Infertility/PCOS

PCOS. Have any of you heard of it? Neither had I.  And unfortunately, it is extremely common.

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  It is what it sounds like.  Cysts on the ovaries. Hormones are a funny thing, and they control everything. I didn’t know I had PCOS, but I did know all about the side effects.  It wasn’t until I was married and trying to conceive that we looked further into why we were yet another infertile couple.

Infertility is a BIG wrestle.  Not only do you wrestle with yourself and your spouse, but with God as well.  It can be devastating at times, and heart wrenching.  You don’t know how much you want something until you can’t have it.  And when it’s something as big of a deal as a child, that’s no simple thing; it gets personal, and it can get ugly.  It’s physically, mentally, and especially emotionally exhausting. Infertility is claiming thousands of couples.  Some for a few months, and others for years at a time.  

We had been married for a year when we got pregnant for the first time.  We were beyond ecstatic about it!  Along with being over the moon, all of the other emotions of becoming first-time parents enveloped us, as they do almost every couple.  Unfortunately, we miscarried at 14 weeks.  That broke me.  I was so ready.  I was so anxious. I was mentally preparing as I was puking my guts out.  I was going through hyperemesis gravidarum, known as severe morning sickness.  I had gotten two IVs so far and was completely happy and miserable at the same time.  It just wasn’t fair!  As I was the one going through all of that, I didn’t know just how much my husband was actually going through as well.  He took it just as hard.  It broke us both.

That’s when we learned that miscarriages are extremely common!  That was both horrifying and hopeful news.  There were other women who had gone through it and opened up to me about it.  Their sweet words were kind and hope-filled, but that’s not what comforted me.  Simply that there were others that knew how I felt was a great strength to me.  Someone (or several) to lean on.  Life moved on, and so did we.  We had to.

Time kept ticking. Weeks, months, and years passed.  We were a couple that went seven years of being infertile.  Those were hard years.  We went through six early miscarriages.  That made it more rough, and we both had had enough.  Things started looking bright for us though as the sweetest person ever gently opened a door for us.  She made the simplest suggestion to go to a fertility clinic—one that she actually worked at.  The doctor and nurses were all super kind and helpful and so empathetic as they see patients about infertility all day every day.  It felt so right to be there.  It was my support group.  I could open up about all of the nitty gritty if I needed to.  Simply talking about it helped me to heal emotionally.  My husband was my BIGGEST supporter as he came to every appointment, and even he took tests.  The doctor mentioned to me that my case looked a lot like I had PCOS.  She made a very obvious diagnosis.  Luckily I knew what she was talking about, as I had done research on some of the symptoms I had.  And we agreed on that diagnosis.  My husband and I learned so much just being there at this particular clinic with this particular doctor.  Fears left us, and we became even stronger as a couple.

Well, the doctor put us on a few rounds of Letrozole, but we didn’t get pregnant.  Just then, we needed to move for work, so we stopped going to any clinic.  The doctor that was there helping us also moved clinics.  What could I do now to get pregnant?  I had read on multiple platforms and scientific studies that diet was a HUGE stimulator for PCOS.  Several hundreds of times, I would come across a gal that had a program for PCOS women.  It literally changed my life.  If you are reading this, write this down!  This information connected everything I had been going through; everything I had just been researching.  Everything in me was telling me that this was what I could do.  I can do hard things.  So I made the decision, my husband was all in, and we dove head first into this challenge.

Her name is Kym Campbell.  She is AMAZING!  She has an ever-growing community of women who are finding out that they too suffer from PCOS.  Look up on Facebook, the “PCOS Diet Support and 30 Day Challenge.”  Or on Instagram as @smartpcoschoices. Do it right now.  Kym does all of the hard research and keeps up to date on latest intel about the real facts about PCOS.  She has taught me so much about the truth on food via emails and her blog.  It is genuinely pure gold information.  And it’s FREE!  I took away so many good pointers and implemented them into a diet change.  It’s not a diet as in, “I went without.”  It’s a healthier CHOICE of foods to balance out my hormones and help heal my body, reducing symptoms. 

