether or not your follicles had grown and how many there were, and then proceeded to wait for a call in the afternoon to discuss the various levels of that morning’s blood work and whether that meant returning to the clinic the following day to continue monitoring or starting timed intercourse (sexy!) It became our regular routine, but no matter how many times we went through it, each “sorry, your follicles are not responding to the medication” or “sorry, please come back tomorrow and we’ll check again” or “sorry, we’ll try again next cycle” got harder and harder each time. For someone who hates science, I sure learned a lot about the human body and the ins and outs of fertility– more than I’d like to admit.

After four cycles with increasing doses of Letrozole/Femara (ovulation drug) each time, we were told we needed to move on with the next fertility treatment: IUI (Intrauterine Insemination aka turkey basting method). While we were mentally prepared that we would need further intervention like IUI and even IVF, we decided to try one last cycle of timed intercourse as we would be on vacation and didn’t want to “miss” a month… and lo and behold, by some kind of a miracle, all the stars lined up that cycle and, it worked. I was finally pregnant.

[While I understand our experience with infertility was not nearly as hard or long as it is for many, many couples, just because someone has it worse than you, does not mean your feelings are invalid. This was an incredibly difficult and dark time for me due to the lack of control I had over the situation and I truly do not wish this upon anyone.]

Breaking the Stigma Around Infertility

Even after becoming pregnant, there was a lot of anxiety that followed. Each day in the first trimester went by sooo slowly, but we eventually hit our second trimester and started feeling more comfortable with telling people. During our experience with infertility, I hit my lowest of lows. I was constantly sad, anxious, and obsessed with anything to do with fertility. But worst of all, I removed myself from a lot of social activities and distanced myself from friends. Less than a handful of people knew what we were going through and in hindsight, I wish we were more open about it.

Because of how much infertility impacted me and how alone and isolated I remember feeling, I knew that I wanted to share part of my story and create more awareness around the issue, in hopes that this makes even one person feel less alone. 1 in 6 couples in Canada struggle with infertility, yet most suffer silently.⁣ For someone like me who fundamentally believes that working hard and hustling = getting what you want, being thrown into fertility struggles completely challenged who I am as a person, tested my closest relationships, and entirely changed my priorities. Infertility is truly something that interferes with every aspect of your life and tears apart even the strongest of people.⁣

All that said, Kevin and I feel so grateful and lucky to have been able to conceive our little miracle the way that we did. We know that everyone’s journey is drastically different, but there are many who have gone through or are still going through much worse for much longer, and that’s something we never want to be ignorant to.⁣ Making this baby has been one of the most humbling and life changing experiences for us. It has taught me so much about myself, my priorities, our marriage, and my relationships. Though our journey to pregnancy was not all rainbows and butterflies, I wouldn’t change a thing. We are so grateful and can’t wait to smother our little burrito with love and one day, share with her the story of how we wanted her more than anything in this world.

If you’re in this season, or have been – one of infertility, loss, or waiting – our hearts go out to you. All I can say is that you are doing all the right things. Keep going and hang in there.