If you expected to have trouble getting prengant and didn't

[Sourire]

It's easy to find stories about people having trouble getting pregnant, or people who don't seem to have anything wrong with them and still can't get pregnant for ages.

I thought it would be nice to hear some stories from people who expected to have trouble getting pregnant, and ended up having no problem at all! If this is you, please tell me about it - why you thought it would be difficult, and what ended up happening!

I am interested in hearing these stories because I plan to start TTC for the first time ever next month and I do have some symptoms that suggest I might have difficulties getting pregnant, but I want to keep a positive attitude!

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

When I went off the pill in 2006 (after being on it for 13 years! ), I thought my cycle would be fine, and things would progress quickly. WRONG! The first month I had been off the pill and expected to get my period, I didnt. I didnt get it for like 4 months! I went to the doctor, who said i should have gotten it at least after 2 months. UM, well, I DIDNT! So now what. So she had me take provera to get my period going. Got it that month, necxt month, NOTHING. SO she had me take it AGAIN that month, next month, nothing. HELLO!!!! So she had me take it again that month, along with chlomid to encourage ovulation. Told me when to DTD, and all that good stuff. I thought, this is NUTS!!! All these years I was worried about getting preggo, now I WANT to, and I cant?!?! The very next month, we do the provera and chlomid again, and VUWALA! I find out in january of 07 that I am infact pregnant. YAY!!!

So. WHen BFing goes horrible wrong with charlie, and I get my period back around 3.5 months PP, we werent being very careful cuz I thought, hey, i needed all the help with charlie, bet I will again. WRONG!!!!! I find out about late march I am infact going to have a baby that november. OYE!!!!!

[happysmileylady]

I got pg with dd1 when I was 17, while using protection, after 4 months of not using it.

After she was born, I went on the pill, was on for 7 years, until I met DH and we got married. During those 7 years, I was one of those people who was just awful at taking it. Would frequently forget, never took it at the same time of day...really I probably should have gotten pg at some point during that time. But thankfully did not.

After I met DH and we got married, we started ttc right away, having no reason to think that we would have a problem. Well, we did, it took 6 years and an IVF to get pg with dd2. At the time of our IVF, we were told that it was basically our only option, that DH had antisperm antibodies and that my eggs were a little older and the "shells" were a little "thicker" than they should be (there was a lot of technical mumbo jumbo that I can't recall off the top of my head, but that was the jist of it.)

DD2 was born November 2008. I did not go back on the pill, and AF showed up at 8 wks post partum despite exclusively nursing. She wasn't regular at first, due to the nursing, but once we finally gave it up at 5 months, I was having regular cycles again. While we knew we wanted more, by that point, we knew that we just couldn't swing it right away. We were in a financial mess, I was stressed out and dealing with ppd, we were just not in a good spot. And besides, we assumed we needed an IVF anyway. So we weren't trying, but we weren't preventing.

I went on PPD meds, which did help, but had awful side effects. One of which was that it increased my prolactin levels, which inhibited ovulation. Great, birth control as a side effect! Well, because of the other side effects, I weaned myself off them in December. Between the antidepressants and the holidays and so on, DH and I weren't "together" much anyway.

Well, I wasn't sure when to expect AF, and when she didn't show up by mid January (last one had probably been around the first of December, last AD was around mid December) I decided to take a test. Super dark line, as soon as the pee touched the dye! It was like 1:30 in the morning, DH was in bed, I started shaking and ran upstairs and woke him up. All I could spit out was "Look! Look! Look!" First, he thought it was a thermometer and I was freaking out because the baby was sick. Once he realized what it was, he was like, uh, take another. So I did and it too came up darkly positive. We sat up for the next hour or two, in shock, jusk kinda repeating, I can't believe it. Oh My Gawd.

I called my dr office for a blood test to confirm, had the test the next day and got my numbers the day after that. Very positively pg. Got a u/s to date with my OB, I was already about 5 weeks or so along, with due date of 9/22! I am still, even at 30wks now, just AMAZED that we did it on our own. The best guess is that I ovulated right after I weaned off the ADs and the only time DH and I were together like that month worked!

