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My Story

Hi there, welcome to my blog. Yes I am a drama queen and yes I have been deemed “infertile” by a few of the medical experts in the great State of Colorado but that hasn’t made me give up my quest to have children quite yet. My husband and I have been on the emotional roller coaster of infertility since March of 2009 when I stopped taking birth control after being on it for ten straight years. I have been keeping a journal since the start of this process and thought I would share it with all of the other incredible women out there who may be going through the same thing or similar thing that I am. At age 28, I have been diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Failure (POF). With no history of fertility problems on either side of my family and normal periods before going on the pill, I was left to accept that I have this condition and that there is no medical explanation for it. Since receiving this diagnosis from a fertility specialist in May 2009, I decided I simply wasn’t going to accept that I wasn’t going to have children with my own eggs. I jumped into the world of Eastern Medicine, worked with an Endocrinologist and even went on a fertility diet trying to get my ovaries to start functioning normally. The conclusion I have come to is this…..having Celiac Disease (Gluten/Flour intolerance) and continuing to eat flour throughout most of my childhood and part of adulthood caused my body to produce anti-bodies that have now started attacking the organs/glands in my body. After a visit to an endocrinologist in December 2009, it was determined that I have ovarian antibodies which are essentially antibodies produced by my body that only attack the endocrine system. No doctor has actually confirmed my self diagnosis that the Gluten Intolerance caused this but Celiac Disease is an auto immune disorder and any auto immune disorder can cause your body to attack itself. I am currently waiting to see a Reproductive Endocrinologist to see what the next steps for me will be. I have read that doctors can try and stimulate the Pituitary Gland to get your Endocrine System running again or that you can be given steroids to help restore ovary function. I am hoping to receive one of these treatments in the near future but only time will tell. In the past 10 months, I have watched many of my close friends become pregnant while I remain a sad statistic. This blog contains my thoughts as I struggle through the process of figuring out what in the world is going on with my body and how I continue to try to stay upbeat and positive about my fertility and enjoy my life. I hope that my blog can help others would love to hear from other women going through the same thing, inspiring stories or anyone who just needs encouragement. I know and understand how difficult every day can be once you have received the POF or infertile diagnosis and want you all to know that I am here for you. Please note that some of you may feel I am sharing to much information (TMI) and for that I am sorry. If you want to read my blog…you get all the details. You never know what will be helpful to someone else right? God bless everyone and I wish you luck on your fertility adventures:0) Remember mind over matter!

My intent is to raise awareness of the issues. Please do not rely on this or any other article when making decisions that will affect you and your health. These are things I have decided to try after much research.
I am sorry I have to even ask, but this research stuff is starting to get expensive. I am just asking for $1.00 donation for posts you feel have helped you. I will use all donations to help fund my research and doctors appointments and of course report back to you. Baby dust to all of you and dont worry we will all find a way to have children.

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Infertile – a horrible word used to make women who are already feeling bad about themselves want to jump into a pool of chocolate fudge and eat their sorrows away only to realize that not only can they not get pregnant but now they don’t fit in their clothes. A word so easily tossed around by doctors that they don’t even realize they are saying it and a word that you never under any circumstances should google unless you want your brain to explode.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Annoying Neighbors, a Project Extension and Facts of the BCP Yasmin

