Other young ones out there...

..Okay I guess I should realize that my youth is all very relative.  I do still get carded sometimes and if I feel like doing a cartwheel in a grassy field, I do - well most of the time.

I found this post over at This Sorta Fairytale on being young and infertile very insightful.  

It got me thinking about my experiences....

I went off the pill when I was nearly 25 and was having hot flashes by 27. I was also charting my fertility signs as a form of contraception. Well I thought of it that way as we were hoping to postpone starting a family for a couple years, and I loved how I felt off the pill. Let me tell you, I really struggled to make sense out of those charts... I should have started wondering a bit when my cycles were really long or really short, and didn't fit any of the book charts --- but my cycles had been like that before my surgery and before the pill, so I just thought it was normal for me.

Eventually I pushed for more answers. I got a referral at 27, and let me tell you I felt very very weird talking to the RE about what was going on. He just didn't get why he would be test my fertility if we weren't actively trying to conceive. Yes, I understand that there might be people with 'less time' or more urgent cases, but this doctor wasn't very 'urgent.' Each appointment was nearly an hour and a half as he slowly typed my story into my electronic medical record (please doctors, learn to touch type or let us type if you are under 10 wpm, this process is already painful enough!). He kept saying that the only way if I could really 'test' my fertility was to start have lots of unprotected sex.... hmmm, and what about the other women in their 20's who don't happen to have that as a viable option? Do we really want to have young women 'testing' our fertility in such a way before its 'too late.' Not me!

What gets me now is that none of that mattered... my health was at risk because my ovaries were failing. It didn't matter if I was trying to conceive or whether I even had a partner, I had a medical condition that required treatment and understanding and monitoring. I personally would have loved a heads up that having my FSH tested out at 19 was probably a sign to throw away the use of condoms if we ever wanted to give my own eggs a chance. A baseline bone scan and some suggestions to exercise more might have been cool too.

There was one appointment where the doctor said that I might be pre-menopausal. He later retracted that diagnosis, but that day was devastating. But my ability to reach out for support was limited. Talking to work mates, and they assume that you're on the verge of maternity leave (as if!). Talk to friends who are dealing with infertility and there is that look of “well you haven't even started trying.” Most of my peers either had 5 year olds or were very far from thinking about kids. My 30 year old friends would panic that if I didn't have time, they were doomed!

Now I realize that it didn't matter if I was 18 and single or 40 with 10 years of trying under my belt, I was still hearing horrible news. If you found out that your long lost childhood friend died in an accident 5 years ago, you are no less sad than if you found out tomorrow or yesterday or in 5 more years. It is still a loss.

In fact I think part of me is grieving that I never really got a chance to even try to get pregnant with my own eggs. Yes, my partner and I've had some fun nights 'trying' in the last year in hopes that all might actually be fine, but I deep down part of me already believed the first of the 4 diagnoses I got 2 years ago... that my ovaries were failing.

If I had been 36 with my symptoms and had been trying without success for 5 years, I really think that the doctors would have been more forward about doing tests. I think in my case, my age – or at least how it was perceived – was a hindrance to getting a timely diagnosis and built unnecessary walls between me and people who were in the best position to support me -- those who have already walked these lonely hallways.

And then I found out that one of my workmates had done years of IVF treatments. Her diagnosis was unexplained infertility. She was now in her 50's and had more or less come to terms with never having had children. She mothered me through those first days like a saint. I will forever love her for that. And should anything big ever happen to her, good or bad, I will be on the next flight back to be there with her just like the grown-up version of the child she always dreamed of would. I'm not a replacement for what she lost, but we have a unique special rare relationship that neither of us ever dreamed of before we were in the midst of it.