Where it all began...

8 years ago I married the love of my life...the one I wanted to share my "forever" with and who I wanted to start a family with.  I started out late in life, but that was more so because of the vocational call that I thought I had been called to.  At the young age of 19 I started to look at joining the convent.  For a short time I even did.  By the time I was closing in on turnig 25 I knew that God was leading me in a different direction.  Within a few months of leaving the convent I met my husband.  I knew he was the one because I had prayed while I was in the convent, that God would find me the person with whom I would spend the rest of my life and with whom I would have a family and that he would have the same faith and values as I had.  I specifically prayed for him and for a family.  I had gotten him, but what about the family?  By the time we got married I was 30 years old and 9 days.  I knew we had to start from moment one to try to have children.  One doctor put me on birth control for several months thinking it would jump start my cycle and ovaries.  After going off the BC pills, nothing.  Within a few months we started seeing a OBGYN that specializes in fertility...or so we thought.  All she wanted was to test my husband's sperm and stick me on Chlomid.  Still nothing.  After over a year it took its toll on us emotionally and financially. The reason we could't conceive would change each time: you don't ovulate, you don't have normal periods, you might have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, you have hypothyroid, or you are too fat.  We had to stop the treatments.

I tried everything I could think of, from vitamens to taking my temperature everyday to making deals with God.  ("Please God, if you just get me pregnant I will devote my first born to you...I will offer him to you.") Still no child.  The one time there was a secod line appear on the pregnancy test, it turned out that the testing kit had been defective and the doctor easily said, "Nope, you are not pregnant."  Friends and family got pregnant and moved into the realm of being a family with their new children.  We continued to sit back and wait...and wait...and wait.  Here we are 8 years into our married life and still not pregnant.

We have spent years of being told "You don't know what it is like...you don't have children," when we would try and be support and help with the nieces and nephews, would just throw a knife into our hearts.  Expectations that we would take care of doing everything for everyone else in the family just because we didn't have children came by the truckful.  And the worse of it all is Mother's and Father's Day's.  The sadness over beign infertile would just get overwhelming more and more each year.  What could make it worse?  A recent "breast cancer awareness" joke on Facebook where those who received it were to put as their status: I am (month of birth in #) weeks and I crave (candy associated with the number of the day of your birth.).  This set myself and many of my friends living with infertility to be stabbed with that knife once again.  I needed to do something. I couldn't deal with this constant stabbing anymore.

I started this blog for several reasons: 1.) To provide support for others going through infertility like myself.  and 2.) To help bring awareness and education to those that don't experiance infertility so that we can bring about a more aware and compassionate society in the area of infertility.  There is so much to write but this is just the beginning.  Stay tunned...it's just getting good!