Progressing in Circles

Welcome to those who have chosen to come visit from my regular, personal blog. And welcome to those who are here to just read and experience our journey with us.

I chose the title "Progressing in Circles" because I could not think of a better description for what has happened in our journey. Every time we feel like we are doing something proactive, every time we feel like we are one step closer, we always end up starting back on square one, where we began two and a half years ago. And yet, we are progressing in other ways- emotionally and spiritually. We are progressing in areas of our life while still never reaching the end of the road. Hence, we are progressing while going in circles.

I would prefer to not give out a lot of personal information, in case I decide to share this blog with strangers or long-distance friends. But I will use our first names to keep it personal.

I'm Allie, and my husband John and I married in June 2009. We began trying to have children earlier than we had planned- we are believers in God, and felt like He was prompting us very strongly to start trying to have children. Neither of us felt like we were ready for kids, but we did not ignore the prompting. Looking back, I'm glad we followed it, because now I know it was so we  could start this arduous process sooner rather than later and have more time on my clock. So in February 2010, I went off the pill and our journey began.

Six months later, I took a pregnancy test, and it came up positive. Even though we had no idea how we were going to care for this baby, we were beyond ecstatic to begin our family. We knew that we had family members who would help, and we are both hard workers who would contribute and raise this child no matter what.

A few weeks later, on September 7, 2010, I had a miscarriage. I was seven weeks along, and it was the most heartbreaking experience we have ever endured. I already had so much love for our baby, and I could not believe that he or she was gone. It took a long time to recover from it, and I'm still not fully healed from it. We were back to square one.

We were able to begin trying again in January 2011 when my mensus started up again. But I immediately knew that something was wrong. I had had regular, exact 30 day cycles since the first month they began when I was 15 years old. But now, my cycles would vary anywhere between 40-65 days long, and I wasn't sure if I was even ovulating at all. I went to my doctor, and she did some tests on both me and John, and didn't find anything wrong, so she prescribed birth control to try to regulate the cycles. I took it for three months the fall of 2011. When I got to come off of it just in time to hope for a Christmas miracle, I discovered that it hadn't worked and my cycles were still as wonky as before. I had no idea what was going on with my body, and I was disappointed that the birth control wasn't able to fix it. Back to square one.

I changed doctors after that to get better patient care. In March 2012, this OB/GYN had a long talk with me, reviewed my tests, and decided to put me on Clomid for the next three months. Finally, I felt like I was truly being proactive in my treatment, and I knew that this would work. April passed, May passed, and then June was over without any success. Back to square one.

So, here we are. We are living life day to day at square one, finding other things to focus on and do, but this is still a constant worry in the back of my mind. We have a long road ahead of us. I just hope that we can finish our final circle, our final lap in this seemingly endless marathon, soon.