Let's Have a Baby, simple right?

One of my biggest reasons for starting this blog is to share our story and hopefully help others that are dealing with infertility. If anything, just a little hope for someone that needs it. Infertility is hard, there is no other way to say it. Before I begin with our story though, I will say this, I would  not trade a minute of our process for anything. It was one of the hardest things I have ever been through, but I learned and I grew so much through this process, and it has made me the best person and mother I can be. For that, I am so grateful.
Lets go back about 3 1/2 years...
James and I had been married about 2 1/2 years and like most couples we were ready to "start trying" to have a baby. Let the unprotected sex begin! Oh how simple we thought it would be. I had been off of birth control for about 3 months and everything seemed to be working right on my end so we were thinking we should have a baby by the new year. That was around March of 2010...
A few weeks later to our surprise, I was late. Yay! We didn't think things would happen that soon but we were hopeful. So we picked up a pregnancy test and eagerly waited to take it the next morning. It was negative. Well maybe we took it too early, maybe I didn't pee on the stick enough, lets try again next week... We waited another week and still no period but not pregnant either, again. We waited and waited and waited even more and still no sign of anything.
Never in my life had I had any problems with my cycle, so I just wanted to assume that all of the tests I had taken were broken and I was pregnant. I decided that I should go to the doctor, take a test there and get checked out. After yet another negative test, I finally gave up the hope that I was pregnant. I started to blame whatever was happening on stress. My parents were getting divorced after 25 years of marriage (don't be sad, they remarried each other later, but that is a whole other story...) but I was a bit of a mess over the whole thing. That, on top of not being pregnant (I wasn't very patient), was too much for me to handle and it was just making things worse.
When I started breaking out like a pubescent teenager, one of the nurses suggested I get checked for PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome. She didn't explain what it was so I googled it and after webmd basically told me we would never have children, I was an even bigger mess than I was before. Luckily, after some tests, the doctor reassured me that I didn't have PCOS. He encouraged me to relax and had me start doing a basal body temperature chart to see if I was ovulating. Every morning for a month, I woke up and immediately took my temperature, anxiously waiting for a spike. Things varied a little but never a spike. The discouragement kept piling on.
Back to the doctor, again.
This time the doctor recommended we start clomid, a medication used to help women ovulate. He first had me take birth control for a month (seems a little backwards right?) to regulate my hormones and then the next month I began taking clomid. He did blood  tests to see if it had worked and we had progress! We were so excited to at least be moving forward in our goal to get pregnant. When we didn't get pregnant that month I wasn't too disappointed because I knew things were at least improving.
The next month we were determined to get pregnant. I was still doing my basal body temperature tests, I bought at home ovulation tests, and we had sex every other day like they recommended. I literally laid on my back with my feet above my head for 20 minutes after every time, trying to encourage gravity to help us out a bit. Nothing says "I love you" quite like, "Hurry get off me so I can put my butt up." Never let the romance die people...
That month I was sure it had happened, so when the test was negative again I was devastated. This time our doctor asked us to do a post-coital test. For those of you that don't know what that is, like me, let me explain. That's when you have sex and then rush to see the doctor so he can withdraw your man's deposit and then test it to see if your cervical fluid is killing the sperm. Sounds awesome. So the next time we got busy I had the honor of calling up the old lady nurse and saying, "We need to see the doctor as soon as possible, we just had sex." Insert awkward pause here. "Oh yes, it's for a post-coital test." Insert longer awkward pause and then "ok, he'll see you in about 15 minutes."
So we rushed to the doctor and this was the day we finally found the source of our problem. After the doctor checked everything under the microscope he came back in to ask us if we really did just have intercourse. Um no doc, I just like to embarrass myself with awkward doctor appointments. Well we had no sperm, not a single swimmer. The doctor decided we should check James out this time (why we didn't do this to begin with almost a year ago, I have no idea). He said it seemed like he had a vericocele, basically a cluster of veins in the scrotum the can cause problems with your testicles. It was at this point that he told us the in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, was our only hope. I thought I was devastated before. This was the ultimate blow to any hope I had left.
We left the office pretty quickly and not a moment too soon. The second I got in the car I lost all control. I was sobbing, hyperventilating, full on meltdown. All I had ever wanted was to be a mom, to feel my unborn baby move inside of me, and it seemed like a lost cause at this point. We were poor college students with hardly any income. James was just finishing his undergraduate degree but with medical school and residency in our future, we thought it would be at least 9 more years before IVF was even a real possibility. I was heartbroken.