Rewind 15 years now and I never would have imagined to be a family of five. My husband never wanted children... I really think that he just didn’t want to give up his freedom and his partying ways. I knew though deep down that I would change his mind, or I probably would not have married him. We were both young, well 23 and 28 when we got married, so we both had some time to start a family. We actually waited for six years before we even started thinking of having kids. It actually took two things to happen to actually get me even thinking about wanting to start having a family.
We bought a new house and threw an “open house” party and invited a lot of people that we knew. Well one of the families that came had some of the cutest little kids, and you know what kids do… touch everything. Well one of them decided to put handprints on the mirror on the back of the door in the bathroom, which normally I would have cleaned immediately. However, something about it actually melted my heart just a little and I left it there for weeks before I actually cleaned the mirror. This was the first thing to happen to make me realize that I was ready to start a family of my own.
The second thing that happened really that got me wanting to really start a family...
So I am the oldest of three girls in my family, so in my mind I always wanted to be the one to do things first...I was the first to get married, so of course I thought I needed to be the first to get pregnant. Well...that didn’t happen. My sister and husband came over one weekend and hit us with the fact that they were expecting. Now don’t get me wrong, I was so happy for them, but I was also jealous and mad that it wasn’t me first...I mean we were married a few years longer already and the oldest should have the baby first, right? Well I guess that was not the case. So yes, this news brought on a whole lot of tears that evening after they left, and honestly it was the first time my husband realized that I was serious now...it was time for us to start a family.
So we got "busy" a lot for months and nothing was happening. Some people are lucky to get pregnant while on birth control, others get pregnant very fast, then there was us...the ones that were trying so hard to conceive but it just wasn’t happening. We tried so many different things, tracking my cycles on the calendar, the Basal Body temperature reading, we even tried the sex every single day, and nothing was working. We tried for just under a year and a half and it finally got to the point of asking the question... could one of us be infertile?
Is Fertility Testing Needed
So I went to my doctor to see what we could do. She gave us the test kit for him to have his “little men” tested. But of course, it sat on the counter for a bit of time before he even wanted to do it, because in his mind...of course there was nothing wrong with him, he wasn’t the problem.
So while that test sat waiting to be taken, my doctor sent me in for a procedure called Hysterosalpingogram (HSG) to check things. So this procedure had to be timed out perfectly in your cycle, you had to no longer be menstruating, and you could not do it around the time you would ovulate (so not to flush out an already fertilized egg), so that timing alone was stressful to plan out to have it done at the hospital. The HSG Procedure was an outpatient procedure where they inject your Fallopian tubes with fluid to flush them out to be sure that you have zero blockages. And let me tell you what...I still remember to this day how horribly painful that procedure was! The results came back and they said that I had zero blockages and that all was fine. Yeah! It wasn’t me! So it was definitely time for him to get done what was needed. But of course, it still set there for a few weeks.
A Miracle Happened
Well needless to say, that test of his never had to be taken. I still to this day don’t know if that procedure I had done actually did break up a blockage or not, or if it was finally meant to be...but I got pregnant days after having the procedure done. :) I could not believe that it had finally happened..,and yes, I took three pregnancy tests all showing positive, just to be sure that I really was! We were both excited, me probably a bit more than him, because reality just set in for him...LOL!
We went back and forth on if we were going to tell people right away or not, because a lot of miscarriages happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy for many reasons. But neither of us could keep a secret! We just told people because everyone knew we had been trying for so long. Plus, we figured even if we did have a miscarriage we would tell people about that too, so why keep this great news to ourselves.
Now this pregnancy actually went pretty well, other than horrible nausea, there were no complications compared to the other pregnancies. But those stories will come at a later time.
There Is A Plan You Are Not Aware Of
So the moral of this story is that there is a plan for everything. You aren’t going to be handed things you so desperately want until you are absolutely ready to be given them. We obviously weren’t ready and we had to go through a few things before our family started.
So if you are struggling to conceive, know that it will happen, if and when it is meant to. Don’t give up it will work out the way it is supposed to.
I would love to hear about your experiences with fertility. Feel free to share your story with me at Hello@ElizabethLBalmer.com. I look forward to hearing what you went through, plus sometimes it is just nice to talk to someone who has gone through the same things.
And of course, if you know someone that may have gone through the same issues as I did, please share this blog with them. I would appreciate you sharing it with others!
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