I'm 31 years old, happily married to my 33 year old DH (known from this point forward as "P") for the past 4.5 years. We've been together for 9 years altogether. Until approximately 2 years ago, we were convinced that we did not want children. I don't remember the exact point when we changed our minds. The reason why we changed our minds, however, is because we want to share our love with a child (or children) who can then grow and share it with others. Sappy? Maybe. True? Definitely.
We were living overseas at the time that we decided we wanted a child, so we chose to wait until we moved back to the U.S. before trying. While overseas, I had some health issues crop up and after an inordinate amount of testing, I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease. I don't remember being bitten by a tick, but the disease is relatively widespread in the area in which we lived. Before going through a 3 week course of daily IV antibiotics, my doctor also discovered that my hormone levels were completely unbalanced. She took me off birth control pills in November 2007, after I had been on them for nearly 15 years.
Once P and I were safely together back in the U.S., we decided it was the right time to TTC. I was full of hope because I had been charting for a good 6 months, and I tried to ignore the fact that my cycles were very irregular. After all, I'd heard and read that it could take up to a year post-BCP for my cycles to regulate.
As we began our TTC journey, I started to lose quite a bit of hair. Not enough that I had bald spots or anything, but it was noticeable to me because I've always had thick, shiny hair. Suddenly it was thinning, weak and dull. My hairstylist mentioned it to me, but I didn't want to own up to it. My hair did start growing back after a couple months, and now I have these ridiculous baby hairs that make it quite a challenge to style my hair (which I had cut much shorter after the hair shedding incident).
After 7 months (5 cycles) of well timed sex and no BFP, I was becoming discouraged. I went to the OB/GYN last month for my annual check-up and mentioned the situation to her. I was shocked when she took me seriously and ordered blood work! She wrote a script for the cycle day 3 FSH, estradiol and progesterone, as well as TSH, glucose, insulin, etc. I've had an enlarged thyroid and borderline test results for TSH and glucose/insulin in the past, so she's going to monitor that. She doubts that the hair loss was caused by coming off BCP.
She also gave me the following information: 90% of couples who chart cycles/time sex become pregnant within 6 months, and 98% are successful within a full year. So while I thought I'd have to wait until May (one full year of trying) to have any testing done, she doesn't feel that is necessary given my medical history, the fact that I appear to be ovulating but still have irregular cycles, and the fact that we've been timing sex.
And that is our TTC journey in a nut shell!
Right now, I am 5 DPO according to FF (I'm not sure that I agree, however). I am not holding out much hope for this cycle because it doesn't appear that we did the best job timing sex this time. I sometimes get ambiguous readings on OPKs, and my CM and CP don't always match what my temps are doing. That said, I have been eating pineapple (core included) since 2 DPO - just in case.
FF shows my test date as January 23rd, but I really dread seeing another BFN, so I will probably wait beyond that unless AF shows. And if AF does show, then I will be able to get my CD 3 blood work done. There's always a silver lining, right? :)
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