Chapter 3. Letting go

Letting go of the first failed fertility medication was easier said than done. With Letrozole, I felt a sense of being in control. When I say in control, obviously no one can choose when they become pregnant, but we felt so much hope because it helped my body function how it was supposed to. Just like every other female out there having babies without any struggle at all.

Letrozole had failed, but on the other hand I still felt like my own body was failing us as well.

If I couldn't get pregnant with a drug, I didn't feel much hope it would happen on its own.

But with a busy month ahead of us in July 2021, we decided it was best for my mental health to pause any treatment for a while. We were not necessarily taking a break, but it was relieving to not be monitored by my Dr. anymore. The constant keeping track of what cycle day it was, and tracking everything was exhausting.

During this time while we were waiting for our first consultation with the Reproductive Endocrinologist, I decided to take time to learn about how I can manage my PCOS naturally. And while there are several opinions on this, I started with cutting certain foods out of my diet.

Not only was I trying to get my body to ovulate on its own, but I also struggled with acne and wanted to focus on improving my complexion. I learned the most by finding people on Youtube and Instagram and also did my own research to verify what I was learning. Bobby Parrish from FlavCity Youtube, and The Women's Dietitian (TWD) on Instagram had amazing content on toxin-free living and food suggestions to reduce the inflammation in your body. Not only was TWD a PCOS cyster (a pun on having polycystic ovaries) herself, she had naturally gotten pregnant twice and had the background in women's nutrition.

Up until this point in my life I had thought I ate pretty healthy, and I had read food labels before, but more for the protein, fat, and sugars. I started learning how to read the ingredients list on everything, and the certain ones you should avoid at all costs. Our American diet uses so many unnecessary oils, sugar, and fillers and I had to completely rethink everything I was buying.

We started with something simple that we ate a lot of in our house, tortilla chips. And while we always bought a gluten free tortilla chip, it still had plenty of bad ingredients that weren't doing us any favors like corn oil, sunflower oil, and palm oil. I had never noticed all the oils in everything, and started to question why they were necessary!

After we cut out tortilla chips, which were really the only chips we ate, I remember noticing about three weeks after that I had lost 5 pounds. I didn't have weight to lose, but it was crazy learning about the inflammation in my body and how after we stopped eating those my body noticed the difference. We were also paying attention to other foods ingredients, but that was the first thing we all together cut out of our diet.

Then it became a struggle, I felt like everything I used to eat, I could no longer have. Going to the grocery store was so discouraging because there were very few things I actually felt like I could buy. I had to turn to more of an online provider to get snacks and baking ingredients, but really focused on whole foods from the local stores.

I won't get too much into the science of how food effects your hormones, but when you have PCOS, it can be a balancing act everyday. Not skipping breakfast is the first key to managing your hormones, because if you do, your insulin and cortisol get out of wack. Not only people with PCOS, but everyone can follow that one. Along with frequent smaller meals, there are many nutritionists out there who believe following a dairy and gluten free diet is beneficial in regulating your cycles. There are also many who believe that is not true, and that you can eat those in moderation if you understand portion sizes. It's really all what works for you, all while keeping a good relationship with food.

For a while, I tried gluten and dairy free. At the same time, I went sugar free which was probably the hardest one for me. I love dark chocolate. Like a nibble everyday makes me happy. Once I found Lily's dark chocolate which was appropriate for my sugar free needs though, It became much more doable, and I was seeing the benefits of sugar free through my improved complexion.

It was around this same time that I started temperature tracking with a device called Temp Drop. If you've never heard of temping, it's incredibly fascinating! The Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) is a natural way to track your cycles and there are a variety of ways to do this. Temping is one of them. It is based off of taking your basal body temperature right away when you wake in the morning, and this temp tells you a lot about your cycle. I chose to start doing this, because with PCOS, most women do not find the ovulation predictor kits to be any help. In fact I never saw anything close to a positive test strip and my Dr. recommended against them for me.

The Temp Drop specifically is great because you wear a little basal thermometer around your arm every night, and it tracks your temperatures until you sync it with your phone in the morning. With BBT (basal body temp) tracking, it is crucial that you take the temp right after you wake, otherwise the data can be inaccurate. On top of that, if you didn't have a good night sleep or got up in the night, that effects your temperature too. The Temp Drop arm band makes it that much easier because it tracks all night and is able to get that morning temp more accurately based on an algorithm.