PCOS symptoms vary widely from severe to non severe: Cysts on the ovaries, very irregular periods, acne, oily skin, and mood swings, just to name a few.  Weight gain is the most common, and it’s harder to lose the weight.  There is also a type of “thin” PCOS.  Symptoms also include miscarriages, thinning head hair, and unwanted facial hair known as hirsutism.  It’s a complicated mess of hormones, as you can see from the symptoms listed.  My biggest concern was the irregular menstrual cycle.  TMI, but my cycle would come around every nine months in high school.  

Kym’s information resonated so deeply within me.  I had pen to paper like a mad woman, and I consumed what I could.  I didn’t listen just to her and what she was saying.  There were so many google searches that I did, and info would pop up from the Mayo Clinic, etc. for example.  When I was finding out about PCOS, it was still an under-studied thing.  Not much was known about it, but it was coming forward as a norm for so many women.  Hormones are a huge factor, as there are thousands of hormones and not all can be tested.  That was something that I learned.  So it’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause.  Typically, something goes wrong, and the hormones react.  Results are excessive androgens and other issues—a domino effect as one thing leads to another.

I had to do something.  I wanted and was willing to try anything.  There were a lot of late nights that I would just talk my husband’s ear off as he nodded off to sleep, but he was such a good sport about it.  I was going to do something about it, whether he was going to as well or not.  So I did.

Basically, I switched to no sugar, no gluten, no dairy.  We hear about these kinds of  “diets” all of the time, so it didn‘t surprise me.  The reason these diets prescribe this is because of inflammation.  Avoid it as best as you can!  Instead, I participated in a Low Glycemic diet and tried to keep my blood sugar levels constant.  But you can read up on it and all you can do for inflammation specifically.  This sounded like it was DOABLE!  But it was so much harder than I thought.  I found out that I was addicted to sugar.  Slowly, ever so slowly, sugar became more sweet, and is harder to handle too much.  I am still working on it.

One of the other gold nuggets I learned from all of my research, to top off the diet change, was the effects of nail polish.  Look that up as well.  It was obvious that my hormones are super sensitive, so what could it hurt to just stop wearing nail polish? 

Want to know something extremely crazy?  After THREE months of changing my normal lifestyle, WE GOT PREGNANT NATURALLY!  It might not always be the same results for everyone, but this was HUGE for us!  I can’t tell you enough how beyond grateful I am that I listened to my body, and that I came across so much information and was led to the DR, and to Kym’s information, and then I was motivated enough to actually do something about it.  We got pregnant naturally.  That means everything to an infertile couple.

There are several PCOS support groups that I then came across as well after I got pregnant; not only just other women sharing their stories, but more groups containing full, rich information that coincides with “how to treat PCOS.”  And I can first-handedly say that “IT WORKS!”  It might not completely heal PCOS, but I got pregnant.  That is proof enough that it helped level out my raging hormones.  Not all symptoms are back to normal, but I got pregnant naturally.  That’s the typical set back for women with PCOS. 

It was a combination of things that gave me the leg up: Finding out about it and that it’s a real thing; learning about it, and finding others discussing it; reaching out, and tuning in to the right information.  I felt both validated and that what I was trying to accomplish was honorable and doable.  Granted, it wasn’t easy at all.  But it was SO worth it.

All of this is OUR story, our case, our differences.  This was extremely helpful information that WE needed.  Knowledge really does give you the power to make a change.  And what better change than to come from being infertile to having a daughter we can call our own.  Yes, we were greatly blessed to have a healthy baby! BUT it is all thanks to Kym, and the info she so eagerly shares, and our dedication to sticking to making better health choices.  That was key.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE adoption and adoption stories.  But our journey took us through infertility hell and back, and we wanted a child all the more.  And we just wanted to know the underlying cause of it all.  Especially me.  What could I do to help myself?  What could we do differently as a couple?  This just helped us on so many levels.  I pray that this gave you hope as well, and know that there is so much information out there that can benefit you and help you along your own journey.  Just do something with that information.  Pray about what is right for you along your own journey.