This is my third year supporting National Infertility Awareness Week (check out more information here)
The theme this year is #StartAsking . What does that mean?
It’s time to start asking questions about infertility and what can be done about it.
With two healthy young adults, I knew that a year of trying on our own, something just wasn’t right.
We had no idea what we were doing and no one in either of our families (that we know of) had been through something like this.
We felt alone and ashamed asking for help but we decided that’s what we needed to do. My OB heard my story and put me on medication (clomid) that ended up being an absolutely disaster. Then we tried the next thing (femara) before we were finally sent to an RE.
I wish in those months, I would have known more. I wish I would have asked questions.
Clomid messed me up pretty badly and I wish I would have know to have more monitoring done during that time frame. Who knows what it ended up doing to my system.
Finally with the RE we learned to ask the right questions. Side effects, the entire process, the entire cost since our insurance didn’t help with a lot. What were our options? What was our back up plan? What were the chances?
Some of the answers, we didn’t like. Some answers were scary. But the more we asked, the more we started to take back control in this very lonely process.
I also started to ask, why me? What about everyone else? The more I thought about it, I started to share our journey, which was very cathartic for me. And that’s when I learned that I wasn’t alone. And it wasn’t just us. I felt less alone. While I was sad others were dealing with this struggle, feeling less isolated definitely helped me navigate how to cope with everything we were facing. We got there by asking questions and doing our research too.
Spills, Spells and Stories 