The only downside is you really need a couple of months of tracking data to learn your body's trends, and it cannot tell you when you'll ovulate, it just confirms after ovulation happens. The point is to learn your body's cycle trends.

Now to the actual cool part, after you ovulate, your temperature spikes noticeably and stays elevated until your next cycle begins. If you're pregnant, your temp stays elevated because of the increase in hormones. So once I started using this device I learned approximately the time I would ovulate. I was also able to predict based off of my temp when I would start my next cycle. I'd know the morning before I would start my period that it was coming, and that felt so powerful.

Even though it was disappointing that I wasn't pregnant, yet again, learning how my body works was so empowering. A few months after making these changes, I had a big moment in our journey. You're going to laugh, because not many people would celebrate this.

I finally had my first natural period, ever! It just snuck up on me. My whole young adult life, I was either on birth control, provera which induces a period, or fertility medication. I had never actually had a period on my own! Wild huh? This moment was huge, it validated that everything I was working so hard on changing was actually working.

If you read my last post about our Letrozole experience, you'd remember that at the end we decided that our next step was to schedule an appointment with a Reproductive Endocrinologist. And we did, it was set for September 2021 and we were very eager to get started. But after my first natural period graced us with her presence in August, I wanted to see it through. We started to get more hope that maybe, just maybe, we could naturally conceive.

The decision to cancel our long awaited appointment was hard, and even when it came to the day we were supposed to go, I wondered if it was the right decision. We soon had this overwhelming sense of clarity that if we took the time now to learn more about my cycles naturally, it would benefit us in the long run. Meaning, if we could have a child naturally, then when it came to baby #2, we would know where to start.

I'll forever be grateful for that path we chose during that difficult time. We deliberately chose not to run the other way and head right to IUI (intrauterine insemination) or IVF (In vitro fertilization), even though we were SO ready to have a baby. Considering our age, 26 and 27 at the time, we knew we had time on our side. That is a blessing that a lot of people do not have.

Shortly after all of this happened, I started to seek help from providers that offered natural ways to support my body and fertility. Acupuncture was not something I ever saw myself doing, because the thought of needles sticking in me for any length of time freaked me out. At this point I had just gotten comfortable with getting my blood drawn frequently, so more needles was not intriguing to me. But with all the research to back it up, I decided to give Acupuncture a try. Plus someone really close to me who had gone through similar struggles to conceive swore by it.

Although the first appointment was not the most relaxing, once I got used to the treatment and went back a few times, it became my favorite part of the month. And to make it even better, my acupuncturist and I connected on so many levels, she quickly became another support for me to lean on. A truly trusted person in my journey that I learned so much from, and it almost felt like I was meant to cross paths with her.

Acupuncture not only helped me ovulate on my own, but it provided stress relief in the most difficult time of my life. Laying on the table for an hour plus each session offered a lot of time to reflect on what we had been through, and where we were hoping to go. I remember always being excited to come home and tell my husband everything we talked about at Acupuncture. And it helped me realize just how amazing our life currently was.

I had of course known this before, but it helped me to see just how awesome our kid-less life was. It was okay that we didn't have a baby yet.

But healing from a trauma isn't linear, and I want to be clear that I had a lot of bad days before this time. For the first year and a half of TTC, I became an incredibly jealous, stressed, and negative person. To be honest though, that is ok. One tip I can give anyone who is experiencing infertility, don't try and be positive all the time. Accept that it is happening, and feel every single feeling to the fullest. If you're angry and jealous, cry about it and let it out. Toxic positivity does not help anyone, in fact that could be a post of its own!

If you take anything away from this post, it's that you have to learn to let go of the way you thought life would play out. You'll learn a lot about yourself, your marriage, and life in general when you're faced with hard things. Writing this brought up a lot of feelings about hiding our infertility from friends and family, so soon I will do a whole post about when to tell your friends and family about your struggles.

As always, if you reading this or anyone you know is in the thick of it, I'm here to lend an ear! I won't tell you what you should or shouldn't do, because that's not helpful at all. But I do know what it's like to go through it, and I promise you that makes a world of difference finding someone to relate to and feel normal.

- CC