[CherryBomb]

That would be me. I didn't have any trouble conceiving my first 3. Then my 4th pregnancy was ectopic, and I lost fertility in the tube that ruptured. I was really worried after reading up on infertility rates post ectopic pregnancy, upwards of 30+% of women who lose a tube struggle to conceive. So I was shocked to get pregnant after my first post-m/c cycle! Sadly we lost that baby at 16 weeks for reasons that were never determined. I worried the ease of that conception was a fluke and I'd have trouble conceiving next time around, but it only took two tries and I'm 28 weeks pregnant now.

[karimac]

I'm really glad you posted this. I keep reading all of these stories about how hard it is after coming off BCPs. This will be our first cycle trying and I'm pretty scared its going to take forever and be hard. It doesnt help to have my mom in my ear saying "I got KU if your father just looked at me! You wont have any problems!". Ugh. Shhhh.

[zippy_francis]

Well for me in Nov of 2006 I found out I had pre-cancerous cells on my cervix and had a LEAP procedure done. While dealing with that my doc told me after they did a sono that I had PCOS. Well I was not really surprised since my whole life I have never had a normal cycle EVER. But he I had a name now for it. Whatev. But she did say that when I was ready to start a family I would prob have to deal with fertility treatments. I was engaged to my DH at the time and my DH and I had already had the family talk before then. I knew I would prob have a heck of a time getting prego since sometimes I would go months without a period, so we talked. Planned that if we couldnt get preg naturally we were open to adopt and if we werent meant to have a family, well that was ok to. (So many people I have known had terrible marriages or ended marriages because that very topic had never been discussed, which I have always found incredibly short-sighted)

Anyways, 3 months later in late Feb 2007 I am puking my guts up for weeks thinking I have a terrible stomach bug. Surpise! I am knocked up, 2 months along and due to walk down the aisle in a month! Fun stuff! (I was on the pill during this time as well).

Fast forward a year or so later. I am exclusively nursing my first DD who is 8 mo old, and guess what? Start puking my guts up. Surprise! Knocked up again! No birth control this time, but was a little misinformed on the breastfeeding can keep you from ovulating. (I didnt read the small print I guess, that it CAN prevent ovulation but not always) I never had a period, just prego.

So now my kids are 33 mo old and 17 mo old. On the pill but also doing a little prayer at this point too. I dont know if I am fertile myrtle or my husband has 'advanced' swimmers or maybe the combo of us together...


The truth is I dont know how long we would have waited to have kids and I dont think I would have ever in my right mind planned for them to be 16 months apart. But someone must have thought better of it because I am happy now the way things are, but it took some time to get here.

We want a 3rd, but we are going to try and breathe a bit before that one. Hey we might actually plan this one?!

[ZoeJane'sMommy]

Originally Posted by karimac

I'm really glad you posted this. I keep reading all of these stories about how hard it is after coming off BCPs. This will be our first cycle trying and I'm pretty scared its going to take forever and be hard. It doesnt help to have my mom in my ear saying "I got KU if your father just looked at me! You wont have any problems!". Ugh. Shhhh.

I will say I do have problems concieving but on a positive side for you, with my first one we tried everything and finally after a year my doc said lets try something crazy and she put me on BCP's for 3 months to force my cycles into 28 days (instead of 70days) the month after I stopped them I got prego!! So in my case BCP made me fertile.

[finnegansmom]

When Ds1 was 11 months old, I got my first pp AF. My first cycle had a 5 day LP, as I was breastfeeding quite a bit. My second cycle, I had a 8 day LP (via OPK only). We decided to try the third month, but I wasn't hopeful. I was taking b6 and started temping but my temps were erratic due to night nursing. Somehow, I got pregnant that month...I was in SHOCK. I mean, we tried, we had great timing, still looking back, I can't believe the luck. Of course this time around it took almost a year and 1 MC but I'm a few years older...

