If you follow my social media channels or are subscribed to my email list, it’s likely for one of two reasons: fitness or motherhood. I’ve decided to start a blog series which I will call Mamacita Moments. With this blog series, I hope to shed light on REAL motherhood, not what everyone thinks motherhood is or should be. I want to show you the good, the bad and the ugly because nobody does. I believe that there are not enough TRUE stories about what pregnancy and motherhood are really like. I will bring you through my motherhood journey from trying to conceive to pregnancy, to postpartum recovery and beyond. I want to warn you ahead of time, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine but it will help shed light on what motherhood is really like and THAT is exactly the point of this blog series. Here is the first post for the series: Trying To Conceive.
It was 2016, both my husband and I decided this was the year we would start a family. We danced around setting the date for when we were actually serious about it until we finally put some real thought into it. We were both social people who enjoyed going out, partying and traveling with or without each other so we decided to make a list of things we wanted to do before getting serious about trying to conceive. At the top of the list for both of us was touring Europe. We agreed that, if nothing else, we had to check that off the list. So we booked a trip and had an EPIC time throughout Europe. We came back feeling like we had done it all and were satisfied enough to start trying for real.
I dumped my birth control pills and stopped drinking in preparation for what we thought would be a montage of nine months of pregnancy that ended with a beautiful picture of a little family of three. How hard could it be? After all, people do this kind of thing on accident all the time! Month after month, I was eager and anxious to take that pregnancy test and each time it was negative. I started to get discouraged and sad about the months of disappointment. Friends told me I was stressing over it too much and needed to relax and have fun with it. True, I was tracking my ovulation and scheduling “sexy time” because we HAD TO do it that day. It was stressful and it was taking the fun out of it. I decided I wouldn’t be so strict about it anymore, I even had the occasional drink but still no pregnancy.
In December, we decided to go to Universal Studios the day after Christmas. We went on all the rides and even had some butterbeer. It was fun of course until the next day or two when I had debilitating cramps and a period unlike I had ever had. If you are a woman, you are probably very familiar with having some period cramps and passing those random blood clots during your period. No biggie right? You do it just about every month. Well, that was my norm but multiply that by 10. The pain was intense, I could not get out of bed and it was actually making me cry. I have a pretty high pain tolerance so this was not normal for me. I suddenly became extremely worried and scared. We’ve been trying to conceive but we went on all the rides and had drinks. What if I was already pregnant and now I’m having a miscarriage??? My husband drove me to the doctor. When we got there the pain was getting so much worse. The doctor asked if this was normal for me. I told her that my periods are usually painful and heavy but I had never had it this bad. I told her that we had been trying to conceive and feared I was having a miscarriage because I had just been at a theme park. She took a look and assured me that a pregnancy was impossible due to the amount of gunk coming out of me. In fact, she said I probably wouldn’t be able to get pregnant without some kind of fertility treatment. I mean the best way I can describe it is just like a muddy flow.
The doctor scheduled me for an emergency dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure. John Hopkins explains it as "a surgical procedure in which the cervix (lower, narrow part of the uterus) is dilated (expanded) so that the uterine lining (endometrium) can be scraped with a curette (spoon-shaped instrument) to remove abnormal tissues." I was told I had multiple cysts, polyps, fibroids, adenomyosis and endometriosis. It was a mess in there and there was no way I ever could have gotten pregnant with all of that going on.
I was so relieved it wasn’t a miscarriage but I was also distraught at the thought that I may need fertility treatment. One thing at a time, I thought. We spent New Year’s Eve at home that year with tears and cheers but looking forward to continuing our efforts to become parents. There were so many thoughts in my head. What if I’m infertile? What if we don’t have the money for fertility treatment? I asked my husband multiple times, “will you leave me if we can’t have babies?” He always said no. “We’ll try and if we can’t, we’ll just travel the world together and do all the things that you’re not as free to do when you do have kids,” I still remember the peace that his words brought to my anxiety. He always made me feel loved and supported.
After going through this whole ordeal, we knew we would have to optimize our health and our habits to make our chances of conceiving naturally better. So about a week or two later, we both started eating healthier and working out. We each dropped about 10lbs, looked better, felt better and about two months later - BAM - positive pregnancy test. By my calculations, our firstborn daughter is either a Super bowl baby or a Valentine’s Day baby. We were over the moon, super happy and started our journey into parenthood.
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