Pregnancy tests are a cruel joke.

I couldn't sleep that night after the positive test. Neither of us could. We stayed up and talked about how we wanted to tell everyone, when we wanted to tell them, fun ways to announce it on Facebook, and all kinds of things. We had already started our name list, so we talked about that more, too! I couldn't believe it at all. The more I thought about it, the scarier the reality became. I felt like we had been trying so long, focusing on finding that victory, and now I didn't know what to do with it. A whole new set of fears set in.

The next morning, after a tiny bit of sleep, I got up for work. It was Monday morning, and I was too excited to think about anything work-related. I got out of the shower, and peed on another stick just because I wanted to see that beautiful word again. It was 6:15am.

NOT PREGNANT

I panicked. I woke Bobby up and panicked to him, too. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't bleeding. Did that mean I miscarried sometime in the last 8 hours?? I didn't know what was going on. Bobby just told me to stay calm and call the doctor first thing. So, at 8:00am on the dot, I called and left a "frantic lady trying to speak as calmly as possible" message for the nurse. Like I said before, they were well-aware of our situation, so I knew she'd call me back as soon as she could. About an hour later, she called and asked me to come in for bloodwork. Forty-five minutes later, I was in the chair with a needle in my arm. The next few hours were agony, waiting for a phone call about the results. I just wanted to know, one way or the other. Just give me an answer. When you are going through all of this, (and if you are, you'll know what I'm talking about here), ALL you want is a definitive answer. Yes or no. So when Beverly called back, you can imagine my frustration when she said, "Well, Kelli, you're technically pregnant, but the levels are so low that Dr. Reshef is worried you might have a tubal pregnancy. He wants you to come back for more bloodwork in a week, and if your levels go up, we'll go from there." What the fuck does that mean?? Am I pregnant? Can I be excited yet? Now, all I'm doing is worrying, because I know an ectopic pregnancy can kill you. That's not an answer, Beverly. Not one that I wanted, anyway.

So, I went back a week later. And then again a few days after that. And then again the next week. The levels were rising, but still REALLY low. My progesterone was low, too, which I know can actually CAUSE a miscarriage, so I argued with them at each visit about putting me on a supplement, but Dr. Reshef kept saying no because he didn't want to encourage growth in a tubal pregnancy, if it was a tubal pregnancy. My thought was, "What if it's a viable baby and you are causing problems by not giving me the supplement!?!" I still got a "no". Ugh. And then, I had to tell them we were going on vacation that Saturday and would be out of town for a week and a half. I told them we were going to New Orleans, because I was afraid to tell them we were going on a 7-day cruise. I was a nervous wreck. What if I miscarried on a cruise ship?? Or in a foreign country?? We still didn't know if it was tubal or not, so I had a hard time debating whether or not to go at all.

But we went. We had a great time in New Orleans for a few days with family, and then headed to the Carnival Terminal to board. We got checked in, and were waiting in line to get on the ship. I had to pee, so I ran to the bathroom. BLOOD EVERYWHERE. I just sat there and cried. What do I do now?? My entire family is getting on this ship and I'm terrified to move. I sat there for about 10 minutes and composed myself and then walked back out. Everyone was still waiting in the holding area, and I knew Bobby and my mom saw my face and immediately knew something was really wrong. I told them I was bleeding, and that I was going to go ahead and get on the boat. That was a hard decision. I was a hot mess that whole first afternoon/evening. We got on the boat, got our luggage, got settled, and then the bleeding stopped. THANK YOU LORD. I still didn't know what had happened. Was that a miscarriage? I'd never had one, and I knew it was still early, so was that it? This vacation wasn't going to be a vacation at all, it seemed.

Luckily, the rest of the week was fine. We stopped in Roatan, Cozumel, and Belize, and I gotta tell you: skip Belize, go straight to Roatan. It's AMAZING.

