Little Baby Steps

Lately, I've been feeling the need to share what Josh and I have been going through. This is very close to my heart, and I haven't wanted to talk about it at all. But over the past few weeks, I've had the feeling in my heart that I need to be more open about it. And I've found that the more I talk about it, the better I feel. I'm not sharing to make you feel sorry for me - that's the last thing I want. I just want you to be able to understand. (I'm going to be very blunt and open, so if you don't want to know all that many personal things about me, you might want to skip this post.)

Growing up as the oldest of nine children, I learned from an early age how to care for kids. I helped feed my brother when I was 2, changed my first diaper when I was 8, and by 12, I was babysitting for my parents as well as others in my church. I grew to absolutely love babysitting! I loved getting to be with all these adorable children. And so I went from watching kids for a couple of hours, to all day, to a few days. People told me frequently that I would be "such a good mom" someday, and I believed them.

Not surprisingly, the more I babysat for other people, the more my desire grew to be a mom myself someday. Growing up in a large family and going to a church that is so family oriented, there wasn't any doubt in my mind that I would be a mother someday. I knew I wanted to go to college and get an education, but being a mother was the most important plan I had. That's why I chose to go into nursing - it was a good career I could have, but it would allow me the flexibility I wanted for being a mom. Now all I needed was to get to college, find a great guy, and get married!


During my senior year of college, I finally met the man of my dreams, and we were married on April 12, 2014 in the Billings Montana temple.

Josh and I had talked about when we wanted to start trying to have kids, and we both felt comfortable waiting a year - that way we could get used to being married before we threw kids into the mix. We didn't want to wait too much longer than that though, and so shortly after we were married, we made a goal that we would at least be expecting our first child by our second anniversary.

Being in a ward with lots of adorable little kids, though, has a way of making any couple extremely baby hungry, and we we quickly succumbed to their cuteness. That August, we both felt impressed that now was the time for us to start trying to have children. We fasted and prayed about it one Sunday, felt good about our decision, and so I stopped taking my birth control. This meant that rather than waiting 1 year, we waited 3 months. I had kept track of the length of my menstrual cycles for a couple of years before we got married, and so I started using a ovulation predictor app on my phone to help keep track of things and make it easier to try and figure out when I would be ovulating. Anticipation of soon becoming pregnant grew at a rapid pace, especially when we found out within a few weeks that Josh's sister and one of my best friends were both expecting little babies of their own.


I was disappointed when pregnancy didn't happen right away, but I was able to brush it off fairly quickly. After all, my mom had no seemingly no difficulties getting pregnant, so I wouldn't have any troubles either. With each month that passed, however, the disappointment grew harder and harder to shake off. The problem we were having was that my menstrual cycles weren't exactly consistent, and so getting the right timing was proving difficult. Before I was married, I had contributed that to living with a bunch of girls and the "alpha female" theory, and so I was a little surprised when they were staying irregular now that I was living with just Josh. But that didn't stop me from being over zealous with taking a pregnancy test a couple of times the day after my app told me that my period was going to start, or convincing myself that we had finally gotten it right this time.

As the months started to go by, my emotions started to get the better of me. The tears were harder to hold back each time my period started, and it would take me hours to regain control of myself. I would try to keep myself composed, but if I dared to think even about it, the tears would almost instantly begin to slip out: at home, at church, even at work. I especially hated having to tell Josh. I didn't want him to see me cry - didn't want to have to tell him that my body had failed, again. He was so sweet, and always just wrapped me in his arms and tried to comfort me. But I often found myself on my knees, crying and pleading to God to take this trial away, to give me anything but this. I didn't understand. Why did this have to happen to me? Why, when having children is such a wonderful thing in His eyes was I struggling to do so? Each time I prayed, though, I was filled with peace and calm, and would be able to regain control of my tears. It would give me a renewed hope and strength to keep going, that I could make it through one more month.

After a while, though, I started to become bitter and angry. Angry at why this was happening to us. Jealous of everyone else who was getting pregnant. I tried to shake the unkind thoughts I was having towards others, but it was getting harder and harder. It was especially hard when it was people who were having their second or third child, or girls who hadn't been married as long as I had were already getting pregnant. It often seemed that when I was already feeling low that I would get on Facebook and the first thing I would see was someone announcing that they were expecting. I became bitter towards anyone who was getting that blessing that I so desperately wanted: coworkers, ward members, even friends and family.  "It's not fair" and "Why me" were the songs I was singing over and over to myself.

I was also frustrated at why all of this didn't seem to be affecting Josh near as much. Whenever I told him that my period had started, it didn't seem to bother him. He'd give me a hug and say that we'd keep trying. After a while, I confronted him about it. He reassured me that he really did want a baby, but he was just trying to keep positive when it didn't work that month. I didn't really understand that explanation, but when I heard Josh pray in our nightly prayer about our desire to have a baby, I knew that he wanted to be a father just as much as I wanted to be a mother.

It wasn't until I saw how uncomfortable my best friend felt about talking to me about her pregnancy that I realized just how deep of a hole I had dug for myself. I didn't want to be angry anymore. I didn't want to have my first reaction to someone else's joy be resentment instead of happiness. My prayers began to change to asking for the anger and bitterness to go away, to help me feel happy for others. One Sunday, I fasted for my heart to be softened and calmed. By the end of the day, I felt a tremendous weight be lifted off my shoulders. The resentment and bitterness towards others had faded, and instead I felt peace. I would (and still do sometimes) feel hurt when someone else would get pregnant, but it wasn't the consuming jealousy that had raged before. 

As summer drew near, with the encouragement of my sweet husband, I began to try to find things to do to fill my time, instead of just thinking or watching Netflix. I wanted to get in better shape, but I had a hard time trying to get into a good routine. So I purchased T25, a Beachbody workout system from Shawn T (the guy from Insanity). I had heard good things about it, and it would be perfect for me because the workouts are only 25 minutes, so even on days that I worked, there was enough time when I got home to work out before going to sleep.

It was hard, but it felt good to be active again, to try and push myself to get stronger. And for the first month, I did really well at working out every day for the entire first phase of the program, but I think I had pushed my body too hard, too fast. After recently having my longest menstrual cycle that I could remember, my body swung to the opposite end of the spectrum, and I started bleeding only 2 weeks after my last period. But it wasn't a normal period. Concerned, I went to the employee clinic at the hospital I worked at, but they couldn't find anything wrong. It went away after a few days, but 2 weeks later, it happened again. I called the clinic, and they suggested that I go see an OB-GYN. I decided to go see Dr. Leavitt, who I had heard good things about from others, and also I learned that Dr. Leavitt and his wife struggled with infertility themselves for 17 years. 

I called and got my appointment set for a couple of weeks later, on July 15th. I tried to restart doing T25 again, but when the bleeding started happening again, I stopped. On the day of my appointment, I was extremely nervous, but at the same time relieved that we would maybe start to get some answers. I ended up seeing Dr. Leavitt's partner, Dr. Adams, and he was great! Something I appreciated the most was the fact that even though he knew I was a nurse, he still explained things very simply. After listening to what I had been going through, Dr. Adams kindly, but firmly told me that I shouldn't be doing such an extreme workout program when I was already at a good weight. But he also had my blood drawn, and we set up an appointment for an ultrasound the next week to look at my anatomy and make sure there wasn't anything wrong there. The last thing he told me was that it was his goal was to do whatever he could to help us have a baby. Wow! I was just blown away by his determination to help Josh and I, who he had never met until that day. I really hoped he would be able to help us figure this all out!

The next few days of waiting to hear from the doctor's office was agonizing, and I was nervous about hearing what I had already feared. But at the same time, if there wasn't anything wrong, that would be even more frustrating. Finally, on Monday, one of the nurses from the office called. She said that my labs were close enough to a condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and so Dr. Adams wanted to start me on a medication called Metformin. Metformin is typically prescribed for type 2 diabetes, but it also helps women with PCOS by regulating their cycles. I called and spoke with Josh about it, and we decided to go ahead with the medication. And let me just say, I am not a fan of Metformin. Don't get me wrong, it worked wonders in regards to regulating my cycles, but at a cost of frequent nausea and other, uh, bowel issues. The combination of the two made food not appealing at all, but if I didn't eat a good solid meal when I took the medication, guaranteed I would be taking a hasty trip to the bathroom in the next couple of hours. And skipping doses was not an option either since my body needed to stay on a regular schedule to get used to this dastardly pill. So I struggled to find a balance between eating and not feeling like eating, and so I ended up losing around 10 pounds in a couple of months. Not the way I was intending on trimming up a little, but I'm not going to complain about it either. (Luckily, I have since regained control over these problems - most of the time.)

