National Infertility Awareness Week!!! April 24-30

{ a couple days late but I started this over weekend and forgot to pick back up, story of my life lol)

http://www.resolve.org/national-infertility-awareness-week/home-page.html

This is very close to my heart as we struggled getting pregnant and staying pregnant. When we started trying we never imagined we would have problems. After months of thoroughly tracking my cycles nothing happened :-( I explained all this to my OB and she referred us to a specialist. I was terrified....what was wrong with me? A million 'what if...' questions ran through my head daily.  After all the tests, we still didn't have an answer to what the issue or issues were, we were diagnosed as 'Unexplained Infertility" Thankfully we found some solutions and have 3 beautiful sons but it wasn't an easy road.

We were sent to Dr. Jeffrey Russell and what a wonderful doctor he is :-) And his staff is amazing! When we first started going to his office, I was amazed at the age range of women in the office....everyone from us, at that time 25 to 40 or 50. At the time, it was assumed that only older women had fertilty issues, I learned very quickly it was all ages from all walks of life.

If you know anyone with fertility issues, just be there for them and listen. I know for me, I didn't need answers for what we were experiencing, I just needed to vent and someone to listen. Everyone has the best intentions but a person can't really understand this until they have been through it themselves. I would never wish this on anyone to experience but it is so scary and intimidating when you start the fertilty treatments, the endless amounts of doctor appointments, the medicines, etc. It is impossible not to stress, not to worry...so many people would tell me, "Don't worry, it will happen.' While great advice, that is impossible when you have to keep track of everything little thing to make sure you get to the doctor on time to start your 'cycle' with them, 4-5 doctor appts/week, monitoring of the meds so that you don't overstim, when do to the baby dance and when your not allowed, hormone levels, daily injections, what time to take medicines, etc. And once you get pregnant...will it stick?

So if you have family or friends experiencing this, just be there for them. I am so glad this topic is coming out in the open. When we were trying to get pregnant the first time 3-4 years ago, no one talked about  it. I have since seen more about infertility in magazines, on the news (not the octo-mom, she is crazy) and just more resources in general which is fabulous :-) People dealing with this shouldn't have to go through it by themselves, they need support :-)

I have always been open about our issues, it is nothing to be embarrassed about. I mean look at our 3 handsome boys....it was alot of missed work, alot of money (thank goodness for awesome health insurance!) and many stressful days/nights but all completely worth it!