Trying to Conceive

It all began 3 years ago, when Doug and I got married. I already had a 2 year old daughter, Meredith, but I had always dreamed of having two or three kids. I assumed that the minute I stopped taking my birth control...Bam! I would get pregnant. The fact that I didn't get pregnant that first month was absolutely shocking, and to be honest, not completely disappointing. It would just mean more time to enjoy our new marriage and more time to enjoy my little girl.

After about four months of trying, I started to become impatient. Things weren't going according to my plan that I had in my head. I decided my body must have been the problem. It obviously wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. I remember getting out of the shower one day and looking at my body in the mirror and being angry. "Why can't you get pregnant?! What's going on in there?" I thought. I was already tired of seeing negative pregnancy tests.

It wasn't long after that when I decided to pick up an ovulation test from the pharmacy. Much to my surprise, I was ovulating on exactly the same day each month. When I shared this news with my husband, he was quite surprised as well. Especially since, for the past six months, we had assumed the only thing standing between us and a little bundle of joy, was my unproductive womb.

They had recently put a new product on the market that tested both male and female fertility. You could pick it up at the local pharmacy, and while it was somewhat expensive, we decided it was definitely information worth knowing. We got it home and followed all the directions. We waited the 30 minutes for the male test to finish, and when it did, nothing. No red line. So we did the obvious next step. Buy another one and repeat the test. Again, nothing. We decided at this point it was time to take our problem to a doctor.

Doug made an appointment with his general practitioner. They did a physical and also a semen analysis. We waited on pins and needles for the results to come back. During that time, I did non-stop research about male factor infertility. I learned about normal ranges. I learned about sperm count, motility and morphology. It was also then that I read about In-vitro fertilization. It sounded so scary and so invasive. I shared all the information with Doug, so that when the doctor's office called him, he would know what it all meant. I talked with him about in-vitro and he assured me that if he did have a problem, there would be an easy fix and that we didn't need to worry about fertility treatments.

When Doug called with the semen analysis results, I could tell by his voice on the phone that they weren't good. I begged him to tell me the numbers. He wouldn't say, so I asked him, "How bad are the numbers? Are we talking like under 20 million sperm? Under 5 million?" When he told me, all I could think was IVF.

The nurse gave him the name of a Reproductive Endocrinologist to call, and so began our journey...