Happy Anniversary

I've always been someone who likes to be in control. So that's why I started charting my cycles 18 months ago, even before we starting trying to have a baby. And that's why when my primary care doctor offered to give me a referral to an RE when we had only been trying for 6 months, I jumped at it. Yes, I know you can't really have an IF diagnosis until you've been trying for one year. Sometimes couples are just really unlucky and it could take up to a year.

But the offer was given and I took it. Several weeks later the RE confirmed what I had noticed in my charting: that my cycles are not very regular. We also got hubby's semen analysis back and that left much to be desired. So the treatments started.

But somewhere in the back of my head I thought we couldn't really be infertile if we haven't tried for a year. Maybe it was just really bad luck. Yes, I have irregular cycles, but I still ovulate on my own and since the RE called it "unexplained" then maybe it's just bad luck or bad timing. Yes, the hubster had a poor semen analysis, but his second one was much better, so maybe that was just a fluke.

While we did start some medications, I have been hesitant to go all in because I wanted to wait. This one year timeline seemed like a big bright line that we hadn't crossed yet. As I joined the blogging community, I was hesitant to join in some conversations thinking that those going through IF for an extended period of time wouldn't want to hear from me. Less than one year? That's not even infertile.

Last year we had big plans to start trying for a baby in August. This date was carefully planned because we thought of course it would happen right away and were trying to plan when when the baby was born. I had gone off the pill l months earlier so I could chart my cycles and have more control over it. Our plan was to use other forms of BC until August. But then our vacation started on July 4th and continued on through our anniversary. And apparently we didn't communicate about who would pack the birth control. And there we found ourselves on our vacation--on our anniversary--with no birth control and my knowledge that I was fertile. So we thought, screw it. What difference does one month make?

The result of all of this is that now our wedding anniversary corresponds with our TTC anniversary. So, umm, happy anniversary?