Before I ever saw the doctor at the fertility clinic in California, I visited my ob/gyn and sought her advice. She noted that we’d been trying on our own for six months and given our ages (32 and 45 at the time), it might time for drug intervention. She prescribed 50mg of Clomid for three months. I’d dreaded this prescription for some time. I’d of course educated myself fully via the internet about Clomid so I knew everything I needed to know, right? I wasn’t completely excited about the side effects (mood swings make me unlovable) but hoped the low dose wouldn’t be so bad.
All I can tell you about those three months is that I was even more obsessive about timing our “baby dancing” and that sucked all the fun out of trying to make a baby. Of course, any woman will tell you that “trying” makes the process, well, a process, rather than a romantic encounter. Thankfully, I married the funniest man alive and he kept us laughing. Even when every test came up negative those three months, he made me laugh until my tears and sobs dried up.
Once we were referred to the fertility clinic, they too prescribed Clomid at first but bumped up the dosage quite a bit. 150mg of Clomid for two months. The side effects were much worse and I sunk to new levels of depressing when an estrogen patch was slapped on my butt for a month when my uterine lining was deemed too thin (the last time I’d heard anything on my body was “too thin” was back in my Miss California pageant days.) In the space of 30 days, I felt myself leave myself for the crazy corner of the room. I cried at the drop of a hat. I snapped at everyone and I hated everything about infertility. As I peed on yet another test stick and saw the blankness again, I thought my heart was going to fall out of my chest after it went through the meat grinder. I couldn’t handle the rejection again. I know it sounds weird to feel rejected by a pregnancy test but that’s what it felt like. It was only until the next month when I felt less crazy did I realize that I’d taken the estrogen patch off my butt and had experienced the extreme low of lows because of a hormone drop the month before. This explained the traumatic crying jag that seemed never ending.
Never again. I told my nurse I would take more drugs before I would ever put more estrogen into my system again. The Mister couldn’t even get me to laugh it off. And when I can’t laugh it off with him, I know I’m in serious trouble.
Hugs for you as I read your story.