Pregnancy is not a straight line

In her recent pregnancy announcement, Anne Hathaway revealed that it hasn’t been easy for her and that “it was not a straight line to either of [her] pregnancies.”

For some people it can be a pretty straight line and I think of those people with a lot of envy. I know the end of whatever line or lines ours is/are end pretty much the same way, but the journey is so very different for each of us. For many of us, 1-in-4 in fact, it can be many many squiggly lines that are of different lengths with twists and turns and ends.

Thinking back, my line for both (in)fertility and the pregnancy too was very “Jeremy Bearimy.”

*This one’s for my fellow The Good Place fans. You think I’d write a blog post about squiggly lines and not include this awesomeness?

Through the however many years it took for us to get pregnant again after miscarrying the first time, it truly felt as though here time just seemed to go backward and forward and round and round and two steps back again and it felt like there was no end in sight - though, thankfully, in my case there was.

Also sometimes it was nothing*.

Jeremy Bearimy, baby.

I did everything I was supposed to do in those seven-ish years:

Taking my temperature
Ovulation tests
So many pregnancy tests only to have my period start immediately after
Vitamins
Exercise
Diet changes and eating healthy
Two different acupuncturists (if you need one go see Gil Ben-Ami, he’s amazing. The other guy I had did not work for me)
Eating whatever the hell I wanted, diet be damned
Not exercising
Fertility tests
Clomid
Ultrasounds

I made a promise to myself that if I wasn’t pregnant by Christmas in 2015, we would do IVF in 2016 and we did. However because I had persistent cysts (seven to be exact) and a few fibroids the fertility specialist recommended I remove them to improve the odds of implantation. The surgery went smoothly, but my uterus was thinned out on one area which meant I was at an even higher risk (on top of being 38, the age which already put me in the “High Risk” category of pregnancy) so bearing down could mean risking my life and the baby’s so it was decided even before I was pregnant that a Caesarian section was the route I’d have to take. I tried clomid again one more time but ended up getting my period a few days later than scheduled (boy was that extra disappointing) so IVF it was.

Before starting the process of IVF I had to have one more cycle. I was a couple of days late again and didn’t think much of it at all and did what I knew would trigger my cycle and used an old pregnancy test I had. You’re probably guessing where this is going.

A line appeared, but then sort of disappeared and reappeared… it was really faint but it was there.

I drove to Walgreens, bought two more different tests (one of the expensive $20 ones and one of the cheaper Walgreens brand ones), paid for them and took them both in the bathroom.

I was finally pregnant.

There’s a lot more to this story including how I almost died after giving birth, how the pregnancy itself was fraught with stress thanks to a positive genetic test result, but I’ll leave it here for today. I was just really inspired to share by Anne Hathaway’s post and the straight line analogy. Nobody tells you how hard it can be, but I’m glad we’re talking about it more and more now and removing the dumb stigmas that come with the choices we make with our bodies and our children. I hope my brief recap of the experience of getting pregnant gives some of you hope or at least makes you go, “YES THAT WAS ME TOO.” I’m here for you.

I’m just going to end here by saying that not a day has gone by that I haven’t thanked the stars that my own curlicue line turn into a rainbow.