A Link in the Chain - Why having children is important to me

So, hopefully you read my introduction and you know a little about me. One of the important things to know is that I've always wanted a large family. I grew up on stories of my grandmother having dozens of cousins within a 5 block radius to play with as she grew up. Her cousins were like siblings to her and as they grew up, while they moved away, they stayed close.

Even at a young age I realized how amazing it is that from two people can come so many more. I wanted to be a link in that chain and create a chain of my own like my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents before me.

I knew when I got married that we would wait at least a year before we started having kids. We had some career goals, traveling and just "us" time that we wanted to do before babies came along to change EVERYTHING, FOREVER.  But finally in the spring of 2011 we decided we were ready to start trying.

In March of 2011 I went off The Pill and we, well you know, tried, and tried again and tried some more. While I knew that it takes most couples at least a few months to get pregnant I really had visions of it happening the very first month. In my head I was estimating when I would find out I was pregnant, when I would get to the 2nd trimester so I could tell people, when I would be due and all the other exciting dates. Of course, that didn't happen. But, I also didn't get my period 28 days later (or 30 or 35...). I figured it was just my body adjusting after having been on The Pill for such a long time (13 years!).

Long, irregular cycles became the norm for me. And after a few of those cycles I made an appointment with my Dr.  Now, I know when you're under 35 they typically don't classify you in the "infertility category" until you've been trying for at least 1 year. Fortunately, my Dr. recognized that I was having some sort of problem and was happy to see me and start treating me for infertility.

At my first appointment with Dr. Redmond (my main OB/GYN) she gave me a standard female workup (feet in the stirups and everything) plus ordered a huge panel of blood work. Everything came back normal, fortunately. And while I'm very glad that all the blood work was normal it didn't tell me why I was having irregular cycles and why I wasn't pregnant.

Dr. Redmond said she would likely prescribe me Clomid but first I would need to have a hysterosalpingogram (more commonly known as an HSG) and my husband would need to have a semen analysis.

More on these exciting test next time...

Peach :)