The Hopeful Beginning:

That blissful moment when two people come together to decide that they are “ready” to become parents. You talk it out and the excitement builds at the thought of a handsome prototype of him with glowing hazel eyes and sandy hair, or a fiery little girl with crystal blue eyes and mop of auburn Irish roots just like her GG. That’s IT, let’s just let go, and let God do what he will do with our lives. Will people think that we are crazy if it happens before our wedding day is even here? PROBABLY! Will it be weird to be adorned in a lacey wedding dress with a baby bump? ABSOLUTELY! But will it all be worth it? Are we ready for it? HELL YES! As two people that prefer to plan out every major step in life, we agreed that we were ready for the journey. Ready, Set, GO!

In my mind, I thought that it would take a couple of months which would put us at our wedding month.  This would mean that we would either not know that I was pregnant until after the wedding or that it would be so early that my secret little nugget wouldn’t be visible under layers of lace and wedding bliss. The next thing I knew the wedding had flown by, and so had the majority of the summer. I was now at my 33rd birthday. All the while still telling myself that this was all fine. We’ve only been trying for 8 months. This is FINE! The Dr said to give this process a solid year before going back in for any further questions….just “have fun with it” she said…most awkward thing to ever have your Dr say to you.

Curiosity of how long this might actually take started to creep in to my mind. I had begun to search Infertility podcasts, apps, and Blogs online. It was so intriguing to see story after story of women getting their BFN, and talking about their DPO, or this dreaded AF. What did all of these terms mean?! Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I won’t need to know all of these things because it’s going to happen for me any time! We are healthy, happy, and every woman in my family is a fertile Myrtles!

However, I am starting to find myself doing this crazy thing that I now know as “symptom spotting”. This is a process of being a hypochondriac, and for lack of more eloquent terms, convincing yourself that THIS is the month! You’re exhausted, bloated, cranky, hungry, and the scale has been creeping up.  Oh, wait, nope! Those were all just symptoms of skipping the gym and going too hard on the Froyo and Sauvignon Blanc on the weekends. This was about the time that I started to dig deeper in to these online resources and app forum discussions.

Yes, you guessed it, I became a frequent acronym user – DPO= Days Past Ovulation, BFN=Big Fat Negative Pregnancy Test, AF=Aunt Flow/Period, and the BIG one, TTC=Trying to Conceive…..

This is an actual post of mine from a fertility app: “AF showed up this morning. Been TTC for a year now. Getting so frustrated. I had high hopes for this cycle for some reason.”

This was around Christmas 2017. A few kind women commented, giving me advice on things to do, attempting to reassuring me that we are all in the same boat together on this. Somehow, this didn’t make me feel any better about the fact that I had just received Mother Nature’s confirmation of my 11th failed attempt at getting pregnant. I had been keeping all of this to myself, and only bringing up my frustrations to my husband on rare occasion. I so badly wanted to be able to surprise our families and friends with a BABY announcement at the most perfect moment. Every month I was thinking ahead at what would be the perfect moment if it were to actually happen this time. Does this sound like self torture? Good, because that’s exactly what it FELT like! I was beginning down the rabbit hole of the acronyms, the frustration, the search for weird herbs, and keeping track of everything that my body did.

People that I knew that had gone through infertility issues had told me in the past how hard it was. I heard them, and I could see the pain in their eyes. I just never knew how deeply it would really cut ME. I felt so trapped in this secret life that I was living.