I met my partner when I was 37. I was feeling like time wasn’t on my side so we decided to start trying before we even got married, 6 months after we met. At first, it was new and exciting, but after 1 year of trying and not even a hint of a positive pregnancy test, I started to feel like it was never going to happen.
I was working at a tech firm at the time with fertility coverage. For some reason, this was a comfort to me, like I had a backup plan if need be. We decided to seek out an REI (Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Specialist). My husband had a semen analysis that came back glowing. Suddenly I felt immense pressure and guilt that the reason we had not conceived was because of me. My only result that was not in the normal range was my thyroid. I had never been diagnosed with a thyroid condition and as someone who is full of energy and thin, I was shocked to hear I had hypothyroidism.
When my doctor prescribed thyroid medication, it felt like “At last! This will be the ticket to getting pregnant”. My thyroid labs normalized but the positive pregnancy test did not come. Sadly we fell into the “unexplained infertility” diagnosis.
One evening during a chat on the Flo app, I chatted with a woman who also had unexplained infertility. She shared that she had recently had a laparoscopy to rule out endometriosis and to her great surprise, she has stage 3 endometriosis that wrapped around her ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, bladder, and intestines.
This sparked something in me. I didn’t have extremely painful periods, but never bought into the idea that my infertility couldn’t be explained. There had to be a reason, right? Two months later my doctor finally agreed to a laparoscopy and hysteroscopy. He was reluctant at first, especially due to my lack of painful periods, but when I told him it is frequently uncomfortable when I have a bowel movement, he got curious.
My laparoscopy revealed stage 4 endometriosis. I could not believe I was not more symptomatic. The doctor removed that which he could. He also started me on 3 months of Lupron to suppress the lesions. We were finally cleared to try again. To jumpstart my cycles after the Lupron suppression, he prescribed letrozole and a monitored cycle.
We got pregnant that cycle. It still baffles me that my endometriosis was so “silent” and that it was negatively impacting my ability to conceive so greatly.
My takeaways from this journey:
- Don’t delay a fertility work up. Your doctor will probably spew some BS about needing to wait a certain amount of time. Turns out, you know your body better than them so if you feel something isn’t right, insist on a work-up.
- Don’t accept a diagnosis of unexplained infertility. There is an explanation somewhere and you need a doctor willing to go deep to figure it out. This might require a lot of persistence and research on your end.
- Take breaks, if you need them, but never stop trying. Sure, maybe you want to take a month off of trying all of the things and tracking, but at minimum have unprotected sex so it is not a wasted month.
I’m looking forward to reading stories of other women like me when we start trying to conceive again this summer!
XO,
Halle
