This post contains very personal and sensitive subject matter. If you are uncomfortable with this, feel free to skip over this post and come back for regular content very soon! Thank you for understanding.
Last fall, I wrote a very personal post about our heartbreaking struggle with secondary infertility and miscarriage. (You can read that post here.)
I was overwhelmed by the response to that post and the outpouring of support, but also the messages from so many women who were going through the same thing or had experienced it in the past. Women I had never met from all over the world were reading my story and emailing me with personal stories of their own. Heartbreaking stories that until that point they felt they had no one to share their story with. It touched my heart and brought me to tears. My goal in sharing that post was to make at least one person feel a little less alone, and ultimately you all made me feel less alone too. Sharing my story was therapeutic for me, and I hoped that other women would find it helpful, but I could have never predicted the impact it would have and what a blessing all of you have been to me. So many of you echoed similar sentiments of feeling alone and like you couldn’t talk about it, and I really wanted to open up the door and take that strange stigma away. I wanted people to feel like it’s ok to talk about it. It’s ok to feel like you don’t have to sweep it under the rug and pretend like it never happened.
Many of you have checked in on me since I wrote that post, and I feel like I owe you an update. Plus, I am hopeful that my experience since then will be helpful to someone and maybe even bring hope to some of you dealing with infertility and/or miscarriage.
After I wrote that post, my husband and I went together to see a reproductive endocrinologist (fertility specialist). My regular OB/GYN (who I am no longer seeing) really wasn’t listening to me, and although he had run many tests on me, when he couldn’t find an answer his automatic “fix it” solution was to put me on Clomid. (A fertility drug that makes you ovulate.) I knew that I didn’t need Clomid, and I felt like in my case this was just a “band-aid,” not really an answer to what was wrong with me. I really wanted to find the underlying problem if at all possible. I took Clomid for one month last fall and it didn’t really do anything for me since I was already ovulating on my own, so I quit and asked him to refer me to a specialist. Clearly he had given up on finding out what was really wrong with me.
Well, it took the specialist 2.2 seconds to answer 2 1/2 years worth of questions. We quickly found out that I have hypoglycemia. This is characterized by low blood sugar/irregular glucose levels, and there is a wide range of causes for it. I was very surprised by this since I eat healthy and had been taking very good care of myself, but sometimes your body just gets out of whack and makes excess insulin. I occasionally felt shaky and weak if I went too long without eating, but I honestly never thought much of it since it didn’t happen that frequently. The crazy thing is that this can also throw off hormones and contribute to PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), which is exactly what happened to me.
My doc’s solution was to put me on a daily medication to regulate my glucose levels which would in effect also regulate my hormones. She thought that with this medication, I should be able to get pregnant on my own without the assistance of Clomid or anything else. When I became pregnant, I would have to stop the medication as it is not safe for pregnancy, but the hope was that at that point my body would regulate itself on its own.
Well, to our surprise and amazement… a month later…. this happened:
We will (finally) be adding baby #3 to our family in November, and we are so thankful.
We are still pretty shocked (after 2 1/2 years of trying and coming very close to giving up on our efforts) but of course very excited. I’ve been extremely sick during the first trimester which is why you haven’t seen many projects from me and my posts have been sporadic for a while. Our boys are extremely excited to be big brothers, as they’ve been waiting a long time for this and begging for a baby for quite a while. I am so thankful to Dr. Kaplan at Georgia Reproductive Specialists here in Atlanta for finding out what was wrong with me, and if you are local and dealing with fertility issues, I highly recommend her.
Here is the cheesy bathroom selfie I posted on my personal Facebook page:
If there is a message I’d like to share with anyone struggling with infertility/miscarriage, it is to trust your instincts about your body. Don’t give up on trying to find answers. Maybe you need a specialist or at least a second opinion, but if you have doubts about what your doctor is telling you, then find another doctor. Intuition is a powerful thing. I knew all along that something was wrong, and when my doctor gave up on trying to find answers, I didn’t give up. I moved on to another doctor who was determined to investigate and get to the bottom of what was happening with me. And thank God I did that, because hypoglycemia can be life threatening. Be persistent and proactive. You are your best advocate.
I keep wondering why I’m not angry. We went through 2 1/2 years of heartbreak when in the end, it was a quick and easy “fix”. But you know what? I’m truly not angry. Maybe I should be. But I believe with my whole heart that there was a purpose for what we went through. Sometimes you have to put up with the rain to get to the rainbow… I know that. And I also know that not everyone gets the rainbow. Some people struggle for years and never get any answers and never get their baby. It’s not fair, and I don’t understand it. But like I said in my original post, I have faith that God sees the big picture and we just see a small part of it. There is purpose in everything, whether we understand it or not.
I’m thankful for this pregnancy, and thankful for your prayers. And please know that all of you who are still going through the rain, I’m praying for your rainbow.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. -Psalm 34:18 *Update: We were blessed to welcome our third son, sweet baby Jonah, on November 25, 2014. Thank you for all of your prayers and sweet words.*Connect with me here: