The Infertility Stuff

OK, I decided I would start posting about the whole big infertility thing. So, to start at the beginning . . . Mr. X and I are Catholic, and as part of our marriage preparation we went to Natural Family Planning classes. It all made sense to us, and so we learned the Sympto-Thermal Method while we were engaged. I noticed right away that my charts didn't look so hot. I had a short luteal phase, among other things. So, we read Marilyn Shannon's book Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition, and I started taking lots of vitamin supplements. And I mentioned my concerns to my HMO doctor, who I really liked. She asked me if I wanted to get pregnant right away . . . well, no, not right away . . . So, she said not to worry about it. Not the most promising response.

The vitamin supplements seemed to help a bunch, especially with PMS symptoms. So, I figured that there would be no issue once we started using NFP to get pregnant. After all, no one in my family seemed to have had problems having children. But the months started going by, and nothing happened. Once it had been about nine months, I decided to change doctors. A while earlier, I had found a highly-recommended doctor who was seriously Catholic (as in no birth control prescriptions). We had been looking for a pro-life doctor, for a couple of reasons. First of all, we thought it would be good to support a doctor who took a stand, and secondly, it sounded like a good idea to have a doctor who would share our views and not pressure us to have an abortion if anything was "wrong" with our future baby. So, I went to this doctor to review my charts. I was kind of startled when he said that we seemed to be "experiencing infertility." Fortunately, by that point, I had learned that "infertility" didn't mean "sterility," but it still wasn't a term I envisioned applying to me. He was great, though. He really listened to everything I said, treated me as if I actually knew something about my own body, and really took his time with me. He recommended that we switch from the Sympto-Thermal Model to the Creighton Model. So, I started calling the nearest Creighton Practitioner to get us signed up to learn it . . .