"So do you think you'll try again?"
A seemingly innocuous question so many have asked without a hint of malice. Simple curiosity is most likely the motivation. But for someone who deals with fertility issues, trying to conceive is a vine entangled forest that is so very difficult to navigate. In the spirit of transparency, I want to take some time to detail how we've forged through this dense forest of uncertainty.
Are You There God? It's Me, Tanisha
I was about 10 years old when I first read Judy Blume's classic work Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. My mother had already talked with me about how a woman's body changes, and though it was a fictional work, nothing seemed more real. I loved reading about Margaret's travails through adolescence and puberty. With every chapter I read, I became more excited and slightly terrified to experience my period for the first time. I skipped the first grade, so all of my friends at school were a year older than me and most of them had already started menstruation. More than anything, I just wanted to belong, to feel like everyone else, and to have my body do what it was created to do.A year or so later, one Sunday after church while I was hurriedly cleaning my room so I could spend the evening at a friend's house, I went to the bathroom and saw a bit of blood on my underwear. It was here! Over the next few years, my period was fairly regular. My mother taught me how to count out my days, marking our kitchen family calendar with a small asterisk on the day my period was projected to start. I took my regularity for granted; I was just so excited to finally be a woman.
"We'll worry about that when you're older"
Around 11th grade, my periods became increasingly irregular. Anywhere from 2-4 months would pass in between cycles, and I was sincerely worried something was wrong. This was the pre-Web MD era, and so I relied on my mother's big books about "Taking Care of Your Family." I looked up words like amenorrhea, ovarian failure, and menopause--I was at one point convinced I had already started going through it! My mom made an appointment with my gynecologist and after asking a few questions, she prescribed me birth control. "This will make your periods more regular," she said. I asked about what would happen when I wanted to have children. "We'll worry about that when you're older," was her answer.And so, I took birth control on and off for the next 7 years. During the times when I stopped, so did my period. I knew this wasn't right. I knew something else was going on, but had no idea how to explore my options. I went for my annual appointments, but never really felt the need to delve further into why my periods were only coming when on medicine.
Fast forward to April 2012. After a few months of being off the pill, I went to the university gynecologist at the school I attended for grad school. I told her I wanted to get back on the pill, as I was getting married soon. That's what we're all taught to do, right? Get on birth control a few months before getting married so it can be in your system and you don't end up with a honeymoon baby (insert eye roll). Little did I know how unlikely that would have been for me, with or without the pill.
My husband Victor and I both thought 3 years seemed like a pretty good time to wait before trying for kids. My periods came monthly, with no issues, as long as I was still on the pill. When we turned the calendar and began the year 2015, I didn't get my prescription refilled and we decided to stop preventing. We also didn't have health insurance for a good part of that year, but wanted to at least give my body a chance to detox from the years of hormonal disruption due to the pill.
Polycyst-a-what?
Month after month my period did not come. And almost every month that year I thought I was pregnant. Those words I looked up when I was 16--ammenorhea, ovarian failure--came back to mind and I tried to shove them to the back of my mind. I spent the majority of that year in denial, not wanting anything severe to be an issue. But intuitively I knew something was wrong. Late at night I found blogs and support groups for a condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS. Symptom presentation varies, but typically they involve the following:- Weight gain.
- Fatigue.
- Unwanted hair growth (also known as hirsutism).
- Infertility
- Acne
- Mood changes
- Headaches
- Sleep problems
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