My Uterine History
Here is the story of my uterus:
I got my period a few months shy of turning 14. All through high school I had regular but short cycles, usually 21-23 days and AF would last about 3-4 days. Life was insanely crappy when I was 17 which led to extremely high levels of stress and extremely poor nutrition and I didn't get my period for about 6 months, but even that was considered normal based on the circumstances. I went on The Pill when I was 18.5 and stayed on it with no issues until February 2005 (That was about 9 years on the pill, and I think today about all that money wasted and stress trying to remember to take it and I really didn't even need it!)
DH and I decided to start TTC in April 2005. We didn't do anything to prevent from February to April, but weren't really trying. I started charting in February 2005 and continued to do that until January 2006. My cycles were mostly regular from what I remember, although my luteal phase (time from ovulation until AF) seemed to vary a few days (anywhere from 9-12 days) and it is supposed to be the same each month. Still, my doctor didn't seem concerned. According to my charting, I ovulated each month and our timing of sex was generally in the right vicinity. Sex was such a chore though and pretty much the only time we had sex during that year was around the time when I might be fertile.
Sometime in the fall of 2005, I was getting pretty down about not being pregnant yet and I started noticing that I would often have this really bad pressure on my left side typically after I ovulated. Not cramps, just really uncomfortable pressure. I told my doctor, thinking I was probably just being paranoid and secretly hoping that maybe this would at least be an excuse for him to want to do SOMETHING about the fact that I wasn't pregnant yet. He ordered an ultrasound.
Ultrasound showed nothing. According to the ultrasound I had two good looking ovaries and nothing that would explain the pressure each month. (To this day I have never gotten an explanation for that pressure which shows up in varying degrees just about every cycle.) At that point I started getting this gut feeling that something was wrong. Even though the test said everything was right, I felt that pressure every month and felt that meant something was wrong. We kept trying.
Finally in December I had enough. My dr said that he wouldn't do anything until we had been trying for at least a year. I was young (just about ready to turn 27 at the time) and healthy and there was really no reason to think that there was something wrong. I lied to my dr and said that we had been trying a year. My dr ordered blood work for me (everything looked fine) and a SA for DH. The SA came back questionable and DH went to a urologist who felt that the numbers were fine. In the meantime, my dr said that when my next cycle started, give him a call and he would order an HSG.
On January 10, 2006, just a few days after I turned 27, I went in for my HSG. I remember every detail about that day, including the date. I went alone because apart from DH and a friend I had met through an infertility message board, no one even knew we were TTC. Mostly it just didn't occur to me that it was something I shouldn't do alone. It was just another appointment, another thing we had to get through before we could start having help getting pregnant. The woman at the check in desk asked me for the reason for having the test done and I nearly burst into tears when I said, "Infertility." It was like admitting defeat. Prior to starting the procedure, my dr and I talked about the plan to move on possibly to IUI the next cycle. Then I lied on the table and felt that horrible pain when the dye was injected.
Then the whispering started. Someone said something about all the dye going to one side. The dr told me to roll to my left, then to the right, then more whispering. Then my dr told one of the nurses in the room to go get someone else. I couldn't see who came in the room but I could hear another man, lots of whispering, something about unicornuate or bicornuate and then finally, "There seems to be a problem."
The first thought in my head was, "I guess we are going to adopt now." Dr said that I probably had a unicornuate uterus, or maybe bicornuate, and proceeded to give me this lesson on how a baby is formed in utero (the same lesson he has given to me each and every time we have spoken since January 2005) and said something about how we should stop trying to have a baby until we figure out what is going on in there and said that he would have his people schedule me an MRI as soon as possible. I went in there thinking that we were finally on the road to having a baby and I left there with a prescription for birth control.
(This is getting pretty long so...)
To Be Continued...
I got my period a few months shy of turning 14. All through high school I had regular but short cycles, usually 21-23 days and AF would last about 3-4 days. Life was insanely crappy when I was 17 which led to extremely high levels of stress and extremely poor nutrition and I didn't get my period for about 6 months, but even that was considered normal based on the circumstances. I went on The Pill when I was 18.5 and stayed on it with no issues until February 2005 (That was about 9 years on the pill, and I think today about all that money wasted and stress trying to remember to take it and I really didn't even need it!)
DH and I decided to start TTC in April 2005. We didn't do anything to prevent from February to April, but weren't really trying. I started charting in February 2005 and continued to do that until January 2006. My cycles were mostly regular from what I remember, although my luteal phase (time from ovulation until AF) seemed to vary a few days (anywhere from 9-12 days) and it is supposed to be the same each month. Still, my doctor didn't seem concerned. According to my charting, I ovulated each month and our timing of sex was generally in the right vicinity. Sex was such a chore though and pretty much the only time we had sex during that year was around the time when I might be fertile.
Sometime in the fall of 2005, I was getting pretty down about not being pregnant yet and I started noticing that I would often have this really bad pressure on my left side typically after I ovulated. Not cramps, just really uncomfortable pressure. I told my doctor, thinking I was probably just being paranoid and secretly hoping that maybe this would at least be an excuse for him to want to do SOMETHING about the fact that I wasn't pregnant yet. He ordered an ultrasound.
Ultrasound showed nothing. According to the ultrasound I had two good looking ovaries and nothing that would explain the pressure each month. (To this day I have never gotten an explanation for that pressure which shows up in varying degrees just about every cycle.) At that point I started getting this gut feeling that something was wrong. Even though the test said everything was right, I felt that pressure every month and felt that meant something was wrong. We kept trying.
Finally in December I had enough. My dr said that he wouldn't do anything until we had been trying for at least a year. I was young (just about ready to turn 27 at the time) and healthy and there was really no reason to think that there was something wrong. I lied to my dr and said that we had been trying a year. My dr ordered blood work for me (everything looked fine) and a SA for DH. The SA came back questionable and DH went to a urologist who felt that the numbers were fine. In the meantime, my dr said that when my next cycle started, give him a call and he would order an HSG.
On January 10, 2006, just a few days after I turned 27, I went in for my HSG. I remember every detail about that day, including the date. I went alone because apart from DH and a friend I had met through an infertility message board, no one even knew we were TTC. Mostly it just didn't occur to me that it was something I shouldn't do alone. It was just another appointment, another thing we had to get through before we could start having help getting pregnant. The woman at the check in desk asked me for the reason for having the test done and I nearly burst into tears when I said, "Infertility." It was like admitting defeat. Prior to starting the procedure, my dr and I talked about the plan to move on possibly to IUI the next cycle. Then I lied on the table and felt that horrible pain when the dye was injected.
Then the whispering started. Someone said something about all the dye going to one side. The dr told me to roll to my left, then to the right, then more whispering. Then my dr told one of the nurses in the room to go get someone else. I couldn't see who came in the room but I could hear another man, lots of whispering, something about unicornuate or bicornuate and then finally, "There seems to be a problem."
The first thought in my head was, "I guess we are going to adopt now." Dr said that I probably had a unicornuate uterus, or maybe bicornuate, and proceeded to give me this lesson on how a baby is formed in utero (the same lesson he has given to me each and every time we have spoken since January 2005) and said something about how we should stop trying to have a baby until we figure out what is going on in there and said that he would have his people schedule me an MRI as soon as possible. I went in there thinking that we were finally on the road to having a baby and I left there with a prescription for birth control.
(This is getting pretty long so...)
To Be Continued...
posted by AM | 5:32 PM
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