This is the story of my struggle with infertility.  I hope to share my story and maybe give some support and encouragment to others going through the same things.

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I guess I'll start at the beginning.  Ken asked me to marry him on March 19. 1989 after dating for 3 years.  I of course said yes and we set a date right away.  We picked June of the same year to get married and we knew that we wanted to start a family right away so I immediately went off birth control.

Nothing happened.

We tried and tried and every month would end in heart break because we weren't getting pregnant.   I think it probably went on like that for a year before I finally made an appointment with a OB/GYN.  He really wasn't much help at all.  He told me signs to look for to know when I was ovulating but since I have always had very wacky periods it was hard to predict.  We just figured that was what the problem was...my weird cycles.  Sometimes I would have them for 2 weeks and then wouldn't have one for 6 months and then when I did they were soooo heavy. To this day I'm still that way.

I went to another Dr. a year or so later and she did a bunch of tests on me to see how my hormones and thyroid were and everything came back normal. Ken was also tested and his test came back perfect. She only did tests that insurance would pay for and at the time we really didn't have the funds to do a whole bunch of other stuff and have to pay for it ourselves, so we kept trying on our own.

As the years went on and every month ended in tears I finally got a chance to get into the Dr. that I had always wanted to see but he was never accepting new patients.  I got lucky and a friend got me into see him.  He was wonderful and he immediately sent me to a specialist out of town.

I went to the specialist thinking that I would go for the appointment but that I wouldn't be able to do anything about it because in my mind the only treatment would be Invitro and that is highly expensive.  I had visions of thousands of dollars for each try.  I was so wrong and I kick myself now for not asking more questions years earlier.

5 minutes into the conversation the Dr, told me that I did not ovulate and that he would put me on a drug called Clomid for 5 days and that should work.  He hadn't even examined me, just listened to my history.  I couldn't believe it could be so easy.

4 weeks later I was pregnant!!!

We were on cloud nine.  I swear I floated on air when I walked. It wasn't meant to be though and we lost that baby to miscarriage at 11 weeks.

In the mean time we had found out that I wasn't immune to Rubella so the Dr. wanted me to have the immunization before we tried again.  This meant waiting 3 months to try again because the vaccine was live. 

We waited the 3 months and this time it took 3 more months of Clomid at a higher dose each time.   Finally at 100mg we got pregnant again.

I was a nervous wreck for those first few months.  We had found out that my progesterone levels were very low and that is what caused the miscarriage.  The levels were very low this time also so we tried supplements but they weren't helping.  Finally we had to resort to my having an injection in the "behind" of progesterone every night for the first 12 weeks.  They taught Ken how to give the shots and he was wonderful.  I had a very sore behind but it was worth every second of it.

Finally, after 7 very long years or trying, we had a beautiful baby boy...Alex Matthew!

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~UPDATE~

July 1, 1999

We are on our 2nd cycle of Clomid to try for baby #2.  Last month we tried 100mg of Clomid, the dosage that worked with our first child, it failed this time to make me ovulate.  I will be uping the dose to 150mg this time and maybe adding a steroid?!  That scares me but I go in on Saturday to talk to my Dr.  It's nice to have a Dr. that works weekends.

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August 10, 1999

Well we took the 150mg of Clomid last month and I DID ovulate but we didn't get pregnant so we are trying again this month with the same protocol.  Wish us luck!

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October 20, 1999

Still no luck.   My Dr. even had me try some Pergonal this time.  That is the stuff that has a very high rate of large multiples.  Yikes!  He had me take a small dose of it to help along the clomid but no success.  We are going back to trying only the clomid at 150mg since I was ovulating on that.  He had lowered my dose to to 100mg last month since he added the pergonal.  Only 2 more trys with clomid left then we have to move up to to pergonal only.  At a much higer dose then I was taking.  That scares me.  I could handle twins but more I don't know.

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April 26. 2000

We decided to take a break in November and we haven't started back up yet...hope to soon.

More updates soon...

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