The beginning of a long & winding road
Wow… this seems a long time ago now, but I wanted to go into where our story began.
First, we got married in March 2020, and our wedding day was the day before weddings were limited to 5 people, due to Covid - talk about stress! Our original plan was to start trying for a family a little while after getting married, but unfortunately the company that I worked for ended up telling us that they were closing down, and that we would all be made redundant. This was definitely not in the plan!
So my focus shifted to manically searching for a job during lockdown, and all thoughts of trying for a family went on hold. My thinking was ‘who is going to hire me if I fall pregnant?!’ In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t cared about this so much, but unfortunately I think there is still a bit of stigma around hiring women that are pregnant, even though there shouldn’t be. I then managed to secure and start a job in September 2020 and again my thoughts went to ‘okay, I need to be in this job for at least a year before we start trying for a baby, or they might try to get rid of me.’ Again, hindsight is a wonderful thing! I naively assumed that it would happen fairly quickly. How wrong I was.
We started trying to conceive at the end of 2021, when I was 34, after a visit to my local hospital’s Gynaecology department… this was actually related to a check up on my endometriosis, but it just so happened that the consultant that I was seen by was also the lead clinician for the fertility clinic. In the appointment I asked whether endometriosis is likely to cause issues for me when trying to conceive. The consultant brushed my questions off and told me that it’s unlikely, but advised me to go to my GP if I didn’t fall pregnant after six months of trying, and told me to ask to be referred to the fertility clinic at my local hospital for further investigations. He also confirmed that because I had spoken to him about fertility before I was 35, I would be eligible for one round of funding on the NHS. I was then told that I would get a follow up scan later that year, to check on my endometriosis and ovarian cyst… unfortunately this didn’t happen and I was discharged.
I went on my merry way and let my husband know what the consultant had told me. We decided that I should come off the pill, and that we should start trying for a baby. Again thinking this will happen quite quickly. Seven months passed and nothing had happened yet, so I spoke to my husband about contacting our GP to start the process of being referred to our local fertility clinic. He was hesitant to do this at first, believing that we just needed to try for a bit longer, but I was fairly adamant that we should get the ball rolling, as I thought the referral might take some time. To be honest, although I knew it would take time to be referred, I wasn’t prepared for just how long it would take for all of the investigations to be completed. My husband now says to me, thank god we spoke to the GP when we did!
We had a call with a really lovely GP, who explained that we needed to have a few tests done before we could be referred to the fertility clinic. These included the following tests:
Blood tests - FSH, AMH, LH, TSH, day 21 progesterone, and a few others I can’t rememeber now
Semen analysis - this was an interesting experience for my husband… I’ll let him describe this!
Transvaginal ultrasound scan
Gosh, there’s a lot of acronyms above! There’s a really helpful resource that explains these much better than I can - the HFEA website (Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority). Just to briefly name what they stand for…
FSH - Follicle Stimulating Hormone
AMH - Anti-Müllerian Hormone
LH - Lutenizing Hormone
TSH - Thyroid Stimulating Hormone
Day 21 progesterone - this measures progesterone levels in the blood to determine if ovulation has occurred
So there you go! Keep your eyes peeled for the post about my husband’s experience doing his semen analysis… coming soon! Don’t worry, it doesn’t go into nitty gritty/dodgy details haha!