I am not a mother.
I am a fighter.
My only true goal in life is to become a mother. It's true, I swear. There are pictures of me as a two year old child carting around multiple baby dolls named Lucy, Graham, Brittany, and Charity. There are pictures of me as a three year old child feeding my newborn brother a bottle while supporting his head the correct way.
I'm not here to tell you about pictures.
I'm here to tell you my story.
At sixteen years old, I was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and as a result, insulin resistance. Kind of like a "side effect" isn't it? Approximately five to ten percent of women of childbearing age have this disease. Of those five to ten percent, half of them don't even know that they have it. Luckily for me, I was diagnosed at sixteen. I don't want to say it was a rash decision on my doctor's part, but I was diagnosed rather quickly and without hesitation. You see, I'm overweight, another common "side effect" of PCOS. The majority of women with PCOS are, however, overweight. I also have excess hair growth on my arms, back, and face. No brainer for the doctor, I had to have PCOS! The only symptom I did NOT have was an actual cyst on my ovary. I was never told by my doctor WHAT exactly PCOS was, so me, being scared out of my mind that something was "wrong" with me decided to do the one thing that I probably shouldn't have done. Ignore it. I went home and did little to no research on PCOS and I didn't care to. My friends thought it was some kind of "STD" so eventually I stopped confiding in them and started forgetting about my diagnosis altogether. My doctor put me on birth control to regulate my periods and stop the excess hair growth and it worked! I stayed on birth control until the age of twenty-two, when my husband and I decided to expand our family.
I'm not upset with my doctor for not educating me.
I'm upset with myself.
As soon as I went off of the birth control my periods started to become irregular. I also packed on about thirty more pounds since graduating from high school and leaving college. I'm married now, so why try, right? WRONG. I'm not a stupid person. I'm almost too smart for my own good, and my brain is full to the brim with fitness knowledge and healthy eating tips that I hand out freely to my coworkers. I just don't apply them to myself, which, I guess kind of DOES make me stupid. Anyway... After one year of the irregularity and skipping cycles altogether I decided to make an appointment with my OBGYN to let him know what was going on. He put me on Provera, and Metformin to start up my cycle and regulate my sugar (insulin resistant, remember?). However... I'll tell you right now I was a non-compliant patient. The Metformin upset my belly horribly. So I starting taking it sporadically or just whenever I "remembered" to take it. In fact, I was given Metformin when I was sixteen as well and ended up doing the same thing then. So supposedly I was taking Metformin EVERY DAY for years and years and years... which wasn't the actual case. Had I really been taking it every day for all those years my outcome may have been completely different.
I'm not inadequate.
I am infertile.
My husband and I have tried for three very unsuccessful, (heartbreaking, in my case) years to conceive a child. I called my doctor back and told him I needed a refill on the Metformin since I read that it can help ovulation, and actually was going to comply with taking it. He said he wanted to do a liver function test first... but he never wrote up the lab work. So now I haven't even taken the medication sporadically. I've just stopped taking it for a year and a half. The Provera also stopped working, so I haven't had a period in two months. My ovulation test kits come back negative every day. No ovulation. No eggs. No babies. My husband is fine either way. He tells me he loves me. He tells me that as long as he has me he doesn't HAVE to have a child, but I'm not happy with that. I sat him down and asked him if he was really serious about having children with me. I told him that if he was serious, then I was ready to take the next step in the journey and seek help from a medical professional whom I feel actually WANTS to help us conceive. I'm not upset with my OBGYN. I'm frustrated with him. He's a fantastic doctor, but I felt like he was stretched too thin and could not give me the attention I needed to get better. To FIGHT this. To complete my family.
I'm not giving up.
I will be a mother.
My husband and I have an appointment next Thursday with an infertility specialist. I looked him up online today to have some kind of idea of who he is. I found out he wrote a book, which I then bought and am currently reading. He mentions PCOS and insulin resistance a lot and I feel like he understands what my husband and I are going through. Or mainly just me and all of my issues, but still. It's nice to know that this doctor I have an appointment with actually CARES about us and is going to try like hell with us to bring a child into this world.
*sigh*
Here goes nothing...
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