It is 2 years ago to the day since I took my last pill. We had had a rather non-committal conversation on Christmas Eve 2003, namely me saying that didn’t he think it was time we started thinking about children. A good friend of mine was 2 months away from having her first child and I just felt like that after having turned thirty only 2 weeks before it was time to start considering it seriously. I stressed to my husband that it more than likely would take up to one year before we got pregnant. Never did I really think that this would be the case, or even longer!

I had read up on the statistics and after being on the contraceptive pill for nearly 10 years I had heard all of the stories of people taking a long time to get pregnant, with the pill’s influence coming back to haunt them for months after they had finished their last packet.

I come from a fairly “fertile” family (my mother is one of 10, I am one of 5, and one of my sisters has 7 children) so although the probability was in my favour for a quick result, there was something niggling me in the back of my mind that maybe I would fall into the “sod’s law” bracket and not be so fortunate.

Over the course of the next 2 years that niggle became a nudge, and at times a punch in the stomach.

I told myself that it was important to remain laid back about the entire process. “Relax and it will happen” “Don’t think about it too much” were all ringing in my head!

Having been on the pill for so long I really couldn’t remember much about my menstrual cycles before hand. No one ever really sat me down when I was a teenager and told me what was normal or that I should keep a record of how long it was between my periods, etc. I found myself at a complete loss as to what to expect from a body that had been regulated by medication for nearly a decade.

I decided to turn to the internet to try and fathom out what was going on and how I could improve my chances of conceiving…..of course in a very laid back and non-obsessive fashion!! ;) What I unearthed was mind blowing! The more I read, the more I wanted to know - it was all I could think about. It became like a full time job! Investigating and analysing every “sign” my body threw out at me.

I did my utmost not to get too deep in the TTC (Trying to Conceive) world by refraining from using OPKs or charting, but to be honest although I looked to the outside world (i.e. my husband) to be laid back, I spent almost every waking moment thinking about my cycle, wondering if we had timed the sex well and if my period would show up that month. I kept a note in my diary of any “symptoms” I might get like a headache or cramps, when we “did the deed”, all so I could review them at the end of the cycle and see if I could get any closer to cracking the conception puzzle!

From the outset I kept my husband on the outside of this new world I had entered. I was determined not to let myself become one of those woman who demanded sex when they thought they were ovulating. I used what powers of persuasion I had, but if the answer was no, I tried to leave it at that……..a fatalist approach!!

I managed to survive on this philosophy for 11 months. My cycles were okay, varying from 29 to 35 days, but then I had one cycle of 64 days and another of 46, and at that point I decided I needed to take back some control. I decided to start charting my temperature so I would know once and for all if indeed I was ovulating.

I guess charting was my way of putting off what I knew to be the inevitable, which was a trip to the Doctor. I was terrified of what I might be told and I wanted to put that off for as long as possible.

So I embarked on the next stage of my journey, that of charting! This opened yet another Pandora’s box! The system of charting appealed to my analytical mind and I actually found myself enjoying it! Of course I was still determined to keep all of this from my husband, so the first few months I found myself waking up to take my temperature with the digital thermometer in the dark, quickly putting it under the pillow as soon as it started beeping so he wouldn’t hear it, and then creeping into the bathroom to read the display as I couldn’t turn the light on in the bedroom as then I would wake him and he would naturally want to know what I was doing!! It was a cloak and dagger affair for a while! Me and my thermometer!

Over the course of the coming months I was able to see that I was actually ovulating and I can’t tell you how much better that made me feel! My ovulation date did vary cycle to cycle, but my body appeared to be working and that was such a relief! It gave me a sense of control, like I finally understood my body, a knowledge that had eluded me for one full year.

By my fifth month charting I knew that I could not put off that visit to the Doctor any longer. I had been off of the pill for 16 months now and no result. I couldn’t continue to bury my head in the sand. As terrified as I was of what I might be told, I knew I had to go. After all it might be something as simple as popping a pill to solve whatever problem there may be, and the longer I evaded going, the longer it would take for us to get the family we so desperately wanted. So I took a very deep breath and made an appointment with a local fertility clinic.

Those few appointments I had were possibly the most nerve wracking times I have worked through in my life to date. All manner of possible diagnoses were going through my head, my insides were screwed up in a tight ball and I felt like I was going to throw up. After my first appointment with the fertility nurse and Doctor I remember driving home and just bursting into tears. I felt like I had started a chain of events that I had little control over, and now I would find out why, more than one year later, I still wasn’t pregnant. The “not knowing” was a heavy weight to carry, but the “knowing” was an equally terrifying prospect.

