We got married in July, 2008. We already knew that children were in our plans so we decided that we would start a family after our delayed honeymoon in the winter. The month finally arrived and I stopped birth control, both of us naively expecting to be pregnant soon after.
By the 6th month of trying, we were getting discouraged. We were trying everything we could think of. You know all of those myths that people toss around? Tried them all. It is actually kind of funny to think back now to everything we tried and only a person who has walked the path of infertility can truly appreciate the humour in it. By the 10th month, I had been charting my cycles and knew deep in my heart that something just wasn't "right". So, I paid a visit to my doctor.
Before a referral can be sent to a fertility clinic without prior medical diagnosis, most couples are told to try on their own for a year. We were two cycles short of that, but I convinced my doctor to conduct some basic testing on us. As I had suspected, there was indeed something wrong. He immediately sent a referral for us, and the journey through infertility officially began.
We saw a specialist at the IWK Health Centre. She ordered even more testing for both of us and sent us on our way. We were still waiting on an official diagnosis so we continued trying on our own in hopes that we'd be able to cancel our next appointment.
On my 28th birthday, we went to the appointment together. We were anxious, scared and excited that we might finally have an answer. We were now into our 13th month of trying, and were more than ready to be parents.
We sat down and without wasting any time the doctor went over our results. My tests looked normal, but we were diagnosed with Male Factor Infertility (I won't get into the specifics publicly for personal reasons). Then she said words that are burned into my memory. "I'm sorry. Based on these results, the only way that you will ever be parents is through adoption or in-vitro fertilization."
I remember feeling like the world had suddenly fallen all around me. All that I had ever wanted was to be a mother. I knew that we could be good parents. We had so much love waiting for a child...so why us?
We left with genetic testing to complete for my husband and a lot to think about. We spent the next several months waiting and researching our options. We both felt very strongly that we wanted a genetic child, so IVF was the one we went with. We couldn't proceed until we had the genetic results back to evaluate risk to the possible baby, and we had a lot of money to save.
We booked another appointment in August to go over our results. We had been waiting since February and had reached the breaking point for waiting. We sat in the office for over an hour while our doctor chased down the results that had been delayed because of a back log at the lab and then the proper consent not being sent by the blood collection lab. She finally got a partial result. We were cleared to start IVF whenever we wanted while we waited for the rest of the tests to be written up and received.
And so, we began the next step in our journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment