My journey...

As a young girl coming into puberty I wasn't thrilled when I had my first menstral cycle. I thought I was one of the "lucky" ones because not every month did I have a period. At the tender age of 18 my pediatrician recommended that I start having my yearly checkups. Yes, I was still seeing my pediatrician. Dr. Soho and I were fairly close. I even babysat her 6 boys for her! She said she could do my first exam and as we talked I told her about my irregularity. Sometimes I could go 3, 4, even 6 months without having a period. She told me that this is fairly common and that we could fix this easily. We discussed the option of putting me on birth control at such a young age but she said that as a woman we need to have a monthly menstral cycle so that we can shed the lining of our cervix which would decrease the long term risk of cervical cancer. The treatment would last only 6 months and after I stopped the birth control I should return to having a normal monthly cycle. If it was only that easy. The medicine stopped and I never got a normal period. I was now frightened that if I didn't have a cycle that I was increasing the chance for cervical cancer down the road so I continued taking the birth control. Every once in a while I would stop taking the pill just to see if I ever started having regular cycles but never did. Deep down I had this fear that one day I would have trouble conceiving since I wasn't ovulating every month.

Seven years later when Phillip and I decided that we wanted to start thinking about having a baby. This was May 2004. I stopped taking the pill and to see what would happen. This was goign to plan out very well since I had my yearly visit coming up in August. Knowing deep down in my heart that I wasn't ovulating I started to chart my temperature every day before I got out of the bed. This meant that before my feet touched the ground or I sat up in the bed I would have to pull out my thermometer. I then would take out my charts and place a dot on the specific day and what my temperature was creating three months of charts. I even ordered a lipstick ovulation test. This required me to run straight to the bathroom after taking my temperature and spitting on a lens in a lipstick looking tube and then checking to see if my spit turned into funny shaped meaning that I was ovulating. My spit never turned into funny shapes.