We got back from New Orleans late that following Sunday, and I had made another appointment for an ultrasound for the following day. Dr. Reshef had told us that by then, the pregnancy would be big enough that we'd be able to see where it was. If it was in the tube, then we had a big problem. If it was in my uterus, then BAZINGA. Bobby was in training that whole next week, so my mom offered to go with me.

FINALLY, an answer. We had a baby growing, with a good heartbeat already, and were only technically a little over 6 weeks pregnant. I sent the video to Bobby's cell phone, and he stepped out of his training class to watch. I love happy news. I needed that happy news. I couldn't have been more excited.

The light at the end of the tunnel...

So, here we are. It was December 26th, a Wednesday, and we'd just be told that I was definitely the problem. Once again, I can't express how defeated those simple little words can make you feel. They gave us the option of waiting another month, but also said that if we wanted to try an IUI, that the following day would probably be the best day for it.

But what's an IUI, you say? Well, I'll tell you.

I had heard of IUI before. I have several friends who have had it done. IUI stands for intrauterine insemination, and it's generally the step you try before you go to in-vitro. We were in the perfect spot to try IUI, because I had gotten my first positive ovulation test that morning, prior to our post-coital test. That meant that I would be ovulating sometime in the next 12-48 hours. Now, swimmers can live in the kush, cozy, fallopian tubes for up to 5 or 6 days (crazy!), so if we were going to send them on up, then the next day was perfect for that. We also did an ultrasound and saw that the Clomid had actually developed THREE eggs that were ready to spit. MOMENT OF PANIC. Three? What if all three fertilized? Triplets?? Of course, we went ahead with everything, but imagine that small moment of uncertainty you'd feel knowing you were potentially volunteering to have triplets.

Now, the cost. Seeing how it was the day after Christmas, and the end of the month, needless to say the bank account of two people on cops' salaries was pretty slim. And remember, insurance didn't cover ANY of this. We had already talked to the doctor previously about private pay costs for those whose insurance didn't cover it, and we knew that the IUI would cost around $700... quite a bill for those who aren't expecting it at that moment! And get this, if the IUI didn't work, IVF was going to cost about $13,000! AND only has a 50% chance of working. We had already made the decision that if we had to move to IVF, that adoption would be the route we would take. Amazing that some people just have $13,000 laying around to gamble on getting pregnant. Wish I did!

So, we scheduled the IUI for the next day, December 27th. Our doctor was out of town that day, so his nurse practitioner asked us if we were comfortable with her doing it. Of course, we were. After all the time we'd spent in their office, we were practically comfortable with the records clerk doing it. LOL :)

Back to the IUI. There isn't anything glamorous or romantic about an IUI. We made an appointment for Bobby to go in and give a sample to the lab the next morning, and my appointment was scheduled for 30 minutes later. I'm pretty sure he was mortified at the idea of it. But the cool thing about it was that we got a semen analysis included with it, so at least we found out where we stood from that end. After all the "washing", "sorting", and analyzing, there were 62.1 MILLION swimmers in the sample we used. Remember that thing about only 4 still being alive I talked about earlier?? I knew there should've been millions. The Discovery Channel is good for all kinds of learning.

My part of the IUI isn't any more glamorous than his was. It's basically his sample, injected straight into my uterus, bypassing that "hostile cervical canal" I mentioned before. The uterus and fallopian tubes are much more comfortable for swimmers, so once they're up there, they just wait. And YOU wait. And wait and wait and wait. They told us not to take a pregnancy test until 10 days later, but after about 6 days, you get REALLY anxious. So, January 2nd, I took a test. Negative. I just cried and cried. And got the same result on January 3rd, 4th, 5th, and the morning of the 6th. Bobby told me to just stop and wait until 10 days had passed, but I'd already convince myself that it hadn't worked.

That evening of the 6th, which was a Sunday, we had just come home from dinner at my mom's house, and were watching a little TV in the living room. At about 9:45pm, I decided to go get ready for bed, leaving Bobby in the living room. And yes, you guessed it, I snuck in another pregnancy test. For any of you who have ever taken a pregnancy test before, you know that those three minutes are the LONGEST MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE, regardless of what you want the outcome to be. So, I set the test on the bathroom counter and went to fold laundry that was piled up on our bed. After about 5 minutes, I stood at the bathroom door, staring across the room at the test, terrified to go in because I knew that I was just setting myself up for disappointment again. I worked up the courage and went in.

