I had that surgery in 2002. My husband and I were living at his Mother's house while we were both in "back-to-school" mode. We knew we wanted kids, but with all the debt we had (not to mention the fact that we were living in his MOTHER'S house), it made trying for kids a no-go. At least then.
It took me another 2 1/2 years to finish graduate school. I found a post-doc position (sort of like an independent scientist-in-training), and we moved to our new city.
We spent the first 3 months trying to get to know the city better--it was larger than any city I had ever lived in before---trying to feel competent in my new position at work, formulating plans to pay down all of our school debt, and generally enjoying living on our own. Although we had been married for 7 years, 4 of them were spent at his Mother's house.
We started trying "seriously" to get pregnant in December of 2005. For pregnancy "protection" we had been practicing Natural Family Planning (NFP) since the surgery in 2002. We were not always as careful as we could have been, but I thought that we were doing a STUNNING job. I mean really: no pregnancies here!
Since I had been charting my cycles with NFP, I had a pretty good indication that I ovulated. My cycles were a little short, but other than that, pretty normal. So we took the charting from "no pregnancy mode" to "bring it on" mode. I wasn't really surprised the first few months that we didn't get pregnant. I had fibroids after all, and I had read that it is normal for it to take 6 month to a year to pregnant. Yet, I had a lingering suspicion, a familiar words kept bubbling up in my brain....fibroids.....endometriosis....
So, after 6 months of trying with no success, I asked my Gyn for a referral to a specialist. She had already had me get another ultrasound for my fibroids, and quickly wrote me a referral for a local fertility practice at a local hospital.
It didn't take as long as I would have thought to get an appointment. Then again, I said that I would just take the first doctor who had an opening. My husband and I went together. I was pretty shell-shocked after the meeting. It wasn't that my doctor wasn't nice, it was that I was just unprepared for the number of tests: clomid citrate challenge test (CCCT), hysterosalpinogram, hysteroscopy, sperm analysis, ultrasound. Once we had taken all of these tests--well, I guess I wasn't the one taking the sperm analysis test--we were to have another meeting with the doctor. I remember asking our assigned nurse at the practice to re-explain the importance of the CCCT. "It's a test to measure the quality of your eggs." and that we wanted a number below 10. "What happens if you get a number above 10?" I asked. "Well, then you have to use donor eggs if you want to become pregnant. But let's not worry about that now, you have a lot of tests that you need to take, and then the doctor and the two of you can decide how best to proceed."
I took all the tests except for the hysterosalpingogram. My husband took his. The doctor wanted to schedule a meeting, and the we didn't need to worry about that test yet.
Now, I'm not entirely foolish. I knew another surgery was coming. One does not walk around with fibroids larger than one's own uterus, have trouble getting pregnant and realize that somethings gotta give.
We met with the doctor. As we suspected, nothing further was going to be done until I had the fibroids out. There were too many, they were too big, and it was too risky. But there was also another thing to talk about. My CCCT results were "a little high." 18 to be exact. I remembered the number 10. 10 or you will be using donor eggs. 18 was not just a little off. It was not 11...13..nowhere close to 10. But the doctor was hopeful, "we've had a lot of luck with women with high numbers." Besides, I had a surgery to get ready for anyway.
To be continued...
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