My name is Lis (sounds like Liz – my mom just
wanted to complicate my life!) and I am 27 years old. I married my husband,
Mike, 2 years ago but we’ve been together for almost 10 years. We knew that we
wanted to have kids fairly early on in our marriage but still wanted to enjoy
some time to ourselves so we decided to wait until our 2nd
anniversary to start trying to get pregnant. Little did we know what would be
in store for us… In December 2010 I decided to go off my birth control pill
because I had heard it can take a while to regulate after being on it for a
long time (which for me had been about 8 years). I also wanted to start tracking
my natural cycle so that when we did start trying I would have a better handle
on everything. It turns out I have totally irregular cycles! One month my cycle
was 28 days, then the next it was 35 days, followed by 109 days, then back to
29 days! After about 6 months of this I decided to ask my OBGYN and told her my
concern since we were talking about having kids soon. She did some blood work
and said that everything looked normal to her and that it was probably just
taking my body a while to regulate.
Meanwhile, there were also problems developing with
my husband. I debated about talking about this for a few reasons. Mainly, I
feel bad airing my husband’s dirty laundry, so to speak. But I’ve realized that
in order to fully explain why we are having fertility issues I need to be open
and honest with everything that is going on with us. Also, I want others who
may be having the same issues to feel like they aren’t alone. So long story short,
we started to notice that Mike wouldn’t always ejaculate when we had sex. He
described it as saying that it felt like he was, but nothing was actually
coming out. My immediate thought was extreme sadness in thinking that my
husband wasn’t physically enjoying sex. I know that is a silly thought but I
couldn’t help myself. Eventually though, Mike was able to convince me that it
still felt as good as it always had, he just wasn’t sure why he wasn’t actually
ejaculating. We did a lot of research online but didn’t really find anything
conclusive as to what could be wrong so Mike went to see an Urologist who told
him we should see a fertility specialist.
Mike and I met with Dr. Lee (our Reproductive Endocrinologist "RE" who we
absolutely LOVE) in mid April and immediately knew we were in good hands. Dr.
Lee told us that what Mike was experiencing is called retro ejaculation and is
a fairly common problem with men that have Type 1 Diabetes (which Mike has had
since he was 12). Essentially, his body is producing sperm but for some reason
there is a “kink” in his plumbing and it is getting released into his bladder.
He said that it may work itself out eventually but more likely it would be
something we’d have to deal with indefinitely. Regardless, we were relieved to
finally have an answer.
After
discussing both of our issues and concerns Dr. Lee seemed pretty confident that we were excellent candidates for fertility treatment and we had a very high chance of getting pregnant within a year which was music to my ears!! And so began our
journey into fertility treatment…
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