Our First Medicated Cycle

Now that you know a little more about Aaron's condition, let's go back in time to the weeks between the appointment that we learned about Y-Chromosome Microdeletion and our appointment at UNC.

Once we had been told that Aaron had a genetic condition, the researcher in me went wild. I was googling everything I could think of to try and find something, anything, reasonably priced that could give us even the slightest increase in our chance to conceive naturally.

I'm pretty sure that I read about every single vitamin and supplement that's ever been created. I read about diets and exercises, essential oils and acupuncture. The list goes on and on and believe me when I say some women try some CRAZY things in order to get pregnant. I spent hours at a time trying to figure out what other people had tried and had success with and what didn't help at all.

It seemed that in everything I read, women were talking about their ovulation, how they track it, and how they can tell when it's happening. I had spent months before I found out that I had PCOS taking ovulation tests every single day trying to figure out when I ovulated and never had any luck. The more I read and the more I thought about it, I began to wonder why the doctors hadn't been concerned with the fact that I don't ovulate on my own. I know Aaron's issue is time sensitive but how could we make a baby if I'm not even releasing any eggs?

I immediately sent my doctor a message asking her what we could do on my end to help us as we were waiting for our appointment at UNC to come. We had been told from the beginning that an IUI (with Aaron's sperm) would be pointless for us, so I asked if we could do a cycle with medication to help me ovulate. My doctor explained to me that since I am already considered "high-risk", she didn't want to do anything to increase my chances of becoming pregnant with multiples. "Our goal is to conceive one healthy baby." She told me about two different medications, one that would increase our chances of having multiples by a little more than the other.

We decided that I would take five days of the medication that was less likely to leave me pregnant with multiples, called Letrozole, and then test for ovulation on certain days of my cycle. Though we had been trying for almost a year and a half, this felt like the first cycle that we had a real chance.

In my hours spent researching, I read about all the side effects fertility drugs can cause. I had thoroughly warned my husband that I might not be a pleasant person for a little while and apologized in advance for anything mean I said while my hormones were raging. Lucky for both of us, the Letrozole didn't cause me to have any side effects aside from a couple moody days which Aaron would say is perfectly normal for me.

A few days after I had finished my course of medication, it was time to start taking ovulation tests. For those of you who have never had to use one, they are very similar to pregnancy tests. You test using a urine sample and it detects something called luteinizing hormone which your body has a surge of right before you ovulate. When you reach time for ovulation, the test strip will have a second line that is just as dark or darker than the control line. I tested a couple times and didn't see any signs of a second line. Over the next few days I started testing several times a day to make sure we didn't miss it. It was tedious but so worth it when I started seeing a second faint line showing on the test strip. I was so excited about seeing that line get a little darker with each test and I just knew this was going to be our month.

Having an irregular period is common for me so I waited a few days past the date it should've started and worked up the nerve to take a pregnancy test. I don't care what anyone says, you can try as hard as you possibly can to not get your hopes up over something like this but that's a lot easier said than done. 

The best way I can explain the way it felt to see another "NOT PREGNANT" flash across that tiny screen is to say that it felt like I was a child with a balloon that had suddenly been popped.