It has been almost a year since I last published. At the time of my last post, there was so much going on. For starters, in January of 2019, I was told that if I wanted to have children, I needed to start sooner rather than later because my ovaries "weren't getting any younger". See, at the time, I had gone over a year without a period. I now know this is because of PCOS, and at the time was also fairly certain of that. However, there's nothing like your GYN making the above comment to get your biologic clock ticking. With little support from said doc, I turned to my internist to get the necessary labwork to show I had PCOS (with the help of a friend in endocrinology to tell us what to order). I will say, the average time to diagnosis for most women with PCOS is several years with visits to several different specialists. I was beyond lucky to have a wonderful primary care doctor who was willing to do what needed to be done. I also was fortunate to have bloodwork that shows that my ovaries are doing just fine for their age.
With the diagnosis in hand, we turned to a local reproductive endocrinologist to help figure out just what needed to happen to trigger ovulation for me. Fast forward to April, and we were talking about using pulse dosing of Femara (typically used to help keep breast cancer in remission when taken daily). The idea is to mimic what typically happens for egg maturation. Estrogen levels drop with the Femara which triggers an increase in follicle-stimulating hormone which causes an egg to mature. It took two tries to finally get egg maturation kick-started and then the use of a trigger shot to cause ovulation. The next few weeks of waiting to be able to take a pregnancy test were really tough. And when I could finally take one, I took 6 just to make sure I was, in fact, pregnant.
I had pretty bad nausea during the first trimester, and developed several food aversions that stuck around for the entire pregnancy (I can thankfully say that they are over and done with and I pretty much eat anything in sight at this point). Pregnancy (like motherhood) is a mix of joy and anxiety on a regular basis. I felt paranoid at times because I felt like any wrong move would be the end of my little nugget. I worried about everything I ate, how much I slept, the exposures at work while at the same time being so incredibly thankful for the ability to carry and grow and protect my little one. It's an incredible experience knowing that I was and still am a safe haven for my sweet little boy.
Speaking of which, little man is needing my attention. Until next time.