[Daffodil]

My first pregnancy is the opposite kind of story - no obvious problem, but tried and tried and couldn't get pregnant until I did IVF. I was 40 when I finally had my first, and I wasn't sure I would ever be able to have another, because we didn't know if we could afford IVF again, and I was getting pretty old to expect success with that anyway. It took 2 years after DD was born before I got AF again, but once I did we figured we might as well try the natural way. The first month I knew I was ovulating, it didn't work out to DTD at the right time. The second month, it did, and that was all it took! I got the positive test the morning of my 43rd birthday.

[happythistle]

We had a tough time the first go round of TTC - took 14 months and then ended in m/c which was heartbreaking. I had to have a d&c due to incomplete m/c and my ob found the reason for all our troubles. Endometrial adnomyeoma - a fancy way to explain a benign tumor. After that we got pg several times, most without even trying. DS arrived and then we had the awful experience of 3 m/c's in row. AFter that I thought I was doomed never to have another. DH and I thought long and hard, consulted with our OB and MW, and decided one last chance. TTC month #1 didn't work, we took a month off, and then TTC month #2 was a winner! I'm now 29 weeks with a surprise in many ways!

[somegirl99]

I had figured it was going to be difficult for us because I was older (37 when we started TTC) and I had had very irregular cycles all my life, except for when I was on BCP, including going over a year without any periods whatsoever when I was about 34, probably because I was underweight.

I put on a little bit of weight before having the IUD removed, the first 4 cycles were no good for conceiving because of bad timing (travel or illness), although they weren't wasted because I was charting and learning my cycle and its patterns (which had become much more regular probably because of the weight gain). The first cycle with good timing, our 5th month TTC, I got pregnant, I couldn't believe it.

[MamatoA]

I was diagnosed with PCOS (I go loooong streches without periods and/or have anovulatory cycles) when I was a teenager and told at that time that I might not be able to conceive children. (It was in the early 90s). As a teenager, this didn't mean much to me; I didn't know if I wanted children. But by the time I was in my mid-20s, I knew I wanted to be a parent and really started to greive the possibility that I wouldn't be able to conceive and carry my child. It was something that I talked to my (now) husband about when we were dating. I felt he should know upfront. Anyway, we married and a few years ago decided to try to conceive. I saw my GYN, she prescribed Clomid, didn't monitor me or anything just told me to take it on days 3-7...so I took it, peed on Ovulation predictors for 30+ freakin' days and never got a positive so I never bothered to take a pregnancy test....

OK. We all know where this is going, right?

I am about as self aware as a lawn chair because I didn't know I was pregnant for several weeks. In fact, my doctor suggested a pregnancy test and I declined but she insisted. The plus side is that I don't drink, I take a multi-vitamin with folic acid daily, and I rarely take medication so I didn't do anything harmful to my child during the TEN weeks that she existed and I was too dumb to know it.

So. In sum, 12 years of greiving and expecting infertility + 1 round of Clomid (unsupervised) - maternal self awareness = one amazing and wonderful child

She is the greatest thing ever. I'm grateful grateful grateful for her. I don't expect to have another child (but if we do, yay!) and I choose to focus on what we do have: a healthy, happy child. I can't ask for more than that.

Best wishes with your journey TTC. Thank you for asking this question. It's helpful (fun and painful, too) to think about where we've been.

[Sourire]

I'm glad I started this topic, I am loving reading everyone's stories.

Coincidentally I heard a really great one yesterday. My cousin was diagnosed with cancer in her early twenties. She was getting all kinds of chemo and stuff and it didn't seem to be working, at one point I remember the doctors told her she had 3 weeks to live, our whole family was in shock!

Anyways she made it through after all, 2 years later she is in complete remission and her life is back to normal. However due to all the chemotherapy the doctors told her she would never be able to get pregnant. Well I just found out yesterday that she is now unexpectedly pregnant, and super happy about it!

[amandasemele]

Well, I had no trouble with our first 3. We made a dumb decision and had my tubes tied. Within a year we decided to get them untied. We were told after a reversal in a healthy woman your chances go down dramatically. So we thought it would take awhile. The next month I was preg! Now trying for our 5th we are still trying after a few months. You never know!! Good luck!