Getting excited . . .

I feel like the ball is really rolling now - finally! We're in the process of trying to buy this amazing townhouse which would be great. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a finished basement, a beautiful big eat-in kitchen and I swear if I didn't know it was a townhouse I would think it was a stand-alone house because it feels so big and open in there. But not in a sterile, anonymous, empty sort of way - more like an airy yet homey kind of open layout. I can totally picture us living there for years and years, making a home with our baby-to-be, hosting family functions and not having to worry about insane landlords, ridiculous rent payments, and crazy wild college parties in the next apartment. Of course home ownership comes with its own set of responsibilities and potential problems, but the place is brand new, custom-built, never-been-lived-in fresh. We shouldn't have to worry about replacing the hot water heater or the roof or anything for years because everything is brand new and under warrantee. I really hope we get it. We're both really excited. And the mortgage payment breaks down to be less than what we were spending on rent and there is easily 3 times the amount of square footage we had before. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

On the baby-making front, things are getting exciting too. We decided to start in September after all because we've both been pretty sick this month and my fertility signals got all screwed up which got me worried that my ovulation would not be predictable this month. However, it turned out to be right on schedule, I ovulated today! This is exciting because I finally feel like I have a handle on this fertility tracking/predicting, which I thought would be impossible with my PCOS. I was expecting it to be a nightmare, and athough it hasn't been easy, I think it is going pretty well (knock on wood). I just hope my body continues ovulating on its own, on schedule, during the months we are trying to conceive!

I am not a religious person AT ALL (much to the chagrin of my Catholic parents) but I do consider myself somewhat spiritual, to a degree at least. I believe in the basic nature of things and don't like to interfere too much with anything occurring naturally. I have been freaked out by the prospect of taking fertility drugs, which I know many people do without problems, but I still felt uneasy. I have been struggling to reconcile this hesitation to put anything foreign into my body (I have accepted the sperm only because it is essential to conception - if there was another way, I'd be doing it!) with the extremely high likelihood that conception would be nearly impossible without the assistance of ovulation-inducing drugs, because of the PCOS. So I feel that having had only 3 periods and no ovulations in 2007 (2 of which were induced with medication and each of them were spaced several months apart), the fact that I have now already had 5 natural periods in 2008 (and the past 3 months in a row all WITH ovulations) is a sign from Mother Nature that we really are meant to be mommies despite all of our health issues. It seems sort of destined that the same month we decided (and by "we" I mean "I" decided at first) to start planning for a baby, my insanely erratic and unpredictable cycle, if you could even call it a cycle, suddenly stabilized all on its own after more than 10 years (since my very first period at 11) of chaos. Intellectually, of course, I know this is probably not fate but the welcome result of my newfound attention and dedication to taking care of my body by consuming as much organic whole food as possible, taking yoga classes every day, losing 20 pounds in a healthful way, and tracking my fertility signals. I just never thought these things would work on their own. I hoped that they would, but doubted that I'd ever be able to ovulate or conceive without western medical assistance. I have the prescriptions for Clomid and Provera in my purse, waiting to be filled, just in case my period stops coming and I need to induce one and then stimulate my ovaries to produce a fertile egg, but I am starting to get really excited at the prospect of NOT needing to ever fill them! I know I'm getting way ahead of myself here - we haven't even started trying yet and it will probably take a long time to even get pregnant, let alone sustain a healthy pregnancy (women with PCOS often have short luteal phases and don't produce enough progesterone during early pregnancy to support the embryo until the placenta can take over around 12 weeks, which often results in recurrent early pregnancy loss = multiple miscarriages). We're just hoping it won't be incredibly difficult; just like everyone else, we want to get pregnant right away and give birth to a healthy baby.

I'm happy to have one less hurdle to clear at this stage of the journey - happy to be ovulating on my own in a way that I have been able to successfully predict for three months in a row (and hoping that this will continue). Has anyone reading this successfully conceived with PCOS without fertility drugs? I'd love a real-life example to help me believe it can really happen. My love and I differ on the issue of western medicine. She's all about it and believes there is a pill for everything and encourages me to use fertility drugs, while I would like to do things more naturally if we can. Most medical studies and research tend to support her position, although I always argue that she should consider the source. So please, share with me if you've conceived with PCOS at all, with or without assistance. I am curious about the level of intervention needed for others - no judgement at all. We'll do whatever we can to have a baby, including fertility treatments if it comes to that, I'm just hoping they won't be necessary.