The Big Question

People ask Jeff and I all the time “so when are you guys going to have kids?”  This, in our case, is a question that is not so easily answered. At first we always responded with a laugh followed by a “never”, jokingly blowing off their question. I tend to mask my pain with humor. I do it all the time; it helps me cope with things. I also didn’t want to state the fact that we had not been preventing it for a while before we even started getting this question. That would then, in my mind, actually make it a problem and I wasn’t ready to deal with that yet. It also makes people feel uncomfortable. I don’t want someone to feel bad about asking us that unknowing how much trouble we were having getting pregnant, it’s not their fault. For us it wasn’t as simple as choosing when we were ready to start a family, we had already done that long ago, it is so much more complicated than that. We still get this question all the time now our answer is “When it happens”.

Not long after our first anniversary I was at a doctor’s appointment and I mentioned my concerns about us not getting pregnant. She was not my normal doctor and was a fill in that moved around from place to place. She suggested having my hormone levels tested along with a couple other blood tests as a place to start. She also suggested since we had been trying for over a year we should go see a fertility specialist. I was informed by her that day that unfortunately The Everett Clinic did not have someone who specialized in this so we would have to go somewhere else. This we found out many months later was not true. We waited a week or so for my blood test results to come back. For me that week was excruciatingly long, waiting was hard and of course my mind ran wild with ideas of what could be wrong and what would happen. Luckily, just over a week later in the mail came my results. Everything looks good, my hormone levels are normal. I was relieved that at least that was not an issue, but even though it was good news I was still disappointed. I know there are a lot of other things that could be wrong and I shouldn’t expect them to find out what it is on the first try but I didn’t feel any closer to the big question. What IS wrong?  

After that I decided before they did any more tests on me I wanted Jeff to get tested. I figured there can probably be a close to a million different things wrong with me, with Jeff there could only be one.  This is easier said than done. Getting Jeff to go to the doctor is hard enough, getting him to make a doctor’s appointment for something that is not causing him pain or discomfort is near impossible.  I was good because even though I wanted to nag him every day about making an appointment I didn’t. As I predicted it took him months and months to do this, even then his main reason for going to the doctor was for something else entirely.  We got some information from his doctor and once again had to go outside of the Everett Clinic to have this test done. Luckily Stevens Hospital (now Swedish) is right up the road from our house and they offer a sperm count test. I will spare you all the details, but after Jeff got tested he had to go back to his doctor for the results. His doctor informed him that his sperm count was extremely low but since he was not a specialist, he couldn’t explain much more to us. He then suggested we take his results to a fertility specialist and they would be able to give us more information. This was hard on Jeff since he was the one who really wanted his own kids. Honestly I was slightly relieved at first thinking I didn’t want to be the one to not be able to give such an amazing gift to my husband. After all I am more than ok with just adopting, my dream is be a mother it makes no difference to me whether they are from my blood or not. Jeff was the one who really wanted children of his own, and I was more than willing to do this for him, but if he was the one who was not able to do this it would not be as heartbreaking, well for me at least. It wasn’t until I realized our options severely diminished when it comes to the problem being the guy that I started to really feel horrible about our situation. My heart broke for Jeff; I knew how bad he wanted his own children.  We just needed more information; I needed to know what the percentage of chance was that we could have children on our own, if we could do anything to help it and really just what our options were.

A couple more months passed and on the little spare time I had I went into research mode. Mostly I just researched about specialist in the area, how much they cost, adoption, how much that cost and all the options in between. Of course our insurance does not cover anything for infertility specialist or treatment.  Jeff and I are not rich but we make a decent amount, certainly enough to be able to support ourselves and a child but once I realized how much all this could cost us it scared the crap out of me. Maybe we will end up being a couple who just never has children. It’s crazy how much it can cost to get help making a baby, or adopting one. Then after you pay for all of that, you have to come up with all the extra money that is needed just too simply raise the baby. Realistically, unless we win the lottery, which I fully plan on doing, our options were quickly diminishing.

Finally a ray of hope came to us when I questioned one of my old friends who had also had a hard time getting pregnant about her doctor. She and her husband had just been blessed with a child maybe he could help us too. She informed me that not only did he specialize in infertility but he also worked for the Everett clinic!!! This meant that or insurance would at least cover some of the cost if not a big chunk of it! I was ecstatic!!  Of course because nothing ever goes easily for me it took me two weeks of just back and forth phone tag to even make an appointment. During the process finding out that I had been referred almost a year earlier by the doctor I had seen who told me Everett Clinic did not have a specialist. I guess she found out that they did but no one informed me of this. At that point I really did not care, I was just so happy that we could finally, maybe get some answers.   

Before or appointment we received a packet in the mail that included a 3 pages of questions. Most of which had to do with me and my cycle. I had never my entire life had a regular cycle. My period sometimes comes every two weeks and sometimes there is 7 weeks in between them.  I never really know when my most fertile days are or when I ovulate.  Even the many ovulation kits I used were not able to tell me this. That’s why I had always assumed that the problem was me.

The day of our appointment slowly came, and I was really nervous. I mean what if they told us because of Jeff’s test results we had very little to no chance of having a baby.  At the same time at least then we would know and we could go from there. After the doctor came he asked us some general questions about how long we had been trying and what my cycles were like. He became slightly concerned when I told him how sporadic mine were. Getting pregnant is pretty much all about timing, we needed to find out when I am actually ovulating. I then asked him about Jeff’s test results, I mean it doesn’t matter when I release an egg if he doesn’t have the sperm to fertilize it. It was then that he informed us Jeff’s sperm count “was spectacular” and he actually was above average. The test results were typed in an unusual format which made it harder for someone who didn’t know any better how to read it. This is why the original doctor had given us the complete opposite information.  Needless to say Jeff was extremely happy. There was a lot more options when it came to helping any problems that I might have. As the appointment went on he informed us that I have a fairly common issue with women of irregular ovulation. Considering how long we have been trying he believes I could be ovulating as little as once or twice a year. What the heck?!? Why am I having all these periods if I am only releasing an egg one out of 7 times? Stupid body. He prescribed me two medications, one of which to insure I’m ovulating. This is our first month on it so we will see what happens.

It’s really hard to know that I am the one causing all of this. I know it’s harder to get pregnant when you stress but how am I supposed to do that? Everything is my fault, and it is me who controls the fate of us having a baby. I know I should be happy that we at least have some answers and I am but it still hurts. All we can do now is hope it works and try not to stress about it. How am I ever going to be able to do that?