Sep 20, 2010

Takin’ it to a “Whole Notha Level”

Every time I hear that phrase I smile. It is a recurrent theme with our pastor, Ed Young at Fellowship Church, and can be applied to nearly all aspects of life. He even has a dog that he rescued named Level, because he brought him to a WNL. And there starts the grinning . . . :-)

After my last surgery I was still having quite a bit of abdominal pain that my general surgeon was blaming on my ovaries. To be honest I didn’t agree with him but decided to get checked out anyway just in case. As I suspected my ovaries were fine and the new OB/GYN I was seeing didn’t seem to believe that the pain was in any way related to my girlie parts. While I was there we discussed how Brent and I have been trying to conceive for well over a year with no success and I was attributing that to my IH. She suggested that we go ahead and do a blood test to check my hormone levels, just to make sure everything was normal.

As with most things in my life these days, of course my hormones were NOT normal. Go figure. She decided to wait a month and re-test to see if it was just an off day or a real problem, so a few weeks ago I went back and submitted some more blood – and then I waited, for an agonizing ten days. Friday afternoon the doctor’s nurse called me and told me that my progesterone levels were better, but still too low, and that the doctor had offered to let me try Clomid to see if we could get the ball rolling. After giving her my pharmacy information I couldn’t contain my excitement so I called to tell Brent the good, albeit bad, news.

Today I am on day three of the treatment and I feel no different – except that I have significantly increased energy. I suppose that’s a great thing though! There are two more days to go this month, and then we cross all of our fingers and toes and pray that it worked. Part of me wants to be ecstatic and jump for joy, but my more reasonable side says to be patient and not get my hopes up. That’s not to say to lose hope entirely; it’s just that when this first started I spent months feeling like a failure because I couldn’t give my husband a child. By the time the new year rolled around I was consumed with my headaches and put baby-making on the back burner. Now it’s front and center again and I fear the letdown.

Infertility is such a taboo subject in our society but it should not be. There are more women suffering from infertility than women who are not, a growing issue in our society that could be blamed on a million things but mostly boils down to our lifestyle. Some women do everything right and their bodies just don’t cooperate despite their best efforts. There are still others who neglect their bodies entirely and “accidentally” get pregnant. Women find it hard to talk about and find someone who relates to their problems and feelings to people they know and I just think that’s sad.

Do I feel ashamed of my infertility? At times, I suppose. It’s never a nice thing to have to admit, “I can’t get pregnant on my own, no matter how hard I try I just can’t make it happen.” It really does make me feel like I’m failing my husband somehow, this is what we were as women were made to do and I can’t do it. But on the same token, I am willing to take the necessary steps to make it happen. I think that many women could benefit from having someone to talk to about it.

For the first time in my life, I’ve felt jealously towards the pregnant – but not all of them. Mostly just against the teens, the young women who’ve whored themselves around and gotten knocked up by practically sneezing and it’s acceptable. I do realize accidents happen, but sheesh. It’s a hard pill to swallow. Surely there is a lesson in there, somewhere.

Now that I’m off my tangent, I really am anxious to see how the Clomid works. So far I haven’t had any of the side effects that I’ve read about which is great – I just hope it doesn’t mean that it’s not working!

Love, KC

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