My Road to Motherhood

My road to motherhood was not direct or even remotely easy. It was emotionally and physically difficult.

Sergio and I first talked about having a baby around 2020. He was the one who expressed the desire first. We had started dating in January 2019. Very early in our relationship, I became pregnant and miscarried almost immediately. It was early and brief, but it stayed with us.

Even before we actively tried, I knew my fertility might not be straightforward.

My cycles had been irregular since I was eleven years old. If I did get a period, it often lasted around ten days and was heavy. Then I might not see another one for months. That pattern continued through my teenage years.

While I was in college, I started birth control. While I was on it, I had predictable monthly withdrawal bleeds. For the first time, my cycles appeared regular.

I stopped birth control in 2020. After that, my cycles never returned to what they had been before. Instead, they became even more infrequent. I would have maybe one or two periods a year. When they came, they lasted several days and were still heavy… then months would pass with nothing at all.

No one had ever formally told me I might have PCOS or hormone issues. I just had suspicions. My mom had struggled to conceive, and my body had never followed a typical pattern. I assumed getting pregnant would require timing and attention.

So I approached it logically.

I bought the Mira fertility analyzer. I took a Modern Fertility test and found out my AMH was high, so i had the egg reserve I needed, but still there was nothing. Eventually I even bought the Inito monitor. I tracked everything.

Over time, I learned something important. I was not ovulating.

My estrogen would rise as my body would attempt to ovulate, but there was no LH surge. It would try with rising estrogen, fail, try again, and eventually give up. That was when I would finally have a period, sometimes months later.

In 2022-2023, I went to Pelex Medical for more testing. Sergio was tested too, because we wanted to make sure we weren’t missing anything.

From the outside, it may have looked like we were just “trying.” In reality, it felt highly clinical. I wasn’t guessing. I had charts, numbers, hormone levels. There were days when hope would rise simply because all the other numbers would rise and fall except LH. I had hope even if the data told me otherwise.

Eventually, I brought all of my data to my GYN. I had been nervous to go to her because she knew my mom, and I worried about the conflict of interest. She reassured me immediately that I was her patient first. After reviewing everything and ensuring this is what we wanted, she prescribed 50 mg of Clomid.

I responded the first cycle.

Watching my estrogen rise to around 600 and then finally seeing an LH surge felt surreal. For the first time, my body was completing the process. We did not do traditional monitoring with ultrasounds or labs. I relied on my monitors at home.

Physically, I did not have many side effects. Emotionally, I felt excited and nervous. I wanted this to work, but I also knew how unpredictable my body had been in the past.

Ten days after ovulation, I tested. I had planned to wait until fourteen days, but I was experiencing a few symptoms and suspected something was different.

The test was positive.

I was home. Sergio was still in New York because I had returned to work and he had stayed a few extra days. I remember staring at the test and thinking, “holy shit.” I called him immediately. I wish I had planned something cute or thoughtful, but I literally could not hold it in. He was ecstatic and told his family despite me telling him to keep it to himself.

I kept testing. Over and over. I did not fully believe it until we saw our little nugget on the ultrasound. Until we heart his heart beating…

Nate was conceived on our first Clomid cycle.

From our early conversations in 2020 to that positive test in 2023, it had been a long and confusing process. The waiting tested my patience. I worried that if I could not conceive, it would change how Sergio saw our future, because having children was extremely important to him.

The journey felt cold and isolating at times. I did not have consistent provider support, and the specialist I saw did not take my insurance. It was expensive. It required research and persistence.

Holding Nate for the first time was not a dramatic moment. The birth was physically hard on me due to being induced with Pitocin and having a failed epidural… I was exhausted and disoriented. But even through that, I knew he was mine. I immediately went into what I can only describe as mama bear mode.

Now, as we consider having more children, I am facing the same reality. I simply do not ovulate on my own. After having Nate, my cycle patterns became even more unpredictable. I could bleed for twenty days or more, stop for a month, and then have intermittent spotting for several more weeks.

While I am grateful for Clomid and for Nate, there is still a quiet grief in knowing that I may never experience a surprise pregnancy. Every child I have may require medication and monitoring. As much as I want more children, I also crave normalcy. I want the possibility of being surprised.

Infertility did not break me, but it changed me. It made me analytical. It made me persistent. It forced me to confront emotions I was not proud of, including jealousy when others announced their pregnancies. That feeling was difficult and very real.

Nate is here because of science, persistence, and a small pill that helped my body do what it would not do on its own.

And for that, I feel bittersweet.