Thursday, July 8, 2010

Uncertainty and Struggles

I do believe my body has rebelled against me.  It has sometimes thorn curve balls to me in the past, but nothing like this.

My husband and I practice Natural Family Planning--the Creighton Model to be exact.  Being devout Catholics, our Church promotes using NFP as the only moral way to avoid and achieve pregnancy.  When we got engaged, we quickly signed up for classes at our local hospital.  Never did I imagine this method being not only effective and fairly easy to do, but so eye-opening to my own body.  I had a WHOA!  This is awesome! moment a few months into it because I felt so in control of my body and cycles.  No more guessing, no more well that's weird thinking inside my head.  It's a wonderful tool.  You can learn more about it here so you can get to know the vocabulary and won't be confused reading this post.

Everything was simple with my cycles.  Black and white.  By the textbook.

Then I had Nora.  No, actually, then I started breastfeeding.  Yes, breastfeeding.

It was like I was ovulating every other day!  I had no menses, so no beginning and end of cycles and my discharge almost always looked like peak type mucus.  I was so confused for about 7 months.  At that point we got back together with our NFP coach who told us not to worry, my cycles had not come back and that I would quickly remember what real peak type mucus looks and feels like when it comes around.  She was right (she's always right).  Two months later, my cycles came back and all was well.  That was January of this year.

Come May.

Had a new cycle start up.  Thought I had some stress in my life that was messing my cycle up, but I still was pretty sure I ovulated.  Then the weirdest thing happened to me.  Just out of the blue I started feeling strange. Like, not normal physically.  Can't really explain it more than just that.  Something was different, I could tell.  The next day or so, whenever Nora latched on, it hurt crazy bad to nurse her.  Holy frick, it was painful!  That triggered a memory in my head at a past La Leche League meeting where a few of the moms were talking about how they knew they were pregnant by the pain they had when nursing.  I decided to take a pregnancy test: it came back negative.  A few days went by and I started feeling weirder and weirder and nursing still hurt.  Took another test: negative.  Waited another week, took another one: negative.  Another one a little later: negative.  I finally decided to go to my OB/GYN to get a blood test for the pregnancy hormone.  Negative.  Blood doesn't lie, right?  At that point, Darrenn and I were really hoping that we were pregnant because then that would've solved everything. But, now I had no idea what was wrong with me.

I began looking up my symptoms and quickly narrowed it down to two conditions: an ovarian cyst or an ectopic pregnancy.  Bad and worse.  I was so scared.  I quickly got on the phone to schedule an appointment with my doctor.  The quickest they could get me in was 5 days from then.  Everyday up to then I kept hoping that my period would come or my symptoms would disappear or, even, a pregnancy test would come back positive.  None of those things happened.

My doctor said there seemed to be nothing wrong with me.  She did a pelvic examine and found nothing out of the normal.  She decided to have me take another blood test to test for my hormone levels.

Those results didn't get back to me for 6 days.  I swear it seemed like 2 weeks.  Finally they called me: "Your hormone levels are all normal.  There seems to be nothing wrong."  Seriously???  "So, could you leave a message for Dr. Sherman, please?"  "Sure."  "Could you ask her what the heck I should do now?"  She chuckles "Absolutely."  "Thanks."

Got a call from them yesterday saying they're mailing me paperwork to get a pelvic ultrasound to see if there's anything abnormal.  That should be in my mailbox tomorrow.  Right from the mailbox, I'll be heading over to get it done.

Meanwhile, this is day 65 of this cycle with no changes.  Thankfully, nursing isn't as painful as it once was, but it's still not "normal".

I'll let you know how the ultrasound goes.

Pray for me.  Thanks.

1 comment:

  1. Oh Gretchen, you definitely have my prayers. The weirdest thing is, I had this feeling you were pregnant too (Maybe I was just hoping, ha, ha!) I hope everything goes well! If you need anything, let me know!

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