Tying the Knot and If at First You Don't Conceive...

Our wedding was beautiful, picture perfect in my mind. I was so happy to be marrying such a wonderful man. There was no cloud over us, as we were excited to give of ourselves fully and completely as God intended. This time we were doing it right!  The readings came from Tobit, the prayer with Sarah, and Romans 12:1-2 about giving your body as a living sacrifice.  Good friend said she almost stood up and shouted Amen! at that part because we were really doing it!

I remember some things I said in those early days. I was insightful enough to say “how do you prepare to have a baby this cycle and also know you might not ever have one?” I knew it was impossible to stay impartial that way. I vowed to both be excited to have a baby and also to make the most of our time being without children. Something else I said in those early days, “I am not going to let this take over our lives!” Little did I know the fears, the emotions, the learning and physical requirements of it all would very much make their way into every crevice of our lives. I was naïve, yet I am not complaining because, as you will see, we were so very fortunate.
Already we knew we were blessed. We knew that we had more diagnosis than some get in a lifetime (I was pained for the women who had “undiagnosed fertility”). I knew we had hit the ground running when time was so precious. I knew God had rewarded our giving up premarital relations and giving everything over to Him without holding back. The direct result of this was giving up the pill, turning to charging for health reasons, getting a referral for the creator of the charting system (Dr. Hilger’s in Omaha) and coming away from my trip with a handful of diagnosis and another one of treatments-yes, things that could be done about what I had. It wasn't that we were special, quite the opposite; it was that God wants to do these things for everyone, but we had seen our error early and were now changing our ways and letting give us these precious gifts.
So we were hopeful and we were blessed. And yet I was more than a little jealous when friend said that after she got married, they weren’t going to try and they weren’t go to avoid and they would see what would happen. With pcos, endometriosis, low progesterone and estrogen post ovulation, complete lack of ovulation on my own, thyroid and clotting issues, DH and I would never be able to “just see what happens.” You see, because I don’t ovulate without a pill, I either take it or I don’t. And if I don’t do my post-ovulatory shots, I would doom a baby to be miscarried. Yes, a lot of responsibility, but we had a sound moral method to achieve or avoid and so we made our choice to try to achieve.
We tried for two cycles with no results. My sis JB was also trying during that time I believe and one day we had a funny conversation. She was asking me if I put my legs up on the wall afterwards. Of course not, I said. I refused to be caught up in silly wives tales. (and there are a lot of them that come with infertility). I was placing my hope in hard science, and of course faith, and only do treatments that were called for by my diagnoses. I figured this was “function-based” which is similar to what I do in my job (function-based interventions for children with behavior problems). I knew how much it helped in my job, to narrow things down, and I refused to be like so many women doing treatments of this and that without knowing if that was even their problem. I wasn’t judging, but I didn’t want to be desperate like that. With my faith came peace that many with IF don't have. I was grateful to God for the diagnosis we already had.
But even though I wasn’t going to engage in silly wives’ tales, one thing sis JB said stuck in my head; it was about waiting to pee. I had seminal fluid instructions to follow post intercourse as part of CrMS. I had learned these in my sessions. I had asked my fertility care provider at the last appt, did we still do them when we are trying to achieve? Yes, she said, they are about hygiene and avoiding observation confusion. And so each time we had intercourse, I promptly got up and urinated. Silly me. I asked sis JB to return my NFP book I left at her house when I lived there and looked up seminal fluid instructions. I learned that while you still do them within an hour after intercourse, you wait 30 minutes at least when you are trying to achieve. So, validating the wives’ tale with science, I was excited! There was a reason we weren’t getting pregnant. I could do something about it! And so next time, not only did I not urinate for 59 minutes (haha!) but I had my legs up on the wall for good measure.