My Hopes Were Up!

It was sometime around Christmas of 2009 when I really thought I was pregnant. We had been trying around six months to conceive a child. It was still pretty quiet to most of our friends that we were hoping to have a baby in the near term except for our close friends Steven and Venessa. See, Steven and Venessa were in the same boat that Mike and I were in. They too were trying to conceive their first child and they started around the same time that Mike and I did. So it was Christmas time and I was late. My last cycle was at the beginning of November and this was December 20th. I was sure that I was pregnant. I stopped drinking all caffeine and I didn’t dare go near sushi. I didn’t want to do anything to bad to happen to the little human being that was forming in my womb. I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test yet, because it was my understanding that the longer you waited after you were late the higher your HCG levels would be.

It was a Saturday night and we had met Steven and Venessa at Flat Irons Mall to do some last minute Christmas shopping, grab dinner and to see a movie. We decided to go to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. I must have got up thirty times to go to the bathroom to check to see if I got my period. No period meant that “hey maybe I really am pregnant.” At dinner Venessa and I were talking about our hopes to be mommy soon and Steven and Mike were joking about how they weren’t sure if they were ready to by thrown into fatherhood.

A few days had passed and I decided that it was time to take a pregnancy test. I went to a local grocery store and bought the First Response test. I came home and read the directions and eventually peed on the stick. I waited the five minutes and sure thing there was only one line, which means I wasn’t pregnant. Ok I thought to myself, there is no baby on its way, or maybe my HCG levels just aren’t as high for the test to pick them up. We had our Christmas Party at work, at Lucky Strike. It was a great time with co-workers. It was towards the end of the party when one of the girls asked if she could buy me a drink and I said no and just looked at her. By this time to she was a little intoxicated and she said “OMG are you pregnant? I just smiled and tried to avoid the question. I went on throughout the party thinking to myself “I am so pregnant, I just so it.” So later that night I went to Target and I bought another box of pregnancy tests. I took the test and what do you know it was negative, just like the ten other tests that I took. This made no sense to me I was now weeks late and I still did not get my period and there was not one positive pregnancy tests.

I waited a couple of days, by that time Christmas had passed and I had a few days off from work. I believe I bought five more tests and used every single one and they were all negative. “Hmmmm”, I thought to myself, what is going on? I enjoyed my time off, but it was two days before New Year’s Eve that I got a text message from Venessa that said “I am pregnant.” Now I was extremely excited for my best friend, but deep down inside I was bummed for Mike and I that I didn’t have the same news for her. I of course told her that’s wonderful and that we were so happy for her and Steven, but my insides went to mush. I remember putting my running shoes on and taking off for a run. I think I might have run five miles that day. I just needed to clear my head digest the feelings that my best friend was pregnant and that I wasn’t. This isn’t how Venessa and I wanted things to be. We wanted to be pregnant at the same time, to go through all the hormones and growing bellies together. I wanted to experience the pregnancy with my best friend going through the same thing. A few days later I got my period. I was heartbroken. Life would go on though. 

Over the next few months my periods came and went and the word regular wasn’t part of them. Some months I was thirty days between my periods and some months I was 67 days apart. Every month that I was late I bought a pregnancy test only one line would to show up. A little side and funny note, there was one month that I was late and I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on the test, so I made Mike take me to the Dollar Store. Yes, the Dollar Store, where I got two for one tests for a dollar. I remember telling my co-worker and she just laughed. Buying a pregnancy test at a Dollar Store is like buying condoms there. It isn’t going to work! I am still remembered to this day and how I got two pregnancy tests for a buck!

I can’t explain to you the emotions that I experienced. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t get pregnant, or better yet why my cycle was so irregular. My friends would tell me that it was stress of my job and I would tell them that was impossible that I had been doing my job for years and it never effected my cycle. By February I couldn’t take it anymore I wanted answers. I made a regular doctor’s appointment with my primary care physician. I had my annual exam done and a blood pregnancy test done. The doctor said everything looked fine and she just thought stress was why my periods were off. I nodded and left. I didn’t feel like any of my fears were answered. I needed more information. It just didn’t seem right that for the past few months my cycles were off, and I needed some kind of diagnosis so I would stop spending fifty dollars a month on pregnancy tests. I was going to take matters into my own hands and find out what was going on with my body. I did some research on line and found the best OBGYN doctor in the Denver Metro Area and scheduled an appointment. If my PCP wasn’t going to get to the bottom of these issues, then I would find another doctor that would.