I've never been big on goals. The exact precision of predicting the future never felt great to me, but intentions, I can totally get behind, and, if they’re you're cup of tea too, read on for three intentions to set for your infertility journey in the New Year.

Ory, my husband came home one fall evening. He had just gotten his results back from the urologist. “We need to talk,” he said. “You went to a urologist,” I said. “For what?” I could feel the nerves welling up in my stomach. He wasn’t about to say anything I would want to hear…

Every summer towards the end of July, I can’t help but think about our first IVF retrieval and the crazy, whirlwind of a month that was. And while COVID currently has our life a bit turned upside down (this month would have looked WAY different in today’s COVID world), I thought it’d be fun to take a trip down memory lane and share the story of my first IVF retrieval and (what you’re likely here for) my IVF retrieval timeline.

My husband, Ory, was in medical school when we started going through our infertility journey. We were accruing debt by the minute and my 50k higher ed salary wasn’t quite the money tree we had been searching for. We invested all this time and money into this process - the tests, the appointments, but it never once crossed my mind to invest in myself. And if you had suggested this to me at the time, I would have given you all these excuses…

For a long time when we were first getting started on our infertility journey, I held my story really close to my chest. I was scared to admit we were struggling. I didn’t want people to know we were trying to get pregnant. And I wasn’t ready to admit that any of this was real. What I didn’t realize was the cost of carrying my story so close to my chest.

Let me start with a full blown confession. I am a terrible baker. In fact, the last time I tried to make some cookies that weren’t break and bake, I got the portions all wrong so much so that I had to throw out my batter and start all over again when the sand like consistency refused to become anything that remotely resembled a cookie… It was rough. I could have given up right there, but I didn’t.

The infertility journey can quickly become a roller coaster of emotions. One minute you think you’re doing fine and the next you’re bursting into tears on your bathroom floor or angrily fuming at the internet as everyone around you seems to get getting pregnant, except you. There are days where it truly feels like the world is against you.

If you've been on your fertility journey for any length of time, you’ve learned how to talk in acronyms. Your new magic power is transforming phrases and procedures into an alphabet soup - AMH, CD, FSH, HSG, RE, TTC, and TWW. This secret-sounding fertility code is fine and dandy until a few more letters find their way into the conversation. One particular acronym is one that few couples want to hear…one that’s much more intimidating than letters abbreviating lab values and cycle days. IVF.

As a total planner, I went into type A mode once I found out that IVF was going to be part of our infertility journey. I started googling all the things in hopes of consuming as much information as possible. The more information the better you feel right? Sort of. The various processes and protocols and even the personal stories were fascinating, but there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of information out there about how I could actually prepare for my upcoming IVF cycle.

When you’re struggling with infertility one day you can feel fine and the next you’re hit with a pile of emotions with seemingly no idea where they came from. This roller coaster of emotions can make managing life hard and can make you feel unhinged. But rest assured that as hard as it is, this roller coaster of emotions is a very normal part of the infertility journey. Even though struggling with infertility can make you feel a range of emotions (that often feels like a roller coaster you didn’t ask to be on), it’s also important to know that there’s a lot that you can do to help manage the roller coaster of emotions.

You’ve been trying to get pregnant for six months maybe even a year and you haven’t seen a single positive pregnancy test. You constantly wonder where you’re not doing something right. Am I missing my ovulation window? Do we need to be having more sex? Are the odds just not in our favor? We don’t want to believe we might not be able to do this alone. That we might possibly need help. So we push back the denial and whispers in the back of our mind that something might not be ok because what if everything is ok. Then what?

I’ve had people ask me if I have any regrets with IVF. Honestly, I only have one regret – and that’s not documenting the details. When you’re going through IVF it’s so incredibly all consuming. It takes over your life. It takes up an incredible amount of your time, and it also becomes something you think about constantly. When I was in the thick of it I remember thinking, “I will NEVER forget all of these details.”

I was blessed with a lot of things on our infertility journey - an amazing clinic and team of doctors, a supportive family, and a small but mighty online community of other women going through this journey. Yet, there were still so many times on this journey that I felt so alone.

This is Part 2 of a 2 part series on 10 Tips to Prepare for Your First IVF cycle. If you missed Part 1 of this blog series, now would be a good time to get caught up before diving into Part 2. And if you’re all caught up, then welcome to Part 2 of 10 Tips to Prepare for Your First IVF Cycle.

When our doctor finally told us it was time to move onto IVF, there was a part of me that was actually quite excited. It was the first time in our journey that I finally felt like we were doing something that could work. Hope was alive again. But with that excitement and hope also came a lot of anxiety. What would our protocol look like? How would the shots feel? What if it didn’t work? I learned a few things from both my own IVF journey (and after the fact) that might help as you prepare for your first IVF cycle. Read on for all the reflection learnings and wisdom nuggets.

When I think back on the early days of infertility journey, it’s hard to remember what I was doing with my life. Part of that is because what ultimately happened is that I let my infertility journey consume me. It took over every aspect of my life. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed I was thinking about our infertility journey.