Hi guys! My name is Stephanie. I’m 28 years old, and I’ve been struggling with infertility for nearly 4 years. However, my story begins long before that…. But little did I know at the time.
When I was 14 I dealt with extremely irregular periods. Back then, the solution was birth control to try to regulate them. The birth control worked, but any time I tried going off birth control, the irregularity continued. So I went back on. At some point my gynecologist decided to run an ultrasound and found a few cysts on my ovaries, but “nothing alarming”, and placed me back on pills. This on- and off- again went on until I was 23, when I married my first husband and we decided we wanted to try to have children.
Since my mother had four of us, and was able to conceive us all without any difficulty, we figured it would be no problem. Sure enough, after 5 months, I received my first positive pregnancy test…. Which ended up in a chemical pregnancy. I made an appointment with my gynecologist to figure out what was wrong, and that’s where my journey really gets going.
My gynecologist ordered some scans to see if we could find the culprit. She found the cysts, again, as well as a 4 centimeter fibroid, which is essentially a non-cancerous tumor, growing in my uterus. She wasn’t too concerned about that, as she mentioned 3 out of 4 women get them and most don’t even realize it. She was more concerned about the cysts, and said that they could be a sign of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), in which ovulation doesn’t occur regularly, leading to those irregular cycles I’ve had since I was a teen. She had me monitor my cycles for a year and follow-up.
Fast-forward through some details that aren’t too relevant to this story, I ended up getting divorced during that year and so stopped tracking since I had obviously stopped trying to conceive. I never followed up, though looking back I feel maybe I should have. I married my current husband (my friend of 12 years at the time) just about a year later, and we knew right away we wanted to have children. He knew about my history and said he didn’t mind if it took some time.
Well… it took over a year, and we finally decided we’d need some answers and quite possibly, some medical support. We found a fertility specialist, who ran all sorts of labs to find out the cause. He ran an ultrasound, and, surprisingly enough, the cysts were gone. There weren’t enough to cause alarm, but he still ran diagnostic blood labs to check for PCOS. They all came back negative. All he found was signs of a little inflammation. The fibroid was still there, but it hadn’t grown, and again, there wasn’t much concern since he also mentioned that many women get them without any issues. My husband got cleared, and we decided that maybe it was just the inflammation. I started some medications and a diet and exercise regimen and we began our first treatment cycle.
The treatment cycle, in a nutshell, failed. This was a year ago next month, and it sent me into a deep depression filled with anger, bitterness, and jealousy toward anyone and everyone who had children or who was pregnant or who simply posted pictures of babies on social media. I decided I needed a break just to clear my head.
In January, while I was still on that break, I started having an IBS flare-up (forgot to mention, I have that too). I was given a CT-scan just to confirm that’s all it was. My doctor called and let me know that the fibroid showed up on the scan, but that it looked to have grown and I should talk to someone about possibly getting it out. I thought, what could it hurt? I don’t have PCOS, my inflammation was taken care of, this is really all that’s left. I called the Mayo Clinic.
Living in Arizona, I am fortunate enough to live within driving distance of the Mayo Clinic, and by the grace of God I believe I was able to get an appointment with the head of gynecologic surgery less than a week later. He reviewed my CT scan and instantly asked why none of my other doctors saw it as a problem. He showed me how it was completely distorting my fundus (the area where most embryos implant) and that it was taking up a whole third of my uterus, which, even if an embryo did implant, it would not have blood supply. I chose to finally have it removed.
The surgery went without any problems, minus a ruptured post-surgical cyst which was quickly remedied. I was up and walking again after two weeks, and was told we could try again in May. I felt like I was finally at a point where I could try, and I knew that extra time wasn’t going to bother me.
As you all can tell by looking at a calendar, it’s now May. I hope and pray that the surgery did the trick, and that we’ll finally have our miracle, but we both know it’s ultimately in God’s hands. In the meantime, we’ll keep waiting and keep trusting and keep hoping to someday, sooner than later, get to meet our child.
