Waiting

After I got married, I was on birth control for 4 months, and then we decided that we were ready to start a family.  We tried for 4 months and then got pregnant with The Teenager.  With The Artist, I was on birth control for 9 months, and then we tried for 9 months before getting pregnant.  With The Chocoholic, I was on birth control for 12 months, and we got pregnant as soon as I went off the pill.  The very first month.  So when we decided we were ready to have baby #4, we knew it would be a piece of cake.  No big deal.  I had been on the pill for a year, so we knew we would be pregnant within a year. 

Well, 6 months came and went and we kept trying.  My cycle has never been regular, going anywhere from 3 weeks to 9 weeks between periods.  And they are very heavy.  I tried Clomid once, but at $25 for 5 pills, we couldn’t afford to do that again.  I had a D&C to make sure everything was okay, and it was.  I tried taking my temperature to see when I was ovulating.  I didn’t ovulate. 

A year came and went. Two years came and went.  3 years came and went.  Still nothing. I know that many people struggle with infertility for many more years than we did, but after 3 children, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t get pregnant. 

My doctor finally had a frank talk with me.  I have PCOS – PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome.  Basically, I don’t ovulate regularly, and because of my weight, it aggravated the problem.  He frankly told me I needed to lose weight.  He had mentioned it before, but I hadn’t really listened.  But this time I did.  I started going to Weight Watchers and in 4 months, I lost almost 40 pounds.

December 2003 came and The Doctor and I talked and decided that we were both feeling that we want to be done having children. After going with my sister to take her 2 month old baby to the doctor and remembering the stress of having a baby who isn’t sleeping and not knowing what is going on, I just didn’t want to do it anymore. The Chocoholic was 5 now, and we had really enjoyed having older children. And I really didn’t want kids 5 years apart.

So we decided to fast and ask Heavenly Father if that was the correct decision.  But neither of us got a definite answer, so we decided to wait and keep praying about it.

The day after Christmas, I was a witch.  I was mean, mean, mean.  More so than normal.  And that usually means one thing.  The Doctor bought a pregnancy test and I took it the next morning.  Yep, I was pregnant.  Which meant that the kids would be nearly 6 years apart. Six. years.  That’s a long time.

It took us 3 1/2 years to finally get pregnant.  That’s a long time.  It was a very stressful time in our marriage.  I just wanted to be pregnant, which was a righteous desire.  But I had to wait.  I didn’t know why then, and I still don’t know why now.  I can give you several reasons why it would have been easier if I had gotten pregnant sooner.  But for some reason, it wasn’t to be.  I will just put it on my list in my head of things to ask my Heavenly Father when I die!