The back story....

Greetings blog readers, Michelle here. I will update you on my progress next post, but for this one, I will tell you our back story with baby M. Let's start by saying that I'm a pretty big planner. James and I have always talked about wanting kids, but wanted to enjoy just us for a little while considering we had a long distance relationship for all of our dating lives (4.5 years). I always said I wanted to be married 3 years then starting trying for kids. Little did we know, we'd have a long distance married life too :) more on that later....

Rewind to summer of 2010. We hit the 3 year marriage mark (not that we were really keeping track of my "unofficial timeline" but the time seemed right). *possible guy tmi* I got off birth control pills and starting keeping track of my cycles. I knew I wasn't the type to just "let it happen" I had to be in control. I read all the books, I tracked my temperature, etc. I did it all. I noticed at first that my cycles were VERY irregular. My first cycle went on for 47 days! Based on my temperatures, I believed I ovulated..... I knew that coming off birth control it can take a WHILE for your cycles to regulate, sometimes up to a year! So I didn't get too concerned. Next cycle was about the same and then they got a LITTLE shorter around 35 days. I still believed I was ovulating based on temperature (if you don't know about this, it's very interesting). It tells you after you've ovulated, your body temperature spikes. I started to wonder if in fact I've been ovulating like I thought so I decided to splurge and purchase a high tech ovulation predictor kit.

They say they work OK even if you have irregular cycles but they just can't be TOO long or the days run out. I really liked mine because it confirmed what I already thought with my temperature taking. It was a bit pricey, but totally worth it for my peace of mind. I ordered it from amazon and the test sticks in bulk from there as well. Fast forward a couple months of cycles being from 32-back to upper 40s. I knew this still could be from birth control pills but felt like there was something else going on. Also, my leutal phase (ovulation day until the first day of your period) was very short. It's supposed to be the constant in all of this. It should be from 10-14ish days long no matter how long your cycle is. Mine was like 7... I was feeling very frustrated because it seemed like I was ovulating and no luck.

Fast forward to February of 2011 and James is being deployed again for the 3rd time for 4.5 months. It has been about 6 months of trying with no luck. I know that it can take a normal couple between 6-12 months to conceive, but it seemed like EVERYONE I knew had no problems at all. We'd hope to already have been pregnant and send him off on his deployment. Well no such luck. Now we had to put it on hold for a while. I was disappointed, but also thinking that I could monitor my cycle a little longer and really get to the bottom of it before he got home so we'd be good to go. They say you shouldn't go into the doctor to get help until after a full year of trying unless you are older than 35 years old. I definitely felt like something was wrong and knew James would be coming home in June which would be almost a year of tracking my cycle (not of trying) so I decided to bite the bullet and make the call. I explained on the phone what was going on and that my husband was military (meaning we never really knew when he'd be up and leaving so it was sorta a sense of urgency to get down to it). They were VERY supportive and wanted me to come in to talk. The doctor wanted to see all my charting (temperatures etc.) which I had kept track of via fertilityfriend.com (highly recommend it). She agreed that something didn't seem right and she wanted me to go get some blood work done to see what was going on.

I didn't realize this post would be this long! I think I better TO BE CONTINUE it for tomorrow. I hope I didn't bore you and that you'll stay tuned tomorrow for the happy conclusion!