Blog Archives

Pregnant After Infertility: My First Pregnancy

April 24-April 30, 2011 is National Infertility Awareness Week
and I’ll be sharing my infertility story with you.

Read The Short Version, or for the whole story read:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5

My First Pregnancy

In June of 2008 we met with an adoption agency and began filling out paperwork. Two months after the last urology appointment on our 5 year anniversary (after a week of ttc) we decided that I would try taking the Crinone. So on June 21, my suspected day of ovulation that month, we used the Crinone for the first time.

Only a few days later I felt exhausted, was having breast pain, and was a little nauseous. I assumed that it was side effects from the Crinone or perhaps even early PMS symptoms. My period was supposed to come on July 5. That week I didn’t have any spotting like I normally do, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up and assumed that the Crinone was the cause.

When July 5 came and I didn’t start my period I wanted to take a pregnancy test. My husband wanted me to wait another week but since I had read that Crinone could sometime prolong a period I didn’t want to have my hopes up for a week. Although I was hoping that we were pregnant, I really wasn’t expecting to be. At 12:50pm I took a First Response HPT, the directions said to wait 3 minutes for results. I normally sit in the other room to wait, but I wanted to check the test line before leaving the room to be sure the test was okay. Before the test line even showed, the pregnancy line showed immediately with the lighter test line following a second later. We were pregnant!

After some other errands that we had to run that day we picked up more pregnancy tests and took them around 5pm. I took one more First Response test, and two digital Clear Blue Easy tests. Every test showed a positive result within seconds. My husband and I were shocked but thrilled. This would be the first grandchild on both sides of the family and we had been trying for so long. By the time we found out that we were pregnant we had been trying to conceive for 4 1/2 years and were almost 28 and 29 years old. I was exactly 4 weeks along according to my LMP. Once we were certain that we were pregnant we had to stop pursuing the adoption since the agency that we were working with requires your youngest child to be 9 months of age before filing for adoption, we were now ineligible.

I had a physical check up scheduled with my regular doctor that Monday. While there I told her of my positive pregnancy tests and asked if I could have a blood test done. She said that with four positive hpt’s that a blood test was unnecessary and that I should schedule an appointment with my OBGYN.

Prior to my first prenatal appointment I continued to experience fatigue, breast pain, and nausea. I began to experience tailbone pain at a little over 5 weeks. I was gaining weight. The day that we found out I was pregnant I weighed 118.5 lbs, six weeks later I had gained 5 lbs. Woah.

My first prenatal appointment was on Monday August 11, 2008. According to my LMP I was 9 weeks 2 days along. My appointment was with the Nurse Practitioner rather than the OB. She did a pelvic exam and she talked and asked me questions. I had a blood test done that day for Cystic Fibrosis, but no HCG tests or urine samples. I had been experiencing tailbone pain and asked her about it. She said that I was feeling that because my uterus was tilted back pressing against my tailbone. She said that there’s nothing I could do about it and that I could try a chiropractor and hopefully it will go away because it’s (pregnancy/childbirth) very painful for “tailbone girls”.

I wanted to ask exactly when to stop taking the Crinone. Should I take it until exactly my twelve week mark or should I be taking it until 12 weeks 6 days and then stop. However, as soon as I mentioned the Crinone she asked what it was. I told her that it was a progesterone gel and that I had a Luteal Phase Defect. She said, “Well, that’s important to know.” I had assumed that all of this information would be in the chart, but apparently not. She never did answer my question about the Crinone because she seemed so distracted once she found out about it, she began asking me questions instead. She said that I should call and let them know if I experienced any bright red bleeding of at least the size of a quarter or more.

My second appointment was scheduled for September 08 when we would get to hear the heartbeat :). On Monday August 25 around 6pm I felt a small trickle. I pulled down my pants right there in the kitchen to find a dime size drop of bright red blood on my panties.

To be continued

Posted in Infertility, Miscarriage, Pregnancy

My Infertility Story (Part 1)

Apr 26

Posted by Jenn Rian

April 24-April 30, 2011 is National Infertility Awareness Week
and I’ll be sharing my infertility story with you.

Read The Short Version, or for the whole story read:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5

TRYING TO CONCEIVE: Take 1
In September of 2002, 9 months before our wedding, I went to the doctor for a physical where I also got a Pap smear and starting taking birth control pills. After a year and 3 months on birth control pills I stopped taking them. They were making me sick and the price had gone up. We began using alternative means of birth control and I started tracking my period and estimated ovulation online. Six months later we decided to start trying to have a baby and stopped all forms of birth control. I have always had very regular periods. I’ve never smoked, never drank alcohol, don’t drink pop (soda) or coffee, and at the time had never been overweight. I was almost 25, hubby was almost 24.

