“Unexplained Infertility - My origin

There are so many diagnoses that can attribute to infertility, but I did not hear any of them. I didn’t get something that I could point my finger at… I did not get something to blame. After three years of trying on our own boxes and boxes of ovulation and pregnancy tests, I was afraid of what the answer would be why I did not have a baby yet, let alone the two babies that we had always planned to have by this point in our marriage.

We had heard it all from friends, family, strangers-

“Just relax and it will happen”
“Go on vacation! It will happen!”
“Stop trying, that’s when it will happen”
“You guys should just get trashed so you can’t stress about it - that’s when it’ll happen!”

“if it has not happened by now, it probably never will” -my personal favorite

After three years with the lingering question… what if something is wrong with me, I made an appointment with my OB. I had tests, ultrasounds, labs, etc. and in the end, I got a flippant diagnosis of “unexplained infertility”. 

We were given the name of a fertility clinic to work with from our area and I left my OB’s office feeling so defeated, ashamed, embarrassed, and ultimately broken.

At this point in my life, I was “desperate” to have a baby. Fertility treatment didn’t seem right for us, none of this seemed right for us. My little sister lovingly mentioned in passing that she would be willing to be a surrogate for us if we wanted to go that route. All of it just seemed so wrong. 

I decided to take a similar route as I did about 10 years prior for a health issue and take full responsibility for my health and see if that helped…

I only ate REAL food for probably the first time in my life. I read labels, I cut gluten, and I had already been dairy-free but before the Whole30 the dairy had just been replaced with PUFA-filled almond milk, so this was a COMPLETE overhaul of the foods I ate. 

The summer before we got pregnant I even quit my high-stress full-time job and opted for a local part-time position doing something that I enjoyed. I knew that the stress was bad for my health, I just did not realize how much it was affecting me.

We briefly entertained the idea of fostering with the intention to adopt, but even that did not seem right for us.

We wanted to bring a life into the world that was a little bit of each of us, and I knew I wanted to experience pregnancy, labor, and birth for myself. We ultimately decided to make an appointment with the recommended fertility clinic and went in for our consultation. After our consultation, the Dr. did an internal exam to verify that I had in fact already ovulated as I had suspected I did.

He informed me that I did not ovulate this cycle yet, and I in fact had a large healthy egg ready to release and told Zach and me to lock ourselves in the bedroom for the next three days. (a fertility specialist telling us to have sex totally seemed worth our consultation fee...)

We went home and did just that… I vividly remember thinking that if we got pregnant within the next few days no one could tell me that it happened when we stopped trying… We TRIED up until the last window of possible conception.

We continued life as normal, took a trip out to West Palm to actually see about us moving to the east coast of FL. Thanks to my uncle who was living there at the time, I had an incredible opportunity to shadow an event planner at The Breakers to see what one of their job openings would look like.

Pictured here is me… blissfully unaware that I am already 10 days pregnant with Evangeline.

A few days later my maternal great-grandmother died and we were navigating a trip to MI for her memorial service.

The following days, I took the dogs for our normal walks, and Luna was even more protective than usual, I thought I started my period and was almost relieved since that meant I could finally go in for my fertility blood tests and get this whole process started!

Zach came home one evening to see me eating his leftover pizza and beer (something that I never did) and made a joke asking if I was sure I was not pregnant because that would normally disgust me.

I could go into further explanation, but I can’t help but cry when I hear the younger freshly in-the-moment version of us it… my first positive pregnancy test…EVER