A New Year

Happy New Year! (or happy four days into the new year, I suppose). Starting a blog has been on my list for a long while now, so I figured the first days of 2012 would be a perfect time to finally get it going. In the past I have put it off because I was not quite sure what specifically to blog about...would anyone really want a play-by-play of MY life? Probably not! However 2011 brought about some interesting challenges and struggles for us, and I knew I finally had my topic.

Meet US! This is me, my husband Matt and our beloved and completely spoiled pup, Bevo (pronounced "bee-voh" for all you non-Texans). We have been married for just over two years with our anniversary being on Halloween of all days. No, we are not a goth, spiderweb and skull obsessed (ok, maybe a little obsessed with skulls) couple, but the venue was way cheaper on Halloween! Can't blame us, right? Anyway, Matt is originally from England and I from the great state of Texas. We met while living in Chicago a few years ago, got married and made it back to Texas as quick as we could.

At the end of 2010 we decided to start trying for a baby, and amazingly got pregnant the first month. For years I had had what everyone told me was an irrational fear that I would not be able to conceive, but I was seemingly proven wrong with our quick success. The weeks and months that followed were a rollercoaster of great highs and even lower lows. The day before going in for our first OB appointment at 8 weeks I started having a little bit of pain in my lower abdomen. It was probably unrelated, but I was so anxious after waiting so long to finally have my first appointment that I went in for an ultrasound just to check out what was going on. There was no explanation for the pain, but unfortunately there was no heartbeat either. The "baby" was there, just where it should be, but there was no heartbeat. The doctor told me to give it a week and come back..so in a week I went back expecting the worst, and miraculously the baby had grown and there it was!! A heartbeat!!! I could NOT believe it. Matt couldn't be with me at that appointment, so I called him frantically crying and gushing that we were the luckiest people on Earth etcetc. Another week passed, and we went in for our "first" big OB appointment. The sonogram part came first, and yet again our hopes were dashed as the baby's heartbeat was absent.

That miscarriage was painful enough as we had seen a heartbeat, I had had no bleeding and there was no explanation for it. It just seemed SO incredibly unfair. I was supposed to be due on November 7th, 2011 and had already thought how great it would be to have a baby so close to our anniversary, have a new baby for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and be able to drink by the time the holidays rolled around!! It was as if everything was PERFECT, and then it was all gone. Everyone said I should not worry because I had gotten pregnant so easily the first time that it was bound to happen again. Well here we are a year after we first started trying, beyond my due date, past the holidays...and we have yet to get pregnant again.

This blog will be my chronicle of the past year and my diary of the days, weeks and months to come in our struggle with unexplained infertility. During this journey I have realized how important it is to hear stories of others going through the same/similar ordeals. I have been somewhat of a silent follower, googling my quesitons, worries and fears incessantly but never contributing much of my own. Going to change that, though, starting now! Here is our story...hopefully it will help someone, somewhere.