PREGNANT

Am I being punked again? I actually looked, walked away, and then came back and looked again, which seems really dumb to think about now. And then the tears came. I just leaned against the wall and cried. I probably cried for 2-3 minutes before Bobby heard me and came in. When he came in the bedroom asking what was wrong, I just walked out of the bathroom and hugged him. I was crying so hard I couldn't even get any words out. You know when you cry so hard that snot and drool comes out and you just wipe it on whoever you're hugging at the time? Oh you don't? Well, I did that. He had pretty much gotten used to my emotional ups and downs, and since I'd been crying a lot of all of this, he just sadly said, "you took another test, didn't you...". To which, of course, I nodded yes and pointed into the bathroom. He walked in and looked and smiled the biggest smile I've ever seen and came back and hugged me until I thought my guts would explode out of my body. I can't remember ever feeling so relieved and scared and apprehensive and excited all at the same time before. After nearly 18 months of trying, I saw the test I'd been waiting to see.

All the excitement was welled up inside me like I've never felt before. I couldn't sleep all night, and I got up the next morning with the biggest smile on my face EVER. I thought to myself, "We're done. Finally. And I can't believe it."

Fertility drugs don't make you feel as good as real drugs (or so I've been told)...

So, our fertility doctor, Dr. Eli Reshef, is pretty amazing. I feel like I can say that now, since it all worked out in the end. And at the time I finally saw a period come back, I thought to myself, "NOW WE'RE COOKING!" I was so angry at my regular gynecologist for NEVER sending me for the blood work-up that Dr. Reshef did after our very first appointment. I got really angry at the 6+ months we had wasted on estrogen treatment, mood swings, weight fluctuation, and all that, when all I needed was bloodwork.

So, come to find out, the tumor in my pituitary gland was causing that gland to produce too much prolactin, which happens to be the hormone that causes women to produce breastmilk. Luckily for me, the tumor was small enough to be treated with medication. Some people get them so big that they can actually start lactating... EVEN DUDES. Seriously. Even dudes. And those big ones normally have to be taken out with surgery. So you can imagine my delight at finding out that our baby quest didn't lead us to brain surgery.

One thing to note here is that Oklahoma is not one of the few states that require insurance companies to cover infertility treatments. At the time I began seeing Dr. Reshef, my problem was still classified as "annovulation" (lack of ovulation, lack of period), but the moment that began, we were moved to "infertile", and the insurance stopped covering any of it. No meds, no ultrasounds, no office visits. Check with your insurance. If you have one of the few that cover this stuff, count yourself lucky and take advantage!

Dr. Reshef knew we were growing impatient, and with every year that passed, he knew our chances of getting pregnant got smaller and smaller. So at the first sign of that period, he gave me a prescription for Clomid. Now, I don't know how many of you have ever heard of this stuff, but it's pretty much the most popular fertility drug on the planet. What I learned is this: your ovaries normally spit only one egg every month. They alternate, left and right, every other month. This generally is supposed to happen on day 12-16 of your monthly cycle (with day 1 being the first day you start your period).

THIS IS WHERE IT GETS QUITE TECHNICAL. SERIOUSLY, I LEARNED SO MUCH.

So, Clomid is supposed to hyper-stimulate your ovaries into spitting more than one egg, giving you more opportunities for fertilization. It also ups your chances of having multiples! And to be completely honest, at this point in the game, multiples wouldn't have bothered us that much. They start you out on the lowest dose, and then monitor your ovulation. If it doesn't work, you go up in dosage the next month.

"But Kelli, how do you know if it worked?"

