A Not So Short History

What inspired me to write this blog, was quite unoriginally another blog. Reading someone else's and thinking I can do this as well, if not better. My husband and I have been struggling lately with trying to make a baby. I feel that our unique journey is worth documenting and sharing. Beyond an infertility story, my life is a series of unfortunate events that somehow keeps cascading down, but of course my life has wonderful and beautiful happy moments as well. I intend to share it all and maybe someday, someone will run across it and stare at their computer screen and feel a sense of connectedness knowing that someone else has been there too.

On the surface I look, feel and act like your run-of-the-mill thirty year old. I can be very bubbly and talkative, and full of life, but brewing underneath is the acculmulation of my not so ordinary life.

I grew up in the suburbs, but had a less than typical existence. A number of factors worked against me. My life has been defined by a pattern of physical illness and medical care. And my less than stellar homelife growing up and those negative relationships continue to plague me to this day.

I was born with a cleft palate. I was not born a girl, I was not born in Danbury, CT, I was not the second child born. I was born with a cleft palate. Whenever my mother has had occasion to relay my birth, her words have always been, "And the doctor announced, 'It's a girl and she has a cleft palate'." So began my long and very tenured medical career, as a patient that is.

Instead of me going into a long narrative about each and every medical event leading up until now; I think a list will surfice. In later posts I can provide more history and vignettes.

My Medical History:
Born with a cleft palate.
Cleft palate surgery done at 18 mos.
6 ear tube sugeries over my early childhood.
Stitches in my head-age six.
Butterfly stitch for a nose injury-age eight.
Braces for one year-age nine.
Broken foot-age eleven.
Foot sugery-age twelve.
Braces on-age twelve.
2nd Cleft palate surgery-age thirteen.
Homorraging several days later and a rushed return to the hospital for more stitches.
Braces off-age seventeen.
Relative physical health for a good long while. Until...
Cystic acne-age 20 to 24. Periods of clear skin when treatment worked.
Braces, again-age 21 to 23.
Back injury-age 22.
Urinary frequency-age 25.
Foot injury-age 27.
Ectopic Pregnancy-age 29.
Tooth reabsorption-age 29.
Breast lump-age 29.

Can you tell 29 was a good year for me?

So here I am at 30 and still on this journey that is my life. My not so ordinary life. And feel I've had two crosses to bear in life physical truama and emotional pain that was seeded and nurtured by my family. The emotional pain isn't as easy to map out or list dear reader. I wish I could make a simply compact list, well actually I might be able to...

Hmmm....

I was suicidal at 9. I thought life was pointless.
I was severely depressed at 15, and suicidal. I thought life was had a point, but I didn't like the point.
I was severely depressed at 17, life's point was stabbing me.
I was serverly depressed at 18, abused alcohol, I cut myself, and had therapy for 14 weeks. I started to accept the point.
During my early 20s I worked through a lot of my issues. And now I am basically normal/healthy. But the difficulties of the last year have set me on a downward tragectory emotionally.

Maybe that's enough for now regarding my past. I will elaborate more in later entries about why I might have had emotional issues (my family) and tell you the specific tales of physical traumas. What should know now is the history of the past year.

Married a year and eight months my husband finally consented to try for a baby. Actually he came home one day from work eager to begin trying. He heard someone at work discussing how someone they knew had had issues trying to get pregnant and suddenly my husband wanted to try because he didn't want us to wait and have problems.

But perhaps we'd waited too long already...

Deciding to Try
We were married in October 2003 and a few months later in January 2004 I started to frequent the Baby Talk board on theknot.com. I read about women's pregnancies and looked through belly pics and started to gain a working knowledge of pregnancy and trying to conceive. My husband and I had always known that we wanted children and roughly how many, but as far as when said family was to be started that hadn't been pinned down. So we ended up having a series of discussions and decided that after we had been married one year, we would try to conceive. So after we'd been married a year we made a couple of attempts in one cycle and my husband proclaimed that he was not ready to be a daddy. With those words any hope of trying then was over. He said he wanted to wait six more months and then we would try. One day I got a call while my husband was at work. He wanted to wait not six more months, but another year and half and not begin trying until Spring 2006!!! I was floored, but I accepted it. I wanted my husband to be ready and willing when we finally got pregnant. But as I already said, one day some random co-worker's comments convinced him and lit the fire. Sadly, I couldn't have had that influence.

The Beginning
So we began to try. What you should know is that I had been charting by this time for thirteen months. Yes, I'd started trying way back in May 2004. I wanted to chart for awhile before we even started trying. And when trying got pushed back, I just continued to chart. So every morning for months I'd been taking my temp first thing in the morning, but I knew two things, when to do it(before ovulation), and what success looks like. Well we tried and got lucky, very lucky. We were pregnant!!! I had two positive pregnancy tests a couple days apart and then I got my period. I called my OBGYN and he sent me for bloodwork and tada I was still pregnant. He did more bloodwork a couple days later and I was a little more pregnant and a week later and I was even more pregnant. But things were wrong, very wrong. About a week and a half before I got my first positive pregnancy test I started have strong pelvic pain and maroon spotting. As I became more and more pregnant my pain was stronger and isolated to my left side. DH and I ended up at the emergency room the night before his Alaskan men's adventure vacation. They took my blood and told me that my OBGYN should be following me every forty-eight hours with bloodwork.