Personal Infertility Journey

After graduating from college, I started working full-time in an OB/GYN clinic.  From this experience, I developed a passion and interest in women’s health.  At the same time, I began my own journey into an unknown world of infertility that lasted for seven years.  During this period in my life, I found it to be not only a difficult journey physically, with the numerous medical procedures and interventions, but it was also extremely challenging mentally and emotionally.

As I traveled through this journey, I began to experience great anxiety, fear, sadness, isolation, and anger.  I did not know what to do with it or how to effectively cope.  My husband was a tremendous support, but he was going through his own journey.  There was no way he could fully grasp what it was like to be uncomfortable discussing our sexual privacy in our attempts to conceive, or what it was like to be a “pin cushion” every other day getting my blood drawn, or being on a medication that made me feel crazy.   I felt alone and isolated and desperate to have a baby.  I had no one to talk to about what I was feeling or experiencing on an emotional level.

Then, after years of surgeries, medications, failed attempts, and many tears, our dreams were realized and became pregnant with twin boys after going through a successful IVF cycle.  I was thrilled, excited and nervous!  When the babies were born, I couldn’t be happier…and then it hit! Something I could not have anticipated or had no idea what it was…postpartum anxiety!  I remember feeling the walls closing in on me, panicking and having to leave my home in a split second just to “get out” so I could breathe!  It was scary and I felt this for awhile.  But, over time, with rest, support, exercise, and taking care of myself, I was able to feel better and adjust to motherhood.