Anyway, back to July. The next step after labs was an ultrasound. The whole time leading up to the ultrasound, I was doing pretty ok - having something to focus on was better than not knowing what I should be doing. It wasn't until I actually got in the chair with the jelly and wand on my stomach, looking up at the screen, seeing my empty, and very not pregnant uterus, that the sadness started to creep back in. This isn't how my first ultrasound was supposed to happen! There should be a tiny little baby in there, with a cute little nose and a little heart beating, not this big, empty, black cavity. The thought took my breath away for a moment, but then I was able to shake it off, and focus on what the ultrasound tech was showing me. She took lots of pictures from several different angles, both from on top of my belly and transvaginally, and everything was looking pretty normal. No cysts on my ovaries, everything was the right size and the correct position - it seemed to be going pretty well! The last thing she did was look at my uterine wall to check the blood flow, which involved moving the wand from side to side while taking pictures of my arteries and veins. After doing that, she paused, looked at what she had just recorded, and said she would like to repeat that scan one more time, because she thought she had seen some blood flow where there shouldn't be much. So she did it one more time and got the same results. She explained that this could be indicative of a polyp (a group of abnormal cells, like a nodule) on my uterine wall. She needed to have Dr. Adams look at the pictures she had taken, but she was pretty confident in her findings. Dr. Adams was going out of town for a week, but when he got back, he would call me with the official results. So again, I waited.

When Dr. Adams finally called a week later, he confirmed what the ultrasound tech had found: I had what was most likely a uterine polyp near the top of my uterus. He explained that polyps were 99% of the time benign, but it being there could be confusing my uterus, and making it bleed more often/preventing me from getting pregnant. He wanted to get a better look at it, through another type of ultrasound called a sonohystergram. During this ultrasound, Dr. Adams would insert a small catheter up through my cervix and into my uterus, and then while the ultrasound tech was taking pictures and such, he would inject saline into my uterus. This would expand my uterus a little bit and give them a better view of my suspected polyp. They had to do it at a certain time in my cycle, and because of that and summer travels, we weren't able to get it scheduled until the beginning of October.

Up until that summer, only my sister and a few of my very close friends knew that I had stopped taking my birth control. Once I got put on Metformin, we started slowly telling more of our family members. I hadn't wanted to tell my parents especially about what was going on because I didn't want to have to admit that we were having problems, and I didn't think they would understand. They hadn't approved of me going on birth control, and even though my mom had had one miscarriage during the course of having my siblings and I, she never really struggled with the getting pregnant part. They had asked about us having children a couple of times, but I would give them a very vague answer in response. But I knew I needed to be honest with them. So at the beginning of August, I sat down with them and let them know everything that was going on, and Josh let his parents and sisters know as well. And our families have been incredible! From asking us how things are going, to praying for us, to encouraging us, they have been our biggest supporters, and we love them for that!

The day of my sonohystergram happened to fall on the exact day that we were moving into our new apartment (October 1st), and so Josh wasn't able to come with me. I was exhausted from staying up late cleaning and packing the night before, so that didn't help with my anxiety for this procedure. It never occurred to me (and my doctor hadn't mentioned) that this would be an uncomfortable thing. Luckily, the ultrasound tech was nice enough to warn me ahead of time, saying "Only a few girls have cried before." Oh thanks... And let me tell you (and anyone who's ever had a pap smear will agree): cervixes are touchy little stinkers. And so mine threw a fit when Dr. Adams threaded the catheter up it. And then I had to have the transvaginal ultrasound wand inserted, which is equally uncomfortable. And my uterus freaked out when the saline was injected. So basically my entire reproductive tract was mad and crampy, and it was all I could do to hold my body still. Dr. Adams kept saying "I'm sorry friend", and I really just wanted to yell at him "Stop saying that! We are NOT friends right now!" And on top of all this, the saline didn't stay in me very long and so it was the weirdest sensation having water spilling out of me - I couldn't help but think that this is what it must kind of feel like when your water breaks. When they were done, Dr. Adams told me, "Feel free to punch any nurse on your way out!" He also said I could head home, and he would call me later when he was able to take a better look at the pictures.