Here's where the giant pain in the ass begins. You chart. You take your temperature every morning before you get out of bed, otherwise known as your basal body temperature. Even if you aren't seeing a doctor for fertility issues yet, you can totally do this at home. There are blank charts you can print online, and even apps you can use. I used fertilityfriend.com for several months and loved it. I hated charting, but apparently, when you ovulate (or just before or after), your temperature spikes up. The problem is, you usually have to have already done the horizontal tango and have his little guys up there waiting for Madame Egg to show herself. So the doctor tells you, "Just go ahead and have sex everyday from day 12-24." And I promise you, nothing take the romance out of sex like treating it as homework.

So, we started out with 50mg of Clomid. I charted for 31 days. And we did our homework as assigned. And then nothing. No temperature spike, nothing. Nothing except a period. So we went back to the doctor for a higher dosage of Clomid, but found that the 50mg had, indeed, hyper-stimulated my ovaries, but not enough to spit eggs. Only enough to cause big, temporary cysts. So you have a take a month off. SUCK.

The month after that, we went back when my period showed up and got the prescription for 100mg Clomid. And there was the temp spike! It didn't happen until day 24 of my cycle, though, and that's a problem too! You see, after the egg spits, the days between ovulation and your next period's arrival is called a luteal phase. And a fertilized egg needs several days to implant before your period starts. So, as you can already imagine, I started my period on day 29, and 5 days isn't enough for implantation. Dr. Reshef said that a higher dose might help with sooner ovulation, so here we go with 150mg...

Keep in mind, this is 90 days into charting. 90 days since that first period showed up. 90 days of agonizing. And this was November 2012, so we were already well over a year since we started trying.

So, we do 150mg. Bingo! Ovulation on day 17... AMAZE-BALLS. So happy! Homework like crazy! And then a period. Mother fucker. What is the problem?? Maybe it's Bobby, too? That's a theory I don't think he liked much, but it was one we definitely had to think about it. But we tried another month anyway. Since we knew that 150mg worked, we did that again, but this time, Dr. Reshef scheduled us for a post-homework analysis. Get ready for the gross part! The day I got my positive ovulation test (which happened to be the day after Christmas 2012), we were told to do some "homework" and come in 4 hours later. The test they did was a swab to see how many swimmers survived. Our result: 4. Four out of how many million? I've been through sex-ed and I have the Discovery Channel. I know how many of those little dudes are supposed to be there. And 4 isn't going to cut it. The consensus was that I had a hostile cervical canal, and was most likely killing the swimmers before they even got going. ARE YOU FUCKING OUT OF YOUR MIND?? All this time, all those wasted homework assignments, all the wasted money on pregnancy tests.... and they weren't even getting there? How much harder is this going to be??

I'm getting pissed just typing it. I was now convinced that I was, in fact, the problem. And even though I knew it in my heart the whole time, having a doctor or nurse confirm it is really disheartening.

An introduction is in order...

I've been thinking about doing this for a long, long time. Lately, it's really been on my heart to share our story, and how we got to where we are now. I certainly hope to bring some information to the uninformed, some light to a subject that seems to be so taboo, and some hope to those still hoping. Our journey to here has been a long one, even though I know there are many others who have been on this road for much longer than we have. I'm here to say that I know what you are going through. But first, an introduction.

My name is Kelli, and I am a tried and true, born and bred, forever Oklahoma Sooner fan who just so happens to spend my days protecting and serving. I'm 33 years old. I'm outgoing, outspoken, and rarely out-argued. I'm a control freak who likes things the way I like them, and I want them on my own schedule. I'm married to an amazing man who I love with all my heart and soul. He is so many of the things I am not, and I can't imagine living my life without him by my side. He's also a cop, too, and also one of the greatest men I've ever met. We have been married for over two years, and have stood fast together through trials and tribulations that a lot of couples don't have to endure. 

Lastly, I'm nearly 21 weeks pregnant with our first child. Finally. Most people don't appreciate the amount of sheer joy it brings to my heart to say it out loud. It literally brings tears to my eyes. I still can't believe it. I still look at the picture I took of the first positive test we got and I can't help but laugh at the way I reacted that night. I'm still amazed at the thought of all of the nonsense we had to go through to get here. But we're here, and our baby girl is coming in September. 

