It took longer than we thought

In those sex-ed classes they give you at school they teach you 2 things:

1. Sex without protection= pregnancy
2. Sex without protection= STDS

Now, there is no doubt that as luck would have it a very fertile 16 year old girl who doesn’t really understand her cycle and how it works could in fact get pregnant that one time that she wasn’t careful. It happens. It sucks for that 16 year old and makes you think that it really isn’t that difficult, but in reality, for some it can be really hard.

It’s disappointing that those teachers educating you don’t tell you the whole story. They tell you the parts that they want to scare you with. They show you birth videos and graphic STD images; but that is only half of it. I am by no means saying that we should encourage teenagers (or younger) to engage in sexual activities, but I think we are doing them an unfair justice by not telling them everything.

My husband and I were under the impression that once we stopped birth control we would be expecting the following month. We first took on this new adventure with the idea of ‘we are trying but we aren’t’. I.e. we didn’t take it too seriously. I knew when I was ovulating, but I never told him as I didn’t want there to be this pressure weighing on us. As the negative pregnancy tests caused me to have a breakdown every month, I started to do more research. As I am under 35 and we had been trying for less than a year, it didn’t qualify us to go and get our blood tested. I thought this was a ‘rule’ or a policy but it’s just to do with your insurance. We could have gone privately- but I didn’t know this and no-one thought to suggest it. I started to buy books; ‘What to expect before you’re expecting’; ‘Honouring our cycles’ and I downloaded more apps. I read that acupuncture could help- so I started going once a week. I bought ovulation sticks. We stopped drinking and we cut out caffeine. But the same negative result kept appearing.

I then got recommended to see a fertility therapist who understood the turmoil of emotions I was in. She put me on Coq10, Vitamin D, magnesium and B6. I was already on pre natals but she suggested my husband took some impryl, to improve sperm quality. She made me meditation tracks that I listened to and I did castor oil packs and massage. I tracked my temperature and my cervical mucus on charts.

As we got to that 12 month mark we were finally able to go for our blood tests. Nothing too abnormal was found. We were now at a loss. We said to each other that if in 6 months we were still unsuccessful then we would look at going down the route of IVF.

12 months of tears every month. 12 months of feeling that my body was broken and wondering what I was doing wrong.

I wish that I had known what I found out at the start of this journey. I wish that I had known that it may not be easy. That what you eat/ drink can affect the quality of sperm and eggs and that once you change your habits, it takes 3 months for those changes to show. I wish I hadn’t been so naïve on what to expect.

And then it happened.

I was pregnant.

And I felt that it was too good to be true and that someone was going to take it away from me.