Childless Not Hopeless

After having the HSG test in March, I was really hopeful for some reason. My doctor explained to me that she didn't believe that the miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy had anything to do with each other. Basically, I just had really bad luck. She felt that there was nothing "wrong" with me, especially since the HSG test and all of my blood work tests have always come back normal. I don't know what is worse. Getting a diagnosis and knowing that something is indeed wrong, or being told that nothing is wrong with you and you are stuck there, with no answers and two failed pregnancies...
So I was told and even encouraged to just go home and try. To have patience. That it takes normal couples 6 months to a year to get pregnant. Well, I am sorry but it is hard once you have "tasted" pregnancy. Once you have had the knowledge that at one point life was inside of you. I wanted more than anything to get that feeling back. I wanted more than anything to prove that I …

Since the ectopic pregnancy happened so close to the holidays my husband and I decided to take a break from "trying" to have a baby. We decided that we would focus on ourselves and let everything that had happened kind of "sink in". We said to ourselves that we would try again in the New Year. We liked all that the New Year signifies, and we didn't want to add on additional stress during the already stressful and busy holiday season. So when 2012 rolled around I was more than ready to start trying again! So we picked back up with the OPK's and wished for the best. Of course by now all of my "pregnancy innocence" had been stolen from me and I figured that this time getting pregnant would be no problem. After all, I got pregnant twice in 2011. The stress would now come from worrying about whether or not I could actually keep and maintain a healthy pregnancy. So after trying and getting negative pregnancy tests in January, February and March I decide…

My blog is supposed to be about my fertility struggles and my quest to have a baby with my husband. But it would be remiss of me if I did not post about something else that has happened in my life. Those of you who know me personally and who have seen my Facebook page have probably seen me post very often about a beautiful little boy named Ty Louis Campbell. He is a hero and the most brave little boy that I have ever known. In August 2010, just a few months shy of his 3rd birthday, a mass was found at the base of his skull and he was later diagnosed with an extra renal rhabdoid tumor; a very rare and aggressive cancer. I found his mom's blog in October 2010 and have followed his amazing story every day since then. I have seen him fight for his life every single day. I have seen him beat up cancer and at one point we even saw him have clean scans after clean scans with no evidence of disease. But after being very sick for a few months, Ty passed away yesterday. He is still nothing…

Today, October 15, is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. I never even knew there was a day dedicated to this cause until I became one of those women who had lost a pregnancy. This day signifies a loss that no one should ever have to endure. It is a day where women and families all over the country release balloons in honor of their little angels. There are walks, prayer vigils, candle lighting's... There is even a Facebook page dedicated to this cause. I am, of course, a member. And I cannot tell you how sad it is to hear and meet all of these women who have been through so much pain. Some of them handle it with strength and offer help to the other women, while others come to the page simply to vent about their frustration and their sadness. My heart breaks for every single one of them. Everyone deals with loss differently. And I want to use today's entry to share something that has been on my heart these past few days. I wanted to share with you how I have deal…

It took me three "Two Week Waits" to get my next positive pregnancy test. And it was so funny that this was the time I got pregnant, because this was the first cycle where I really didn't have any hope or expectations of getting pregnant. The reason being is that the time frame of when I was supposed to ovulate fell over the weekend that I was going to go visit my BFF in Houston. So unless I carried a turkey baster filled with my husband's sperm, this cycle was a no-go (little did I know that almost a full year later we would actually try and get pregnant via an insemination, aka - the turkey baster approach)...Any way, my husband made several valiant efforts the day I left for Houston and the day I got back. And well - it worked!!! Because two weeks later, I was pregnant! So I called my doctor and she made an appointment right away since I was considered high risk. I went in and had my HCG levels measured and they were beautiful!!! I was so relieved! But, my doctor …

Returning home after my miscarriage was kind of surreal. I thankfully work for some amazing people and was told to "take as much time as I needed" before returning to work. I stayed home for a whole week after my hospital stay. I remember sitting at home and having to deal with the after math of the pregnancy. The first day home I got an email from "What To Expect". It was one of those emails that exclaim "Your baby at 12 Weeks"!!! Ouch. I went to the website right away and "reported" my miscarriage. I still to this day get emails from their sponsors. There should be some sort of setting that when you report your miscarriage not only does WTE stop sending you emails but so do all their sponsors. I hated getting emails about breastfeeding and which pumps you should use. Or tips on how to baby proof your home. It was (and still is) a slap in the face.
For several weeks after the D&C I had to go to my doctor to make sure my uterus was healing p…

**Warning, this post talks about my actual miscarriage and the procedures that took place. It might be hard to read for some, but I feel that it is necessary to tell this part of my story**

As I mentioned in my previous post, it was Mother's Day weekend 2011 that my husband and I decided to use the pill (Cytotec) prescribed to me to help miscarry my pregnancy since my body failed to naturally miscarry. I started to take Cytotec on Saturday May 7th. I was told to take it several times a day and monitor my "bleeding". For the entire day Saturday and most of the day Sunday I had nothing but cramps. Monday rolled around and I still had not bled. I was starting to get really worried that the medicine would not work and that I would have to undergo a procedure called a D&C. A D&C is a procedure also known as dilation and curettage. Dilation means to open up the cervix; curettage means to remove the contents of the uterus. This was something that I really did not want t…

When my husband and I were told to go home and figure out how we wanted to "move forward" (they could have used better terminology, I mean how am I supposed to move forward from the loss of a pregnancy I so desperately wanted) it was with the understanding that what we were going through was a "missed miscarriage". Meaning that I had no symptoms of a "normal" miscarriage. I wasn't having cramps anymore. I never bled. Not even a tiny spot. So basically, the embryo had stopped all growth but my body missed the signal and never prompted the miscarriage to take place. My levels were still rising, albeit slowly, but rising nonetheless. I was still having some pregnancy symptoms but I was no longer pregnant. How cruel and unfair is that? It was like my body was desperately holding on to this pregnancy just as my heart and mind were. So our choices were to wait and see if my body eventually caught up with what was going on and naturally miscarry (which we we…

I am a very instant gratification type of person. When I go on a diet and start exercising I expect to have a flat tummy in 2 days. When I decide I want to plant a garden I want it done and the plants fully blooming the minute I plant the seeds. I don't like to wait. I blame it on the day job. My job is very results driven and I do everything without hesitation and I do it on a very high level. So I expect the same courtesy to be applied to me, and life just doesn't always play by my rules. Go figure. So with that said and even with my fear of not being able to get pregnant, for some reason I just thought that if it was going to happen it was going to happen right away. Remember, I considered my husband to be a fertile myrtle and I just took so many things for granted... So after four months of being off of birth control and still getting negative pregnancy tests I was getting impatient. I had heard of the ovulation prediction kits (OPK's) and decided to put them to use. I…

I have always had this fear that I would never be able to have kids. I don't know where this fear came from, maybe it is because I have several women in my family who were reproductively challenged, or maybe it was just because I had a very low tolerance for pain, and could never imagine squeezing a baby out of my vajayjay. Either way, I just always had this "fear". So when I met my husband who had two children, I thought perfect - my own fertile myrtle! Maybe I won't have trouble getting pregnant after all (when the time was right, of course)!! We dated for 3 years before getting married in April 2010. And it was four months after our wedding that we decided to throw caution to the wind and start trying to have a baby. So I stopped taking my birth control and well... That is where our journey began.