Getting Pregnant is Harder than I Thought

I wish I had happier news to share. But the truth is I cried yesterday because wanting to get pregnant and not being able to is incredibly frustrating because you just can’t do much about it. I went off the pill in January and with every month that has passed, we’ve gotten more serious and intentional about “trying.” I can say we’ve been sincerely trying for about 3 months now, and no luck.

As far as I can tell, I’m doing all the right things. I’ve sworn off alcohol and cut back on caffeine. I’m taking a prenatal vitamin with folic acid every day. I take my temperature at 5:30 am each morning, and record this temperature and other symptoms in my fertility app daily. But so far our timing hasn’t been right.

I went to the doctor yesterday to inquire about what options I might have. Living in Saudi Arabia, I wanted to plan ahead and know if there would even BE fertility treatments should it come to that. The doctor told me what I had expected to hear, but it still wasn’t easy: they won’t refer you to the hospital (1 hr away) until you’ve been trying unsuccessfully for a year, and our insurance may or may not cover fertility medicine and treatments, possibly including the fact that any pregnancy conceived “through outside intervention” wouldn’t be covered either.

I know a lot of people do try for a long time, apparently 4-6 months is average. But part of me is wondering, if there IS a big problem, why wait for a year before doing something about it?

Even as I write this, it sounds petty. What about the women out there who have been trying for years? To them, my 3 months of impatience is nothing. But 3 months makes me scared that I might become one of those unlucky women. Aside from that, I’m also dreading some other unfortunate possibilities.

1. Having to tell my sisters-in-law this summer when they inevitably ask, “So when are you guys going to have kids?” that I don’t know and we’ve been trying and it’s just not working so shut up about it.
2. Seeing the unspoken question on my parents’ faces. They’d never ask, but I know they’d love a grandchild and they’re turning 64 this year. The years they have to spend with that child are numbered.
3. Sex becoming something stressful, something we do out of desperation or routine. I don’t want each time we have sex to also bring along with it all these painfully high expectations and hopes that get dashed at the end of the month.
4. Making myself crazy analyzing my BBT chart, reading online forums, etc. I can already see that those things produce more questions than answers.
5. Having to give up our jobs and our life here to pursue fertility treatment in the US, if things prove too difficult to manage.

I know the most likely scenario is that my body is taking a little longer to readjust after the pill, and in another few months it’ll happen. But if I had known a year ago how I’d be feeling about all this right now, I probably would have started trying sooner. It turns out making babies is harder than it looks.