We tried for almost four years before going to an OBGYN to get checked out. There wasn’t any particular reason why we didn’t go sooner. I had just never started going to a GYN (You can probably thank my 8th grade Sex Ed class for scaring me about the GYN by showing me a speculum. You want to do what with that?! Um, no thank you.). Had I been going for an annual GYN appointment I would’ve mentioned right away that we were trying to conceive and perhaps have made a special appointment before we ever got started. Lesson learned. Be sure to go the GYN ~~boys and~~ girls, no matter how scary the big shiny torture device looks.

They did blood work and said the results were all good (I don’t know all of the tests that they ran but I do know that they checked my thyroid, ovulation, and progesterone). I had a hysterosalpingogram (which is an X-ray test where they shoot dye into you to check the uterus and fallopian tubes) which again showed that nothing was wrong. I had an endometrial biopsy (where they scrape out a sample of uterine lining for testing) which showed that I had a lag in my uterine lining (I was on day 22 but the sample showed that I was only on day 18) called a Luteal Phase Defect (LPD). To my understanding this meant that we could’ve been fertilizing eggs but when they try to attach to the uterine lining it wasn’t prepared yet due to my lag and the egg wouldn’t be able to attach. My OBGYN recommended that I begin taking Crinone 8% which is a progesterone gel. It comes in an applicator and I was to use it every night starting on day 15 of my cycle until my period starts. If I became pregnant I was to use it every night for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy until the placenta took over. The OBGYN also mentioned that women with a Luteal Phase Defect usually have low progesterone levels but that my levels looked fine. I picked up the Crinone but never used it. I never even take aspirin so I was reluctant to put this into my body especially if my progesterone levels were apparently fine. I also wasn’t thrilled with some of the side effects mentioned including depression, nausea, fatigue, breast pain, head aches, and more. We decided to wait until my husband’s tests were completed to start using the Crinone.

The same day that I had the hysterosalpingogram my husband dropped off a specimen for a semen analysis (SA). Almost two weeks went by and no one ever called us with the results. Finally my husband called and they told him that his count was fine but there was some inflammation which could have been caused by a catheter (my husband had been catheterized at the beginning of September ’07 during a gallbladder surgery). After a few months my husband decided to make a urology appointment to see if anything else was wrong. Before he even had his appointment he found blood in his urine so they brought him in sooner. The Dr. found that he had a prostate infection which can result in abnormal sperm (we assume that these are the “inflamed cells” that the OBGYN office referred to). This would cause a problem conceiving because it lowers your sperm count since the abnormal sperm are completely useless. He put him on antibiotics and told him to stop drinking pop and tea…the infection cleared and then he had another SA done. The results this time were that his sperm count had doubled bringing it to the average level. The urologist said that if we don’t conceive within 6 months to come back (This was in April 2008).

In June of 2008 we met with an adoption agency and began filling out paperwork. Two months after the last urology appointment on our 5 year anniversary (after a week of ttc) we decided that I would try taking the Crinone. On July 5 we discovered that we were pregnant after 4 years of trying to conceive.

To be continued

Posted in Infertility

1 Comment

Tags: infertility, National Inferitility Awareness Week, ttc

National Infertility Awareness Week

Apr 25

Posted by Jenn Rian

This week April 24-April 30 is National Infertility Awareness Week. This week I’ll be sharing with you about my infertility story. Hopefully I have the time to edit some pictures and put up some Easter posts so that things won’t be so “sad” around here with all of the infertility talk.

Why should you be aware of infertility? Because there’s at least one person that you know that has struggled with infertility or suffered a miscarriage or infant loss. It’s much more common than people think. People don’t know what to say when they hear that a couple “can’t get pregnant” and more often than not they say the wrong thing. “It’ll happen”, “Just be patient”, “Try to relax”, “You can have my kids ;)!”, “You have plenty of time”. Learning more about infertility can help you to be more sensitive to those who are struggling. If you educate yourself on the issue then possibly you can be a source of help and comfort to a hurting couple rather than another source of pain. Women (and men) struggling with infertility can feel very isolated and even embarrassed and it’s time that it’s brought out into the light…where hopefully we’ll find compassion and support.

Hopefully sharing my story will be able to help someone else and bust some infertility myths.

Related Posts:
Read The Short Version of our infertility story, or for the whole story read:
*Part 1: Trying to Conceive: Take 1
*Part 2: My First Pregnancy
*Part 3: My Miscarriage
*Part 4: Trying to Conceive: Take 2
*Part 5: Trying to Conceive: Take 3 Secondary Infertility
*Spring Ahead: Reflections on Miscarriage
*Celebrate Your Name Week: Jordan: Why we named the baby we miscarried
*Childless Mother: Infertility Poem