It took us nearly 18 months to get pregnant, and that might not seem like a long time to some of you, but when all you want is a baby, it's an eternity. That's right. My husband and I found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of a battle with infertility. There. I said it. We struggled with infertility. I use the word "struggle" because I'm afraid to say that we just about went out of our fucking minds with doctors and testing and charts and temperatures and emotions and timing and bloodwork. I know people who tried for 5+ years, and I'm still amazed at the thought of waiting that long, because I was about at the end of my rope after a year and a half.  But why is "infertility" such a taboo word? I've told our story to many people and most of them have said that they can't believe I'm actually talking about it. Are you kidding me? I wish someone had told us sooner what a gigantic miracle it is to get pregnant! And I'm not kidding. It's a crazy, scientific, one-in-a-million process of nature. Or in our case, nature and medical intervention.

It's not something you think about in high school. Or really, even college. We, as women, are raised to do everything possible not to get pregnant, not realizing that when the time comes to switch your mindset, it can be a lot harder than it seems. I began to hate all of my friends who had... oops!... gotten pregnant by accident. Seriously, I was Charlotte in that Sex & the City episode when Miranda accidentally gets pregnant and you can tell that Charlotte is so hurt because they'd been trying and trying, even though their situations had nothing to do with one another. Seriously. I still cry when I watch that one. I went through a phase of hating my friends who had kids, hating the pregnant ones, hating the ones who say "Oh, we don't really want kids". REALLY?? What does your opinion have to do with my feelings?? It seems comical now, but if you are going through these emotions, don't worry. I get it. 

So, let me tell you what our issue was. We both went through that thought process, independently, of "am I the reason we won't ever have kids?!" It doesn't start out that way, though. It's all very romantic. You both decide that it's time to get pregnant, so you discontinue birth control. And you just know it's going to happen super fast because you love each other so much. And then it doesn't. And each month after that, your period shows up and you just cry. And you get really REALLY discouraged. But you shouldn't! What most people don't realize, and what I definitely didn't realize until going through our journey, is that there are only 2-3 days of the whole month that you can get pregnant, and even still there's only a 25% chance of it happening, and that's only if all of your systems are working properly! Crazy odds. Unbelievable that it happens so fast for some people. 

It didn't happen that way for us, at all. I discontinued birth control in September 2011. We had been married for only 6 months, but already both in our early 30s, it was time to get started. I had been using the NuvaRing for a few years (and loved it), but it eventually stopped my period altogether, which my doctor said was perfectly fine. After I stopped using it, and I didn't see even a sign of a period for four months, I knew something was wrong. People had told me you could get pregnant with no period, so I wasted countless pregnancy tests just randomly checking to see if I was. When I saw my doctor in January with still no period, she started me on straight estrogen and progesterone. 40-day cycles! And if you've ever known anyone on straight estrogen, then you know what a monster I became. Moody, crazy, weepy... all of those. And we did four cycles! All to try to kick-start my period and ovulation. By June, she gave up and referred us to a fertility specialist. 

After our initial visit with the specialist in July, he sent me for bloodwork. The next day, he called and said he was sending over orders for an MRI... on my head. When I panicked on the phone a bit and asked what the problem was, he told me not to worry. Don't worry?? About needing an MRI on my head? Are you fucking crazy? He said that sometimes, women get tumors on the pituitary gland that can stop ovulation. SO NOW WE'RE TALKING ABOUT A TUMOR. IN MY HEAD. How did we get here? We just want a baby and now I might have a tumor in my brain? Am I being punked? Are there hidden cameras watching for me to flip out? 

So, I had an MRI. He called two days later and said I did have a small tumor, and that it could be treated with medication. I started the meds, and 45 days later, my period showed up. I had never been so happy to see that. I just cried and cried. Little did I know, the fun was only beginning....