Our story begins in January 2007. I was lonely, so very painfully lonely, I just knew I was going to spend the rest of my life alone due to the fact that I had Social Anxiety Disorder.
S.A.D is a disorder which causes and irrational fear of social situations. Needless to say, I was afraid to go on dates, have relationships that weren't based online or hold a job.
I finally got the courage up one day to look in the personals section of Myspace (yes they used to have personals). I thought to myself that if I could find a decent man, I would be under no obligation to talk to them on the phone for a while. so I took a chance and began my search. That's when I found James.
Looking at his Myspace profile I realized we had so very much in common. I sent him a message that simply said "I saw your personal ad, just wanted to say Hi" and the rest is history. We actually began talking on the phone almost immediately.
Less then a month later, we were married. Yes that's right, we met January 21st and were married on February 14th (Valentine's Day).
How Our TTC Story Began . . .
When James and I first got married, we had decided to hold off on having children. We knew I wouldn't be able to work, so it was up to him to be the bread winner. For 1 year at this point, I would at times have severe pain in my upper stomach, right below my rib cage. In March of 2007 it finally sent me to the ER.
I was diagnosed with Gallstones and told to see a surgeon. We didn't have insurance and I had been turned down for medicaid and other help with medical assistance and no surgeon would so much as talk to me without one of these things, so I was force to play the hand I was dealt and deal with the pain.
In June of 2007 I had another episode with my Gallbladder, lasting 2 days straight. James rushed me back to the ER where they had to perform Emergency Surgery to remove my Gallbladder because one of the stones had escaped and was blocking my common bile duct. I was in the hospital for a week and told that If I had waited one more day, I would have died.
When I was released from the hospital, James and I talked about things, it was a scare and we realized how short life was. We knew from the moment we met we both wanted children badly and we also knew that despite things being tough financially we knew that if we did have a child it WOULD be taken care of, so in July of 2007, we started TTC.
Since then we've had periods where we have stopped trying and periods where we've "Tried" but not very hard. I say this because, knowing what I know now, we didn't try very hard. The only method I used to track my ovulation is a chart that I kept my cycle dates in. I would only put when my period would start and that's it. No Temping, No OPK's, No CM checking or symptom checking.
My cycles were horribly out of wack. I would have a 16 day cycle one time, then a 62 day cycle and then a 34 day cycle, so it was impossible to tell when I Ovulated, plus my husband and I would only have sex maybe 2 times a month.
Looking back, I'm convinced that we had it all wrong. However, it doesn't change the stigma I have from the many Negative Pregnancy tests I've had to endure over the past 4 years.
Where We Are Now
Today we are actually TTC. We're trying very hard to get pregnant, doing everything we can to increase our chances without doctors and without expensive medications, because we just can't afford doctors or meds.
My cycles have been normal for the past year (Between 28-32 days) and I couldn't thank god enough for that. I however do have untreated Hypothyroidism which I was diagnosed with in 2003.
You may ask why I use "infertility" to describe our situation if I didn't believe I had done all I could to get pregnant. It's because primary infertility describes couples who have never been able to become pregnant after at least 1 year of unprotected sex.
Now that you are up to date, you can follow us on our quest to become parents, my future pregnancy (god be willing) and our future children's development.
If you are on your own TTC Journey I would love to hear from you!
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