IVF: What I Never Talked About….

Some things….you keep to yourself…
I wrote about most of my personal infertility experiences here on this blog but some things….I kept hidden….
I’m not one to expose myself…
I’ve been pretty anonymous on here(unless you are on my IG or are the 5 people I’ve actually told about this blog) and I did not open up about my infertility to friends until we were already 6 months along(since my sister was carrying and lived in another state….wasn’t that hard to hide and not talk about until I was ready)….

And speaking of hiding…I hid something that was devastating and I’m about to tell you all about it now….
For some of you, it might not have been a big deal…..and I get it…. but since my career was in television…. this was hard to hide…

It’s called Alopecia Areata

I’m finally writing about it because I thought…what if this happens to someone else and they don’t know what to do? Or where to go, or who to ask?

So here we are….

Long story short, I lost my hair….

If going through all of these infertility treatments wasn’t enough…….

I sat silently as clumps of hair would fall out in the shower…it was devastating to say the least.

At first, I just noticed my hairline getting thinner…..

And I tried to ignore it as nothing….

But then I couldn’t ignore it any longer…

I was losing my hair..
I actually lost most of the hair on the right side of my head(see pic below..this is after it grew back a little too)

Because of infertility….and all of the treatments I put my body through….I developed Alopecia Areata….
For those of you that do not know what that is, it is an autoimmune skin disease that I believe developed due to all of the meds/treatments/stress/anxiety, etc..that I went through to try to have a baby……sure, they say it’s inherited, genetic…but no one in my family has ever had this…4 rounds of IVF and 6 medicated FET’s….10 cycles(!) are most likely the cause in my book…sooo many meds and shots…

And guess what you have to do to try to treat this?

More shots……

but this time…..in your head 😦 ugh…

Like I didn’t have enough injections in my life…….so for months upon months in 2015 and into 2016…I would get shots of steroids in my head from my dermatologist…

To say I was over needles was an understatement….

But I had to get them…I couldn’t lose all of my hair..I was still trying to work…combing my hair certain ways…not allowing anyone to touch my hair and making excuses when they tried….

It was awful…

But oddly something beautiful was happening at the same time….I was moving towards gestational surrogacy…

And every step we took with my beautiful sister…….

more clumps of hair would fall out…

But I was ok…

And once that pregnancy test was positive, once we saw the heartbeat, once we passed 20 weeks…..

My hair continued to fall out…but there was this blinding light upon my horizon that overshadowed any sadness…..

I was finally going to have a child…

All of the torture I put my body through was finally paying off….

Hair loss and all….

The things some of us do to try to have a baby…

So, if you ever find yourself losing your hair…please know, you are not alone(and most of mine eventually grew back).

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask..

This post is extremely vulnerable…and I only decided to write about it to help someone else….

Someone that might be feeling alone, sad and have no where else to turn…

But I’m here to let you know…you’ll never be alone…I’m here…and I understand..

For more information about Alopecia Areata, please visit: https://www.naaf.org/alopecia-areata

Scars Between My Fingers

I sit here looking at my hands. They are dry and cracked from washing bottles in hot water. And I couldn’t be happier about that….but I notice something else too…..

Little scars between my fingers…on only two fingers…but I can still see them.

As I clasp my hands together to pray before dinner….I realize why they are there….

During infertility, there were times where I would pray so hard, my rings would rub up against my other fingers….causing them to bleed a little…and it left tiny scars…
I didn’t notice at the time because, with infertility, I was in so much pain, mentally and physically, that I was numb to feeling much else…

So many things I didn’t notice during the dark days……..

I know I write a lot about the hard times on this blog. It took us almost 5 years to have a child. I was incapable of even carrying my child. Infertility has been a big part of my life and I remember scouring the internet to find someone…anyone who had all of my problems….I didn’t find anyone with ALL of my problems but I did find some that I could relate to…and I held on tight to those…..like in prayer….

Every feeling they felt, every procedure, every vitamin, every doctor…I wanted to know it all. And I prayed for them…and most of them succeeded in pregnancy….and then their blogs would go silent….never hear from them again…

I never understood why….but I’m slowly understanding….

My audience……most of my followers and readers find my blog while searching for infertility.

Infertility.

They want to have a baby.

So once an infertility blogger has a baby….the blogger is either done writing, they have conquered their goal or it turns into a parenting/baby blog….

If 5 years ago, I searched for an infertility blog and the first thing I saw was a cute baby pic…it would be a punch to the gut a little(just being completely honest)..I obviously would have wanted to know they eventually succeeded but being in such a depressed, fragile, lonely state..searching for infertility blogs…I wanted information about diagnosis, treatments, procedures, timelines, experience, doctors…I could go on and on…

So this blog won’t have any more pictures of my baby boy. He is here, he is safe, he is growing and if you do want to see more pictures of him growing up, you can follow me on my new Instagram account @changingdiapers 🙂

Mark my word, I am thrilled beyond words to have my son, but like I wrote about in this post, I didn’t “beat” infertility..so I’ll continue to fight and try to find procedures and doctors and treatments for those like me. And I’ll continue to call scientists and researchers and doctors around the world to find the most up-to-date information on everything in the reproductive endocrinology world.

You see…because I think I have finally found my purpose…..I’ll write more about this in another post…but there’s a reason I started this blog years ago..to help those wanting to have a child…simple…yet so overwhelmingly complex….

And like these scars on my fingers…the memories and struggles of infertility are scars in my mind…I can’t ever fully forget about them…..

So I’m not about to forget about you….still battling, still fighting, still crying every night…

Still collecting scars…..

I’m still here….and I’m not going anywhere.