Cycle 18

With only 5 days left in cycle 18 it seems weird to be writing this post now. But, honestly, I just haven’t felt up to it. Cycle 18 has hit me hard. We’ve now been trying to get pregnant for the length of TWO pregnancies. That is how I’ve been thinking about it, even though it isn’t exactly true because I have short cycles (25-26 days) so in months it’s “only” 16, but by the time I hit the 18 month mark I’ll be at cycle 21.

At this stage I have no hope for getting pregnant naturally, especially given that 3 medicated intrauterine inseminations failed and one medicated cycle has failed. I felt so much hope on IUI cycle #1. That was lost when IUI cycle #2 failed – 2 eggs and 50 million sperm placed directly into my uterus and still no pregnancy. While statistics differ on the chances of getting pregnant after a certain length of time, they all agree that after the first 6-12 months your chances of conceiving are very low. From babycenter.com:

·      30 percent get pregnant within the first cycle (about one month)

-   59 percent get pregnant within three cycles (about three months)

·      80 percent get pregnant within six cycles (about six months)

·      85 percent get pregnant within 12 cycles (about one year)

·      91 percent get pregnant within 36 cycles (about three years)

·      93 to 95 percent get pregnant within 48 cycles (about four years)

The difference between 1 year and 3 years is so small that it is hard to hold on to hope that this will happen for us without IVF.

When I first started checking out pregnancy communities, I would see women that have been trying for 18 months, 2, 3, 4 years to get pregnant and still have no living children. I would wonder how they kept going after all those failed cycles, all those failed infertility treatments. Now that I’m in that same position, I don’t really have an answer besides “you just do”. You just kept going forward because that is the only thing to do if you want a baby. You go forward until you’ve exhausted all your options, or are out of money, or just can’t take it anymore, and you decide that you’ll live child free not by choice. As much as I’ve given up hope, I’m still moving forward. I’m doing my last medicated cycle (progesterone only) before we switch to what is commonly referred to as not-trying-not-preventing while we wait for life to settle down so that we can pursue IVF. If IVF works I anticipate we will be at the 2-3 years trying before we (finally) can hold our baby in our arms.