When he called me later, Dr. Adams said I definitely had a decent sized polyp near the top of my uterus. It didn't seem to be blocking either of my fallopian tubes, which was good, but it still could be causing our difficulties with getting pregnant. He explained that polyps can "fall out" by themselves during one of my periods, but there was no way to tell when that would happen. So he suggested we go in and surgically remove it. Obviously removing the polyp doesn't automatically guarantee that we'll get pregnant (the polyp could very well not be causing any of our issues), but Josh & I felt that this was the best course of action. So a week or so later, I went back to the office and booked myself an OR room for November 6th for a hysteroscopy, polypectomy, and D&C.

I could have had the surgery done sooner, but I knew by the 6th that my period would have happened already, and so there would be no chance of me possibly being pregnant. As my surgery drew closer, I started to become very anxious about that. I didn't want to not know that I was pregnant and go in to have a surgery that would take away what I was striving for. So about a week and a half before my surgery, I went to the temple to get away and calm myself. As I sat in the Celestial room, I prayed that I would know if I was pregnant or not soon so I wouldn't have to worry. A feeling of peace again came over me, and I left feeling reassured that all would be well. And the next day my period started.

Josh wasn't able to take me to the hospital for my surgery because he had a class that morning that he couldn't miss, and so Allison and Emma were amazing and without hesitation said that they would take me instead. Even though it was a fairly minor surgery and I wouldn't have to have any incisions, I was still nervous, and so Josh gave me a blessing the night before. Once again, I was filled with peace and reminded that I have wonderful friends and family who are always besides me.

We had to be at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning, and I was terrified that I would run into one of my coworkers, but luckily we didn't see anyone. The nurses were great and got me settled in my room and into my ginormous hospital gown (we really need a size smaller than XXXL).

Dr. Adams was a little late getting to the hospital, and so I was relieved when they finally took me back to the OR holding room to start my IV. Once my IV was in, the anesthesiologist shot some medicine into the line, and I almost instantly started to feel a little woozy. I barely made it out of the holding room in route to the OR room before I lost consciousness. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery room - I was freezing and my uterus was cramping like crazy. I started to shake and shiver uncontrollably, and apparently I wasn't breathing the greatest because my nurse kept telling me to breathe. I looked up at the monitor and my oxygen sats were 89%, and so my nurse covered me with a gown that blew warm air on me, put some oxygen in my nose, wrapped my head up in a warm blanket, and gave me some more medicine in my IV. I asked what she had just given me, and I barely heard her say "Fentanyl and decadron" before I passed out again. I woke up again just before heading back to my room in day surgery, and it wasn't too much longer before I was able to head home - but not before the nurses made sure I had some more pain medicine :) Emma and Allison showed me the pictures Dr. Adams had taken during the surgery, and said that everything went great! I tried to be excited about that, but all of that darn pain medication made me just super tired and I passed out again shortly after we got home. Josh was the perfect husband and made sure that I didn't have to get off the couch to grab anything. A couple of sisters from my amazing Relief Society presidency brought us dinners, and my short recovery went very smoothly.

A couple of weeks later, I had my follow-up appointment with Dr. Adams, who gave me the all-clear, and said that after a month or two, we could start trying to get pregnant again. And then after that, he would see me either when I got pregnant or if we continued to have problems. He told me that we could be as aggressive or as conservative as we wanted, and he would do all that he could to help us reach our goal.

And so, Josh and I are back to taking it one month at a time. I still have my hard days, days when I get angry at our situation, but things are overall so much better. The past year and a half has brought Josh and I closer together and closer to the Lord as we've studied and prayed for understanding and patience. I'm learning to look at all the other things that I have been blessed with during this time: my rock of a husband, my adorable fur-baby Link, a great job caring for wonderful little children, a better relationship with my Heavenly Father, a better appreciation for my Savior, amazing friends and family who have supported and care for us, and so much more. Life may not be exactly like I thought it would be right now, but it's so much better in so many ways. And hopefully soon, we will be blessed with a cute little baby to call our own.