When I was 14 I dealt with extremely irregular periods. Back then, the solution was birth control to try to regulate them. The birth control worked, but any time I tried going off birth control, the irregularity continued. So I went back on. At some point my gynecologist decided to run an ultrasound and found a few cysts on my ovaries, but “nothing alarming”, and placed me back on pills. This on- and off- again went on until I was 23, when I married my first husband and we decided we wanted to try to have children.
Since my mother had four of us, and was able to conceive us all without any difficulty, we figured it would be no problem. Sure enough, after 5 months, I received my first positive pregnancy test…. Which ended up in a chemical pregnancy. I made an appointment with my gynecologist to figure out what was wrong, and that’s where my journey really gets going.
My gynecologist ordered some scans to see if we could find the culprit. She found the cysts, again, as well as a 4 centimeter fibroid, which is essentially a non-cancerous tumor, growing in my uterus. She wasn’t too concerned about that, as she mentioned 3 out of 4 women get them and most don’t even realize it. She was more concerned about the cysts, and said that they could be a sign of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), in which ovulation doesn’t occur regularly, leading to those irregular cycles I’ve had since I was a teen. She had me monitor my cycles for a year and follow-up.
Fast-forward through some details that aren’t too relevant to this story, I ended up getting divorced during that year and so stopped tracking since I had obviously stopped trying to conceive. I never followed up, though looking back I feel maybe I should have. I married my current husband (my friend of 12 years at the time) just about a year later, and we knew right away we wanted to have children. He knew about my history and said he didn’t mind if it took some time.
Well… it took over a year, and we finally decided we’d need some answers and quite possibly, some medical support. We found a fertility specialist, who ran all sorts of labs to find out the cause. He ran an ultrasound, and, surprisingly enough, the cysts were gone. There weren’t enough to cause alarm, but he still ran diagnostic blood labs to check for PCOS. They all came back negative. All he found was signs of a little inflammation. The fibroid was still there, but it hadn’t grown, and again, there wasn’t much concern since he also mentioned that many women get them without any issues. My husband got cleared, and we decided that maybe it was just the inflammation. I started some medications and a diet and exercise regimen and we began our first treatment cycle.
The treatment cycle, in a nutshell, failed. This was a year ago next month, and it sent me into a deep depression filled with anger, bitterness, and jealousy toward anyone and everyone who had children or who was pregnant or who simply posted pictures of babies on social media. I decided I needed a break just to clear my head.
In January, while I was still on that break, I started having an IBS flare-up (forgot to mention, I have that too). I was given a CT-scan just to confirm that’s all it was. My doctor called and let me know that the fibroid showed up on the scan, but that it looked to have grown and I should talk to someone about possibly getting it out. I thought, what could it hurt? I don’t have PCOS, my inflammation was taken care of, this is really all that’s left. I called the Mayo Clinic.
Living in Arizona, I am fortunate enough to live within driving distance of the Mayo Clinic, and by the grace of God I believe I was able to get an appointment with the head of gynecologic surgery less than a week later. He reviewed my CT scan and instantly asked why none of my other doctors saw it as a problem. He showed me how it was completely distorting my fundus (the area where most embryos implant) and that it was taking up a whole third of my uterus, which, even if an embryo did implant, it would not have blood supply. I chose to finally have it removed.
The surgery went without any problems, minus a ruptured post-surgical cyst which was quickly remedied. I was up and walking again after two weeks, and was told we could try again in May. I felt like I was finally at a point where I could try, and I knew that extra time wasn’t going to bother me.
As you all can tell by looking at a calendar, it’s now May. I hope and pray that the surgery did the trick, and that we’ll finally have our miracle, but we both know it’s ultimately in God’s hands. In the meantime, we’ll keep waiting and keep trusting and keep hoping to someday, sooner than later, get to meet our child.
We'll check in with Steph over the coming months and let you know of her progress. We hope you'll join us in wishing her all the luck in the world.
If you would like to contribute to Steph's journey (and the medical treatment she has had and will be having, please click on the link to contribute to her Go Fund Me account.
http://www.gofundme.com/babyfoss
If you would like to contribute to Steph's journey (and the medical treatment she has had and will be having, please click on the link to contribute to her Go Fund Me account.
http://www.gofundme.com/babyfoss