I felt I had little support or understanding from my husband, but how could he know how deep my pain ran? I had excluded him from this entire journey up until this point, as much for my benefit as his. In a way I guess I had felt that the fewer people who knew how I was feeling the smaller the problem was. As long as I could contain it within myself I could control it and how it was making me feel. Here was my husband now having to play catch up to what I had gone through emotionally over the last 16 months, and it was a tall order to ask of anyone.

Instead of working at involving him during my fertility appointments I went to each and every appointment alone. I had a full monitored cycle which involved blood tests on cycle day 3 and again one week after ovulation, as well as regular internal scans to monitor the ovarian functions, follicle growth and confirm successful ovulation. Everything came back fine, with no alarm bells ringing. I did not have polycystic ovaries which I had almost convinced myself I did, and despite my ovulation date varying month to month there didn’t seem to be any glaring reason why I wasn’t getting pregnant.

My fertility nurse told me that the final test I really should have done would be a histerosalpingogram, where they inject a dye via your cervix into your uterus and fallopian tubes to check for any obstructions or blockages. This didn’t sound at all pleasant and after the emotional month I had had I decided to leave it until after the summer, convincing myself that I would hopefully be pregnant by then and I wouldn’t need to have it done!

These goals were really how I got myself through. The first year I kept reminding myself it took an average healthy couple up to one year to conceive. When the one year mark hit I was devastated, but I worked it out of my system and set myself a new goal. When that new goal passed as well I finally made the appointment to get myself checked by a fertility doctor and so another goal was set once again as soon as I had the all clear.

I truly believed that by the Autumn of 2005 I would be pregnant. That summer of 2005 was a very tough one for me. I found out that several friends who had fallen pregnant the first month of trying were now trying for their second, and the self-imposed pressure cranked up a notch. It just didn’t seem fair that I had to struggle at something that should come so effortlessly and naturally. I began to consider the very real possibility that the only way we were ever going to have a child was via assisted conception and I really didn’t know if we were strong enough to go through that.

And so Autumn arrived! My two friends were pregnant with their second children and my world had fallen from beneath me! I was never angry that they were pregnant, or resented the fact that they had what I didn’t, but learning that a close friend was pregnant brought it home so much harder to me exactly what I was facing. I did such a good job most of the time at putting a brave face on it, even to myself, and this was like someone punching me in the stomach with the raw facts of the situation I had found myself in, and it hurt.

I hit rock bottom at this point. I felt completely drained. I had done everything by the book and I still didn’t have anything to show for it.

It was our third wedding anniversary and we took a long weekend away. I was on my 2 week wait and I had some spotting, which I normally don’t get, at around 8 days after ovulation. After all this time I had learnt not to get my hopes up and I was shattered as I thought my period was coming early. I had had so many signs that this month could be it. We were staying in room no.15, my lucky number, at a hotel called Dar Les Cigognes, which I only found out when I was there meant “storks” in French and many other little lucky indicators. I know it may seem pathetic reading into things like this, but when you have been trying for so long you grab onto whatever hope you can find. Spotting at around this time in a cycle can also indicate implantation of a fertilized egg. My period didn’t arrive while we were on vacation and the hope that we had been successful and that all of these “signs” meant something began to creep into my mind.

You do such a good job of keeping optimism at bay when you are in for the long haul. It is not that I spent all of my time being pessimistic, but you try to strike that fine balance between optimism and a realistic approach. It is the only way to stay sane month after month. But somehow the body almost seems to like to play tricks, and just when you think you have yourself under control, your body does something different that month and you allow yourself to hope, and to a degree believe, that this month could be it.

Of course this month was not it. My period did arrive one week after the spotting and I was left a deflated shadow of my normal self. I was angry at myself for believing that this could be it, and devastated that once again another goal had come and gone, and I was still not pregnant.

I knew I had to take myself one step further, suck in the nerves, and book myself in for an HSG . It was the last box to tick and it had to be done.

Very nervously I went for the HSG at a local hospital, it was as unpleasant as I was anticipating, but I told myself that I should get used to lying on my back with my bits on show as there would be plenty of that during pregnancy! I was enormously relieved to be told that there was nothing wrong with my internal structures and I really felt like a final weight has been lifted from my shoulders. There was no medical reason why I should not be able to get pregnant, all that remained was for me to find the missing link in my conception puzzle.....

(Please refer to "Acupuncture - Miracle or Anecdote?" entry)