More Than Miscarriage

There was a time when trying to have a baby felt exciting.

You decide you’re ready. You talk about when you should start trying. You imagine what month your baby might be born. You wonder how you’ll tell your family. You download the apps, start paying attention to your cycle, and suddenly every little symptom feels like it could mean something.

And you genuinely believe that sometime in the next few months, you’re going to see two pink lines.

But for me, there was always a voice in the back of my mind telling me that it might not happen that way.

“You’ll Never Get Pregnant”

My entire life, my sister had told me that I had PCOS.

I had never actually been formally diagnosed. That wouldn’t happen until I started seeing my fertility specialist. But growing up, I had symptoms, and my doctor had put me on birth control to help control them.

Somewhere along the way, that turned into something much scarier in my mind.

My sister would tell me that because I was taking birth control, I would never be able to get pregnant.

And those words stayed with me.

You will never get pregnant.

Even years later, after I was married and my husband and I decided we were ready to start our family, I could still hear them.

At first, we tried naturally.

And then we tried again.

And again.

And again.

Nothing was happening.

My periods weren’t coming consistently. I couldn’t catch my ovulation with the strips no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t figure out when—or even if—I was ovulating.

Nothing seemed to be working.

And the longer it went on, the louder that voice became.

You will never get pregnant.

When the Guilt Started

This is where infertility can become incredibly cruel.

Because when you don’t have answers, your brain starts creating its own.

I started wondering if somehow this was my fault.

I thought about being younger and choosing to take birth control because I wanted relief from the symptoms I was experiencing. I started convincing myself that a decision I had made as a kid—when I had absolutely no idea what my future fertility journey would look like—was somehow coming back to punish me.

And even worse, I felt like it was punishing my husband too.

Here was this man I loved, who wanted a family with me, and my body wasn’t doing the thing I thought it was supposed to be able to do.

I know now that treating my symptoms didn’t cause my PCOS or create the infertility we were experiencing.

But infertility doesn’t always listen to logic.

The guilt was still there.

And it became all-consuming.

I Had Always Wanted to Be a Mom

I think that was one of the hardest parts.

I had always known I wanted children.

I’ve always loved being around kids. Some of my favorite jobs during college were the years I spent nannying. Being around children came naturally to me, and when I pictured my future, being a mom was simply part of it.

I never imagined that getting there would be the part that broke my heart.

The thought that my husband and I couldn’t just decide we were ready, try for a baby, and get pregnant naturally killed me.

And no one knew.

We didn’t tell anyone we were trying.

Part of me didn’t want people asking questions every month. But a bigger part of me didn’t want anyone to know that we were struggling.

What if this was our journey?

What if something really was wrong?

I wasn’t ready for anyone else to know what was happening between me, my husband, and this family we desperately wanted to create.

So we kept trying quietly.

“Just Keep Trying”

Eventually, I went to my OB-GYN.

I told her we weren’t getting pregnant. I told her my periods were irregular. I explained that I couldn’t figure out when I was ovulating.

Her response was essentially that it was normal not to get pregnant within the first couple of months.

Just keep trying.

And yes, I understood that pregnancy doesn’t necessarily happen immediately.

But I knew my body.

Something didn’t feel right.

My period wasn’t consistent. I couldn’t track my ovulation. Month after month, we were trying without even knowing whether my body was giving us the opportunity to conceive.

I didn’t want to keep waiting for someone else to decide that enough time had passed for my concerns to matter.

I knew I needed someone to help me.

The Google Search That Changed Everything

So I did what so many of us do when we don’t know what else to do.

I Googled it.

I searched for IVF doctors near me.

There was no spreadsheet comparing clinics. No months of research. No carefully planned list of questions or success-rate comparisons.

I barely knew what I was looking for.

I just wanted someone to give me answers.

I found a fertility doctor and called. Somehow, I was able to get an appointment within about a week.

I remember walking into that first appointment alone.

I was so nervous.

I didn’t know what she was going to tell me. Maybe part of me was terrified that she was going to confirm the words that had been living in my head for years:

You will never get pregnant.

But almost as soon as I sat down in her office, something changed.

I felt better.

I felt like she understood what was happening before she even really knew me.

For the first time, I felt like someone was actually listening.

I knew this was where I needed to be.

Finally, an Answer

During my ultrasound, my doctor could immediately see that I did, in fact, have PCOS.

After all those years of wondering, I finally had a diagnosis.

But what I remember most wasn’t hearing the words you have PCOS.

It was what happened afterward.

My doctor didn’t make me feel like my body was broken. She didn’t send me home and tell me to keep trying.

She sat with me and explained what was happening inside my body.

She walked me through our options. She explained the different treatments, what each one would do, what the timelines might look like, and what our next steps could be.

She made something that had felt completely out of my control finally feel like something I could understand.

And she has continued to be one of the best doctors I could have asked for throughout this journey.

I walked into that office afraid someone was going to tell me I couldn’t become a mother.

Instead, I walked out knowing that we had a place to start.

Looking Back

I wish I could go back and talk to the version of myself who was lying awake wondering whether she had somehow caused all of this.

I would tell her that taking medication to manage symptoms was not a decision she needed to spend years punishing herself for.

She was a kid.

She made the best decision she could with the information she had.

She didn’t ruin her future family.

And she didn’t fail her husband.

I wish I could tell her that infertility was going to become a much bigger part of her life than she could possibly understand in that moment—but that she was finally in a room with someone who was going to help her start looking for answers.

Because this was only the beginning of our journey.

I didn’t know yet about fertility treatments.

I didn’t know about IVF.

I didn’t know about transfers, medications, waiting for phone calls, staring at pregnancy tests, or learning an entirely new language just to understand what my body was doing.

And I certainly didn’t know about the losses that would eventually lead me to create More Than Miscarriage.

At that point, I knew only two things:

I wanted to be a mom.

And I was finally ready to ask for help getting there