I got married to Bruce when I was twenty-two, and I really wanted to have a baby. I thought by the time I was twenty-six, I'd definitely be pregnant. But it was not happening. I got to be twenty six and I was not pregnant. I was working with a childhood friend who was also trying and going through all sorts of tests and procedures. And it was not happening for her either. We were in the same school. I was teaching art, grades K through 6. The school was in a very low socio-economic area; the parents were grateful for any good work that was done there and I loved the kids. It was a wonderful job in many ways.
I remember we were skiing in Maine when we first decided to start trying. When nothing happened for nine months, I started to worry, but it got down-played because of my age. Nobody in the medical profession, or among my friends, felt that it was time to get upset about it, at least not until a year had passed. Then I saw somebody who called himself a fertility specialist but looking back I don't quite understand how he ever got away with it. My father was a doctor and I think I grew up with a sense of loyalty to doctors. Maybe that's why I stayed with him for a year, even though on some level I must have known that something was wrong. I was on Clomid for nine cycles. He was doing IUI's and they were terribly, horribly painful. I had every side effect in the book; blurry vision, bloating, I was depressed. My vision was so bad I could barely drive. I must've gained ten pounds and I'm not a big person. It was truly the worst time of my life. I would go from one-fifteen to one-twenty-five every time I took the drug. After one cycle this guy should've looked at me and said:"This is not a good drug for you." When I spoke to him about the symptoms, he assured me that the symptoms I was having were within the acceptable range. And I just took his word for it. It was hard for me to leave him, I guess I felt if I stayed with him and stuck it out, he would help me. But the drug was a disaster. Let's put it this way: going on Pergonal was a relief.
Finally I did move on to a fertility clinic in New York, which turned out to be a bad move. It was like a factory, I didn't know anything about any of the doctors so I decided to go with a woman doctor, thinking she would be more understanding. That was a mistake because she was going through her own fertility problems. In the middle of the treatment, I found out that there was nobody overseeing my cycle because she was in the hospital! And her husband, who was part of the practice, was covering for her. Except that when I called with questions, he turned out to be in the hospital with his wife and didn't have my chart. I ended up speaking with a resident, who told me what to do. When I questioned his instructions, he said: "Just do what you're comfortable doing." Now this is on Pergonal. I'm supposed to decide how many amps of Pergonal I should take! I never paid the Bill for that cycle. They kept billing me for about a year, but I never paid it and they stopped.
I stayed with that clinic for a while, had a laparoscopy, and a number of tests to try to find our what was wrong. The thing is I always had very irregular periods. My cycles were really long. So they came up with a number of different diagnoses but none of them really fit. After the clinic I decided to go for yet another opinion. Dr.L was unfortunately another major mistake. He said he needed to do another laporoscopy, which he did in his office and I was so hyper-stimulated that I started throwing up and was very sick for a week afterwards.
The next stop was a fertility clinic and Dr. N, whom I loved. I finally did an IVF cycle, and a frozen cycle and neither of them worked, I had two very early miscarriages. It's important to mention that my father died just around that time. Looking back I don't quite understand why I kept trying to get pregnant in the midst of my grieving. I took Provera to bring on my period after my father died. It didn't work. I took two cycles of it. It didn't work; my body just shut down;it was stronger than any drug.
In September of that year I had a chronic sore throat, and I was so tired. I finally went for a check up and they couldn't find anything wrong with my throat, but the endocrinologist palpated my thyroid, and said, "Do you realize your thyroid is enlarged by about 50 percent?" He said that it may be the cause of my fatigue. I had some tests and they put me on Synthroid. Three weeks later, I didn't have any more sore throat and haven't had it since. If I don't take my Synthroid, I get it back. My naturopath is encouraging me to look for natural alternatives, and I will. I'm just not ready to do that right now.
At around the same time Bruce and I went into therapy and that was very helpful. The idea of a child-free life became less devastating. I went out to California to visit my friend and ended up on a vegan diet. I always ate very well, but I changed to an absolutely no animal fat diet, did a lot of juicing, I took some supplements. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I said to myself, I'm not pregnant and I am fat. I felt horrible about how I looked and felt. I went on this diet, and I felt wonderful. I lost weight, my skin looked great, my hair looked great, and I looked fabulous! I also, decided to quit my job which was becoming very stressful. And Bruce got a new job that he had wanted for a long time. I started taking yoga classes; I was weaving full time; we moved to a beautiful place.
At that point we were working with Dr. S whom I loved. He was very tuned in to me and we were going to start another cycle of medications. I went in to see him; I remember it was day 67 of my cycle, which was not unusual for me. But he insisted that we take a pregnancy test, something he had never done before. And we did and I was pregnant and nine months later Annie came. After six and a half years! Thankfully, it all now seems very far away!
When Annie was about a year old I started getting my period again and after two cycles, when the right time of the month came,I thought, "It'll probably take us six years this time too, so might as well get started!" And after the first month I was pregnant. And exactly the same thing happened with Lucy. I had been getting my period for five months, and Bruce and I looked at each other and said, "oh, right time of the month," and once again it worked. Not only was it easy, but it was really textbook easy.
It really was amazing. When I got pregnant with my third child, I wasn't even a day late. I was going out with my husband that night in the city, and jokingly I said "I'll take the test." I swear I almost had to be committed. It was the first normal thing that I did since I had been diagnosed. I got to tell my husband first. I didn't tell my mother; I didn't tell my friends. I went to the city, and I got to tell him first. I have a girlfriend who is 27 with her first baby after about 3 years of trying. It's difficult when you have 3 children to say, "Yes, I'm infertile." Am I infertile anymore? But that word, "infertile," is a label, and labels are sometimes difficult to remove.
My experience not only changed my life, but it also affects how I am raising my kids. We are all vegetarians and we don't eat white sugar, white flour, or any of that stuff. It absolutely changed my life. I don't know what kind of parent I would have been otherwise, what kind of choices I would have made. I wonder if our marriage would have survived if we had had a child when we first started trying. We grew so much through all this. I believe that there was a reason that it happened the way that it did. I really do. I firmly believe that there wasn't one thing that did not have to happen.
