Our TTC Story, Part 1: How It Began

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Photo Credit: Molumen

We are just near the end of the “waiting game” for this month, so now is as good a time as any to share our TTC story.

J. and I got married on March 26, 2010, when I was 36. I pretty much decided I wanted to wait at least a year before we started trying to have kids. Seeing my age, I probably should have thought a little harder on that one – and prayed a lot more. But I didn’t. We were both a little older, and I just wanted us to have a year to get adjusted to being married before bringing kids into the mix. I thought I was being smart. I wanted. I thought.

J. didn’t really see the need for birth control – he’s of the feeling that we should just let God be in control of that area; in his reasoning, no one in the Bible had such precise control of their child-bearing status. They just let God be God. While I didn’t necessarily disagree, in retrospect, I should have given his opinion more weight and maybe listened to him and at least asked God what I should do. He left it up to me. I was a nervous bride with a lot on her mind and just wanted to settle in to marriage peacefully. I just didn’t think I could handle a baby on top of all the new life changes that were coming. So I went on the pill three months before the wedding.

Up to that point, my periods had always been regular – 31 days. My OBGYN prescribed me Junel FE, and then Loestrin, both very low-dose birth control pills. I was on birth control for a total of 17 months. I was planning to go off the pill after we were married one year, but we were going to Nigeria that summer on a missions trip. I felt it was better to wait until after the trip, and my doctor agreed. So, July 2011, after the trip, I went off the pill.

My period returned to normal right away. Technically, we weren’t really ‘trying’ when I went off the pill; we just weren’t preventing. And according to all the TTC gurus, we were doing it all wrong (I later found out).

That November, 2011, my period was late by a week. I couldn’t believe it. Surely, it couldn’t be this easy!

And, no, it wasn’t.

I took a pregnancy test, and it came back negative. While I didn’t think I would get pregnant so easily, I also didn’t know why my period would be so late. That had NEVER happened. So, another week. No period. Another test. Negative. I thought I had to be pregnant, because why, out of nowhere, would my period be so late?

After the second negative test, I made an appointment with my OBGYN. Definitely wasn’t pregnant, and I had a small cyst on my ovary. It was nothing to be concerned about. They really didn’t do anything for me; nothing was really wrong – but no explanations for why my period was so late either.

I got my period the day after my appointment.

So, for the next eight or nine months, my cycle went from 28 days to 45 days; 27 days to 42 days; 29 days to 39 days. It was consistently inconsistent.

Still, during this time, we were not technically ‘trying’ and after doing some research, that was when I realized we were ‘doing it all wrong.’

By the summer of 2012, my period was close to being normal again…something like 29 days one month and 35 the next; the gap was getting smaller.

In August of 2012, I starting using the Clear Blue Ovulation Predictor Kit. And, now, we were ‘trying,’ doing all that we should according to textbook.

I went through one or two cycles where my ovulation seemed pretty normal. Then, in October 2012, my levels went up around day 11 or 12. They stayed up until about day 23, then dropped. I never showed ovulation.

Now, I was annoyed and freaked out. What the heck? I made an appointment with my OBGYN for the very next day. Basically, we decided to do the blood workup for the fertility tests and try to determine what was going on. She told us to give our efforts a real ‘college try’ this time around and to get bloodwork done, beginning on CD 3 of my next period.

That Sunday (probably about CD 26 or 27), I got what I thought was the beginning of my period. It was light, and by the next day, it was done. My periods are usually 3-5 days and definitely not light the entire time.

I told my friend about it, and she said maybe it was implantation bleeding; I knew what that was from all of my recent ‘research,’ but I was doubtful. About a week later, for kicks – on Sunday morning, October 28, 2012 – I did a pregnancy test, one of those Dollar Tree cheapos because I wasn’t going to waste good money on a negative test.

I remember this exact date because this was the Sunday before Superstorm Sandy hit Long Island.

It was positive.

This was first and lesser-known of two hurricanes that were about to hit my world.