Life’s Curveballs

Every little girl dreams of the day she will become a mother, and every newly married couple dreams of the day they will hold their first child in their arms. For some, those dreams are shattered when they face the challenges of infertility. There is nothing harder then to hear you have infertility and may never get pregnant. What is even harder to hear is that someone else is pregnant; while you are happy for them you can’t help but wonder why it can’t be you. People will try to offer support and words of encouragement, but if they have never experienced infertility they don’t know how it truly feels. It makes it harder to hear someone say “You’ll have a baby when it’s meant to happen,” or “Stop trying so hard and you’ll become pregnant,” as if it’s that easy. Let me tell you, month after month of no positive pregnancy tests really takes a toll on you emotionally.

I’ve struggled for a few months with whether or not I was going to post this, simply because we weren’t ready to tell people and also because in the back of our mind, we just knew that it would happen and there would be no point in telling everyone.

Well it hasn’t happened and it is a very real reality in our life right now.

Jonathan and I have been trying to extend our family for about a year and a half now (surprise!).

And as a small disclaimer, here comes a lot of information that you probably wished you never knew about me. I’m sorry, but it’s a part of the process so get over it. 🙂

Anyway, I have always had sporadic cycles and my doctor said it wouldn’t be a big deal until I was trying to get pregnant, so we never did anything about it. I went in to see my doctor for my annual visit, about 9 months after we had started trying, and she did some blood work to see if anything was abnormal. Voila, there’s my problem! I had increased prolactin levels from a prolactinoma on my pituitary gland (a small benign tumor). The tumor doesn’t really cause a problem until you are trying to get pregnant and then you can’t because you don’t ovulate. Now, here comes the technical part… Prolactin is one of many hormones produced by the pituitary gland. It is primarily responsible for milk production during lactation. With increased prolactin, there is an increase in the hypothalamic hormone dopamine which tells the pituitary to stop releasing prolactin. In some cases the dopamine can’t reach the pituitary gland (like from a tumor). When that happens, there’s no signal to suppress the secretion of prolactin, and the pituitary continues to release it. When prolactin levels rise, the hypothalamus manufactures and releases more dopamine in an effort to stop prolactin production. This increase in dopamine has other effects. In particular, it suppresses the production of the hormones that promote release of FSH and LH. This in turn, leads to a drop in LH and FSH, causing low estrogen levels and therefore no ovulation.

Now that wasn’t too bad was it…still with me?

So we discovered I had a pituitary tumor and my doctor started me on a miracle drug to “shrink” the tumor and bring my prolactin levels back to normal. Well within two months, the tumor had shrunk and my levels were back to normal, YEAH! But we still haven’t been able to get pregnant. My doctor thought that’s all it would take but it didn’t. I have been to many office visits with her, tests, blood work, you name it and she can’t explain why now… it’s basically just unexplained infertility.

Everyday woman get pregnant, it’s what our bodies were designed to do, but for some reason my body is broken in that department. There are many different treatment options available each with their own side effects. I am still on the medication to keep my prolactin levels low but I have now started a fertility drug that will hopefully help as well. There are many undesirable side effects from the medication that I would love to live without but I’m willing to do anything, within reason, to have a baby. So over the next few months I will have many more visits with my doctor and many more blood tests.

Now granted, I said I would do anything within reason to have a baby because Jonathan and I have talked about it and we will only go so far to try to get pregnant. We can’t justify spending thousands of dollars on treatments that still only give us a “maybe” chance of getting pregnant. We would rather spend that money on adopting a child that is in need of a family but we will cross that road if and when we get there. Either way we would like to adopt a child at some point in the future, but that’s another story for another time.

So basically what it boils down to is this, after months and months of disappointment and heart ache we need some prayers… prayer for strength, patience and understanding. Personally speaking, it’s taking a toll on me emotionally and physically, because of side effects of the drugs.

As a final thought, I know everyone will want to call, e-mail and ask us if we’re pregnant yet or how things are going (we get that enough of that as it is – without anyone knowing all this background 🙂 ). We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers and know you mean the best when you ask, but if you’ll promise not to bombard us with questions, we’ll do our best to keep you posted and let you know if anything changes.

I will never give up the hope of becoming a parent, whether it’s our own or through adoption, one day it will happen!