The journey to conceiving was planned for. I type this as I am trying to, I'm not sure what made it seem like a breeze. At least in all the teen pregnancy articles, it does seem so but fertility is pretty much the taboo topic once we all hit the marriageable age and of course, what comes with it child bearing.

It took much courage to pen this down, whether or not to share with likeminded folk our journey or spread the awareness that infertility can hit nearly anyone. It will be a lengthy post...one that was written and re-written so many times...I lost count how many.  

I very much wish that I had it textbook way, nothing is wrong, I have children when I want to and flood my social media accounts with their updates. And in the most cliche manner ever, life is never perfect and we don't live fairytales.

I'm sorry for sounding like I am the only one facing this in this world but until you have been through any of these struggles, you may never know. Thank you all well meaning people for checking in on us every now and then OR better still tell us how wonderful life is with kids, I wish I can say more to "We are still having fun" or "In God's hands"...because it's painful even having to answer.

How about, lay off and wait for the good news?

Of the things that were thrown at us during this journey - 

It is normal to try for at least a year.

People try for years, some decades. I salute that kind of patience and perseverance but impatience does get the better of me every now and then. The kind of questions that plague include - are we infertile? What should we do if we were? Did we have the finances to support...etc. However, if you do have a nagging thought on checking things out, chances are its your intuition at work and it probably is true.

Strange thing is, I already had a bugging feeling before we got married and a well meaning single friend had shared "women's problems" with me and though outwardly I brushed them aside, I thought something may be wrong with all the painful periods. 

"Try not to be so stressed" is a fallacy

The vicious cycle is, the more you don't get pregnant, the more stress there is. I admit stressing the husband even, so much so he was frustrated with me, at me and at us.

BUT, it is a fallacy.

How can one "not be so stressed" when the clock is ticking - bio clock and time clock both! Fact is, the more people say so, the more those damned stress levels climb. Do we go bonkers during the supposed ovulation period? HAHA, yes we do.  For real, stop telling someone to "take it easy" because that's noise to the ears.

Hope floats, hope drowns

For as much hope keeps me going every cycle, the same hope drowns me when Little Miss Red reports. I hate to say how emotionally challenged I get but I do and become such a mess that I feel sorry for the Hubba facing all of this.

In His Time

You would have seen this mentioned here before. I turned to God again, maybe someday he will answer my prayer once again. Only time can tell if all our efforts are futile but every cycle brings hope and for sure, we both are clinging onto the hope that one day, we will be parents.

So the story goes...

Sometime 4 months into trying, I went for a routine full body check and it revealed a higher than usual ovarian cancer marker. Put onto six months of contraceptive jabs which was necessary yet the side effects throw me off guard every now and then.

We resumed trying again after Little Miss Red normalized herself - that state of false menopause did bring much joy I must admit - none of the nonsensical PMS symptoms, no mood swings, even my allergic reactions towards squid and chocolate were silenced. Sounds like a good time of my life I must say.

One month, two months, I went back into that same stage that we were months back before discovering the cyst. Lots of resentment towards his travelling and missing the O and what nots. I hated myself even for counting cycle days, days past ovulation and being ultra sensitive to symptoms that may suggest we were successful.

It reached a point I questioned if we were even ready for our lifestyles to be disrupted, my spending habits to change and there will not be any of those whirlwind trips we make every now and now.

But you can never be truly ready for anything.

And all these while people around me continued to have children, one after another and it's that stinging feeling of when will it be me? Will it ever be me?

I finally made the decision to see a TCM. There are tons around to choose from  which just indicates how huge an issue infertility is to the rest of the nation. Fate would have it that I ended up not seeing one - and headed straight for a fertility specialist instead.

Straight up, a fertility specialist is NOT a gynae. A gynae specialises mainly in pregnancies and occasionally, gets involved in cysts, fibroids and women problems in general. A fertility specialist does assisted contraception.

The journey continues.