So now that you've read our epic love story, I guess it's time to tell our trying to conceive (TTC) story. We had talked about children before we got married and we were both pro repopulating the earth. We decided however, that we would wait a year after we got married to start trying to get pregnant. We were both 27 when we got married so if we waited a year, we would still have plenty of time to have our first baby before we turned 30. It was the perfect plan.
Or so we thought.
We spent our first year together fixing up the little starter home we bought and took a belated honeymoon/first anniversary trip. When our first anniversary rolled around I decided to push our "go" date for TTC back a few months. We were still working on our house and I was afraid we would get pregnant right away and we wouldn't have time to finish everything before we had the baby. Oh, to be that naive again.
So we threw out the birth control pills and on August 10, 2011 we started our first cycle of TTC. We decided that we would start out with the "Let's just see what happens" approach. I had done some research on fertility and menstrual cycles (Note that i might have a little control freak in my personality), so I at least I had some idea of when was the right time to ave sex. Here's my big issue with the "Let's just see what happens" approach, I had no idea what was going on! I just came off of birth control pills and I had no idea when/if I had ovulated. I didn't even know when to take a pregnancy test because I had no idea how long my cycle might be. So at the end of cycle 1, I bought a basal body thermometer, signed up with fertilityfriend.com and started charting my basal body temp (BBT). I also purchased some Wondfo OPKs from amazon. I was ready for Cycle 2.
I found that I really enjoyed charting my BBT and OPKs. I learned about my cycle and it gave me a job (other than just spreading my legs to the hubs) while we were TTC. The first few months, it was the hubs that was really upset when a cycle was a bust. I had done my research and knew that it could a healthy couple under 35 up to a year to conceive, so I wasn't worried. I looked at it as each failed cycle we were one cycle closer to our BFP (Big Fat Positive- as in pregnancy test). If I only knew. It was around the time we hit cycle 10 that I started to get concerned. I would get a little more upset after each failed cycle. What's strange is the more concerned I got, the less concerned the hubs got. When we hit the year mark in August of 2012 and an all time low in our marriage.
One thing they don't tell you about TTC (unsuccessfully) is the stress it can put on a marriage. I was completely stressed out, which made the hubs completely stressed out. When I'm stressed, I want to over think and talk through every decision, lists the pros and cons of each choice, and think out load about every possible outcome. The hubs is more of a make a decision and move on kind of guy, no need for discussion. Slowly our communication broke down and arguments took over. We were lucky that with a little therapy and some hard work, we were able to rebuild what was broken. Not every couple dealing with infertility is so lucky. I have talked to several women online that their marriage did not survive infertility.
Speaking of infertility, I think I will save the our infertility journey for the next post.
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