I’m infertile but not defective: how our journey to parenthood is changing
I’m one of those women struggling with infertility issues. One: my age. I’m no spring chicken. Two: endometriosis — I was treated for that two years ago after suffering for over a year with crazy painful periods, and after my husband and I had been trying for more than six months. Three, high FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) levels — it’s taking more hormones to kick-start my ovaries and get them working.
How and when in the now: learning to live in the moment
I’ll admit it: I am a planner. I need to have all my bearings gathered with at least an outline of things to come. After our wedding some life situations like health issues and a death came up, our priorities shifted, and the planned window of time for having “our babies” moved up. And now it has, at last, become a real fleshy possibility.
This shadow of possibility scares me shitless like nothing before….
How and why I voluntarily became a single mother at 22
When I was little, my rendition of “house” always included pretending I was a single mother struggling to make ends meet. I’m not sure if my eight-year-old self could foresee the future, or if I was just making do with the fact that I didn’t ever have a boy to play my “husband.” I dabbled in dating as a teenager. By “dabble” I mean my relationships never lasted more than three months and most were more like a few days. I just never had much interest in men (or women, for that matter), sexually speaking.
Self-care during fertility treatments
If you’re doing fertility treatments, chances are pretty good that you’re stressing the fuck out. Not only do you have the logistics of appointments and medications (and physical/emotional weirdness from said medications), but if you found your way to fertility treatments after dealing with infertility, then you’ve got the emotional burdens from THAT whole awfulness.
And then, as if the whole process wasn’t stressful enough, then you have to stress about STRESSING, because everyone tells you that anxiety will negatively influence your chances of getting pregnant. Not stressing isn’t just an issue of sanity — it’s an issue of treatment effectiveness. AARGH!
So, that’s all fine and good: DON’T STRESS. But how? How can you keep yourself calm and non-anxious during the mind-fuck that is fertility treatments?
Our lesbian conception story – how a salsa jar helped us get pregnant!
We always knew we wanted to have a baby, but having two sets of ovaries doesn’t really help with that. Patty’s best friend has always talked about helping her conceive by donating sperm, but Patty didn’t want to carry the baby herself. I, on the other hand, was happy to get pregnant. We did consider adoption, and I in fact always thought that would be the way I’d have a child, but since we had a willing known donor… we figured we should at least give conceiving a biological child a shot!
My female acupuncturist knocked me up — and it was mostly painless
When I first met my acupuncturist in a small Brooklyn practice where a mechanic shop spewed fumes nearby, I took one look at her and hoped she would knock me up. In fact, I desperately hoped she was the one. The one who would know just where to stick those freaky needles for my womb to quiver and totally rock out a life force ready to take the world by storm in 9+ months. I hoped she was magic. I hoped it happened immediately.
How can I politely tell people that my reproductive goals are none of their business?
As my husband and I decided that this pack of birth control pills would be the last (for a while), I found myself confronted with an awkward situation. Random people (co-workers, clients, etc.) asking me in one form or another if I was thinking about having a baby yet.
My experience using Fertility Awareness Method to conceive a child
For the past eight years I have been battling severe endometriosis. Three surgeries, two rounds of medical menopause, and four doctors later: I am pregnant. But getting here wasn’t easy. Because of my endometriosis it was automatically assumed that I would have a difficult time getting pregnant and therefore my doctor wanted to put me on Clomid. Given that I had just gotten over another round of menopause-inducing hormones, I wasn’t about to add more synthetic hormones to the mix. So I refused the prescription and decided to try to conceive for at least six months before taking a serious fertility drug.