After receiving my new and improved blood test results, the rest of the day passed by in the blur. I don’t know where the day went but before I knew it I was on my way home from work. Traffic was not bad and I managed to make it home fairly quickly. As I pulled up to my house I noticed that the neighborhood kids had continued their annoying pranks and had rearranged some of the items in my yard for the second day in a row. When we were first married, my husband and I were given a solar rock with our address on it. It sounds tacky but it was actually very cute and was a nice way for people to identify our address at night (when our front porch light was turned off). The numbers were removable so the neighborhood kids would rearrange the numbers while my husband and I were at work. Although it was funny at first that started to annoy me. Around Christmas last year, I came home from a family function to find one side of the solar rock had been bashed in! My husband and I decided to still leave it out because the part where the numbers where was still intact. About a week later we came home from his parent’s house to find that the rock was still there but that all the numbers had been taken off and were no where to be found! Now we were forced to throw our rock away and thought it would be the end of the pranks….we were wrong. I came home the next day to find that someone had broken two long branches off of our tiny tree in our front yard and stuck them in the two empty flower pots (because it was winter) so they were standing straight up. So now they were ripping branches off my tree…great! It is now May and it had been a few months since the pranksters had struck. Now that we are all caught up…last weekend my husband built a cute planter around our tree in the front yard. Since I purchased the home a few years ago, I have always had a fake rock with a prayer on it that can hold a spare key sitting somewhere in the front yard. It usually sits by the flower pots but we recently moved the pots into the backyard which left the rock sitting by itself not to worry because the neighborhood kids took it upon themselves to sit the rock on the nice, newly planted flowers in the planter the last two days. I also found a flattened, dead, baby rabbit sitting perfectly in the middle of our back deck. Unless the rabbit decided to climb onto our roof and commit bunny suicide, the kids put that there too. I have been trying not to get upset about things lately but the bunny was the straw that broke the camel’s back! I am going to take a day off of work in the next few weeks and wait for the kids to come walking along. Once they are on my property…I am gonna….well I don’t know what I am going to do but something needs to be done. Why would they do that? It’s not like my husband and I have been the neighborhood trolls always complaining and yelling at people. I was tempted to leave a nasty note in our yard so that they found it today but my husband said that would just add to fuel to the fire. I am jotting down a mental note right now to make sure my children know that vandalizing other people’s property is not acceptable. I would have never even thought about doing something like this as a kid or young adult. Now my opinion of every kid between the age of 10 & 20 in my neighborhood has been tainted. Everytime I see kids walk by I think to myself “I am watching you, my little pretties…and your little dog too.” I swear that if my plants are vandalized or taken out of my yard I will call the police and have them search all the homes in the area for kids shoes covered in dirt from my garden! Ok now that I got that out of my system…..the fact that I do not have to go on hormone replacement has hit me and I am so happy. Since by bone density test came back higher then average there will be no fake hormones for this girl! Not only am I happy that my bones are in good shape but the higher then normal readings mean my body is producing a pretty normal level of hormones….now all we need to do is get the hormones to follow the full path to ovulation each month and I will officially be the happiest woman in the world! I still have the clear cervical mucus and am wondering how long it is going to last (not that I am complaining). With my FSH still a bit on the high side (43) I don’t know if I am quite ready to get pregnant but I will take what I can get. Besides the author of “Inconceivable” conceived during a month where her FSH was in the 30’s. If I thought I was being strict on my diet before…there will be absolutely no cheating in the next month. I am determined to get an even lower FSH reading on June 18th and will not take any risks. Which reminds me of a little business I need to take care of..Dear body, I know I gave us a deadline of June 15th to get pregnant but all of the hard work and effort we have recently displayed has convinced me that 1. we are not quite ready to nuture and grow a baby inside us and 2. An extension to August 15th is only fair. You now have two deadlines with two different areas of focus. 1. Have at least one period before July 15th and 2. Get pregnant by August 15th. I know with the way we have been feeling, the positive changes in us and the recent good check up that we will make these new deadlines and make it look easy. Keep up the good work, I guess we found out what God was trying to tell us….get healthy and please start taking care of yourself! Taking Mrs. W’s advice, I have been doing some research on Yasmin and the reasons for the recent lawsuits against the maker of the birth control pills. What I found is that out of all the crazy possible side effects, there is a long list of very serious and deadly ones. It shocks me that so many doctors seem to be pushing birth control on young women like they are candies these days. Why would they do that if it could cause liver and kidney failure, Heart Attack, Stroke, Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), Pulmonary Embolism (PE), Gallbladder Disease and Sudden Death (just to name a few)? It is not like there are only a few people involved in the lawsuits, there are thousands and the cases just keep coming. Now I am the first one to admit I took the magic pill for over ten years but I also didn’t do my research before I started drinking them down. I understand the need for protected sex in today’s society but I am thinking a condom and a diaphragm have got to be better then causing your blood to clot or your liver to fail just for a few fun nights. I think the maker of Yasmin and any other birth control pill should have to write in very large letters the toxic side effects of their product on the front of the packaging. Then maybe we wouldn’t continue to have hundreds or thousands of teenage girls across America start birth control prescriptions every day. It’s like society is saying “welcome to adulthood honey, now take this pill to suppress your reproductive system. It may make your blood clot, give you a stroke or cause you to go on kidney dialysis at a young age but you wouldn’t want to get pregnant at to young of an age would you?” I have some research on Yasmin I will share tomorrow. Happy Thursday!

Reading Materials/Other Items That Have Helped Me

  • Inconceivable
  • Making Babies by Sami S. David, MD & Jill Blakeway, LAc
  • pre-seed Fertility-friendly Intimate Moisturizer
  • restoring fertility - yoga for optimal fertility dvd - you can feel it working!
  • Taking Charge for Your Fertility by Toni Weschler, MPH
  • The Infertility Cure by Randin Lewis, Ph. D.