Welcome ICLWers!

This is my first time participating in the International Comment Leaving Week (ICLW). I thought this would be a great way to "meet" new people so I am looking forward to it.

For those of you who are visiting for the first time...THANKS! I am not a very witty or funny writer, but I hope you will stick around to see what life is like in the Patterson house. You'll see that I blog about pretty much anything - family, friends, activities, tv shows, and, of course, our infertility battle. You can find a timeline of our journey to the right, but I'll give you our info here, too.

As a teenager and young adult it was made very clear to me that having children before marriage would not get me my "big, white wedding" ... and, of course, who doesn't want their big wedding? So, naturally, I was on the bcp until we decided we were ready to start trying. I met my husband, Jason, in October of 2000, and we got married in May of 2003.

On our one year wedding anniversary, we decided we were ready to add to our family. I remember conversations about people who tried to have kids and when they quit trying they would get pregnant supposedly because "they just quit worrying about it" (at least that's what those people believed). I certainly didn't want to be categorized into that group, so I wasn't going to obsess over trying...and, I didn't. We were young, Jason was finishing his degree, we were traveling and enjoying life. After about two years, I began wondering what was going on, maybe we weren't really trying all that hard so I started tracking my cycles. (I didn't even know how long my cycles were before this!) They seemed to be okay, but a little irregular - ranged between 28 & 35 days.

After 29 months of BFNs (October 2007), I talked to my doctor about checking things out to see if there was something preventing us from getting pregnant. I had a blood test that day, and Jason had his semen analysis the next day. Lucky for us, everything came back normal. (FYI - my husband is a cancer survivor - so glad to know that the treatments didn't cause any problems) Their first recommendation was Clomid - the lowest dose (50mg). After 5 months of clomid with timed intercourse, an hsg (all clear), and 5 BFNs, we were referred on to our wonderful reproductive endocrinologist (RE)!

We met with Dr. J in April 2008 and instantly liked him. He was very knowledgable and had a genuine interest in helping us. Of course, he thought we would get pregnant right away. After 3 IUIs and 1 miscarriage, we moved on to IVF. Our first IVF was in January and resulted in a BFN, so we are on to round 2! We'll be starting stims at the beginning of May and are hoping and praying for our BFP!