Let's Make a Baby!

Warning - first blog, got a lot to catch up on.

After getting hitched in September of 2008 to my first real "boyfriend" ever, we spent the next two years enjoying life as a married couple. Buying a house, taking vacations, getting a dog, arguing over who did (or did not) do the dishes correctly, you know - all those things newlywed are supposed to do. And it was absolutely wonderful. We always knew children would be a part of our future, and deep down the fear of what that journey would entail was never far behind for me.

A little background to put my fear into context.

I spent the majority of my life overweight, enjoying food without really thinking about what I was putting in my mouth. Turns out, it's a sure fire way to gain weight, and quickly -which I did. By the time I came home for Christmas after my freshman year at college I was barely fitting into size 16 pants.

Something snapped after one New Years Eve party, where I saw a girlfriends pictures and didn't even recognize the woman I was looking at. To confirm my suspicaion I got on the scale a few days later and almost cried when I saw I was close to 200 lbs (a number I always swore I would never reach).

I was tired of being overweight, tired of being the only one of my friends who didn't wear a size 6, and ready to make a change. Over the next few months I started to exercise more, eat healthier,  and track my calories. Wouldn't you know the weight seemed to fall off.

I continued down this path, increasing the amount I exercised, decreasing the number of calories I ate and watching in shock as I started fitting into smaller sizes, and getting comments about how much weight I had lost. In less than a year I lost 80 lbs, going from a size 16 to a size 4. Aside from the weight I also stopped getting my period during this time, most likely because I shocked the sh*t out of my body going from one extreme to the other (something I can't seem to help).

At first it seemed like a blessing, no period - this is awesome, who needs birth control! Later I realized it was my bodies way of telling me something was not right, which I ignored for the next 5 years until turning 26 and realizing that soon we would be looking to start a family and not getting your period (aka not ovulating) sort of hinders that process.

I was referred to an RE (Infertility Specialist) and diagnosed with Hypothalamic-Amenorrhea which was most liketly caused by the amount of running I was doing and stress put on my body (remember, did not do stuff like "run" for fun for about 20 years).

I started to work on gaining some weight and cutting back the intensity that I exercises to see if my cycles returned on their own. Did that for 4 months and each month was disheartened to see that nothing had changed.

After talking through our options with my Doctor we decided to try a little infertility magic pill called Clomid, to see if that helped me regulate my cycles. Wouldn't you know, it worked.