We're Not Expecting

I wish I was pregnant. 

Sometimes I feel like if I say it enough it might come true.

I wish I was pregnant. 

There are pregnant people everywhere I look. The same thing happened when I was waiting for my boyfriend to propose. Every day I would open Facebook and see engagement announcements, or overhear someone discussing their wedding plans with a friend. I would start at other people’s engagement rings and wonder when my turn would come.

It seems silly now. So small and insignificant. Because I knew my boyfriend and I would get married. I was impatient, but never unsure. 

This time is different. There is no guarantee that we will have a baby. There is a wish, a desire, and a lot of hard work going in to it, and yet absolutely no guarantee. So now when I open Facebook to see pregnant and birth announcements, the happiness I should feel for my friends turns into a profound sadness with a pang of jealousy. 

People say that good things happen in their own time, but no one said how heavy this time would feel. 

Every cycle its the same thing. It starts, I’m motivated and ready to conceive. I’ve done my research and test my ovulation daily. Hubby let’s make a baby!

Then the days pass and I don’t get a positive ovulation tests. I forget to take my temperature because it has become too depressing. We still DTD as often as possible and keep our fingers crossed. 

After that first failed attempt, I entered into one of the weirdest stages of TTC so far. I passed day 28 of my cycle... 

I took a pregnancy test. 

Big. Fat. Negative.

Then I passed day 30... 35... 40... I had every symptom from nausea to a heightened sense of smell and then some. 

I took a pregnancy test. 

Negative.

I took an ovulation test, for good measure.

Negative.

Day 45... day 50... 

I decided to make an appointment with the doctor. With issues due to a new insurance policy, the process took much longer than it should have. 

More waiting.

More symptoms.

I took another pregnancy test.

Another negative.

Day 55... Day 60...

I was sure I was pregnant and the tests were just wrong. Maybe my hormones were so out of whack that they couldn’t be picked up? Who knows. 

Around day 75 I finally have the doctor appointment. With little sympathy the doctor told me what I already knew, that coming off birth control can mess with your hormones and an irregular cycle is “normal.” I asked her how a 75+ day cycle could be normal and she had nothing more to say other than advising me to be patient. Keep trying and wait. 

An action plan was put into place. When I reached 90 days with no period she would have me come in for a blood test, see that big fat negative again, and then she would put me on hormones to regulate my cycle. While I wasn’t too excited about the idea of external influences, I was willing to try anything. This could work!

Where do I even begin?

It almost feels silly to type these words, to share something with the world wide web that I feel uncomfortable sharing with my own friends and family.  Society has convinced me to not talk about it outside of my own home. But I'm tired of not talking about it. I'm tired of lying and pretending my heart doesn't break more and more every time I wait for a plus sign that never appears. Yep, my husband and I are trying to get pregnant. Let's talk about it.

We are young and have been married less than a year. Out of the people that we have shared the "we're trying" news with, the reaction has been "whats the rush?" and "you have your entire life ahead of you." But we want to be parents, to welcome a little tiny human in to our world, and pour so much love in to them. We have been 'us' for 7 years and this is what's next for us. A family.

I stopped my birth control in February when we decided to just "see what happens!" I stopped drinking alcohol and caffeine, and started taking prenatal vitamins and exercising more. I wanted my body to be more than ready to grow that little human. Three weeks later I was convinced I was pregnant! The symptoms were there. I was nauseous with really odd cravings, sleepy all the time, and had stomach pains. I HAD TO BE PREGNANT. I was buying groceries for the week and walked by the pharmacy. The pregnancy tests caught my eye. $20?! Oh well, I'm buying two! I didn't tell my husband (the man I text to tell him what I ate for lunch and updates on cute things our dogs do) because I was all about the surprise. Everything was planned in my head, how I would tell him and then how we would tell our parents a few weeks later... How I needed to cancel some of my work I had schedule in December and January because I would have a newborn at home...

That was my first negative test. My heart sunk, but maybe I had a faulty test or just needed one more day to get my positive. I told myself I could try again tomorrow. I wrapped the test in a napkin and threw away the evidence so I wouldn't have to share the bad news. But tomorrow's test was also negative. And the next one. And the next. I must be doing something wrong... I downloaded a cycle-tracking app, and cracked down with more research on getting pregnant. It was then I learned about the affects of birth control on a woman's body even after she stops taking it. That was the first pang of true fear I felt, what if it takes months to get pregnant? And then, what if I can't get pregnant?

It might sound crazy. A 23 year old newlywed so worried about not being able to get pregnant after a month of trying. But that negative test brought up a decade old fear of mine. Something deep-seeded that made absolutely no sense; I was terrified I would have trouble getting pregnant. I felt it. I knew this would happen. (Yes this is one month in, and yes I feel crazy dramatic saying that even now.)