I can beat that. I got pregnant three times in two years. Once on the pill (miscarriage), once using foam and condoms together (live birth), and once with an IUD (another miscarriage). In each case, I was using the method exactly as I was told to. My husband and I weren’t even doing it that often, either.
After that, I used abstinence until my husband and I could convince a shrink and another doctor that I had absolutely no intention of EVER wanting to have another baby, and besides, I’d already had some retinal damage from gestational diabetes, and let’s not even go into the whole toxemia/pre-eclampsia thing (how the hell was I supposed to take care of a toddler if I got put on bed rest again?), so I really and truly DID want my tubes tied, and I DID understand that it’s permanent.
SiL used to mistakenly think that “the average” is the same as “the only possible value”, when it isn’t even necessarily “the most common value.”
When she decided they were going to try, and got pregnant within days, she repeated so many times “but the average time for a couple to get pregnant after they decide to start trying is two years!” that “two years!” has come to mean “impossible but true” in my family
The second time, she was worried because she did not get pregnant on the first try :smack: (it took all of three months, by which time I had set a trout to freeze)
I got pregnant twice, both times were two bonks on the same night and none other during the week (my husband was working away both times so both boys were weekend visits!)
We have never used contraception other than the withdrawl method and me knowing my cycle very well (we bonked slightly after egg laying day both times and got boys which is statistically right. Not that we were trying for boys, it’s just when the weekend fell!)
Never been pregnant before (well, maybe once before. By the time I realised I’d gone 50 days with no period, I had it, so was it a miscarriage or not? I’ll never know.) or since. So I have always wondered just exactly how fertile I really am…
Just another note to add to the every body is different chorus.
I have a couple of girlfriends who are “superfertile” - they can plan the conception of their children by cessation of birth control. They’ll then get pregnant
But I also have one girlfriend who conceived her son the first month of trying - and adopted her daughter six years later after four years of trying.
Often, it’s harder than you think. But it depends mostly on the couple’s individual fertility. IIRC you get a diagnosis of ‘infertile’ after you have tried for two years with no results.
My mom was pregnant 4 times, and she’s had unprotected sex 4 times. The risky sex probably coincided with her most fertile time, though, which I think happens a lot with those couples we all know who got pregnant right away from one slip-up.
Well, this is making me feel a little bit crap. We tried for 36 cycles with absolutely no success whatsoever, with no real indication that there was anything wrong with either of us. We timed everything well, used a fertility monitor after it was obvious that we weren’t going to be in the pregnant-after-3-mins category. I’m now pregnant after IVF, but as far as I knew, we could have kept trying till the cows came home with no success. Or we could have been lucky on our 37th month without fertility treatment.
It was particularly galling, as we’d been waiting until we were completely ready because my mother was one of the fertile ones (for her three children the time taken was one month, two months and then one with contraception) and I thought I’d be like her. Guess the joke’s on me.
{{{Hugs}}} It is hard to hear these stories of how easy it is for other people - but Neeps, that will all fade once you have your baby in your arms, and it’s not long to go now! Baby from Mars is now 3 weeks old, and so totally worth all we went through to get her. (Of course there is that sneaking worry in the back of our minds about how much planning will need to go into number 2. But then again, we won’t have to worry about using condoms, figure if we can sneak one past the goalie, all good!)
For DD#1, we tried for about 1.5 years before I went looking for help. (I was a bit more hesitant on this baby thing at age 25. I was temping/charting/using ovulation kits etc.) My gyn put me on Clomid for 6!!! months - no workie. I went and found a fertility doctor. Both of us were pretty healthy and only 25/26. Everything came back normal until my new doctor found cysts, which I had to wait for to go away before starting IUI. Three months later the last cyst was small enough we could proceed with IUI and on April Fool’s day we got pregnant that cycle.
With DD#2 we got pregnant about 18 months later. We weren’t actively trying, and we weren’t preventing either during that time. (I still had a period while nursing.) I bought some ovulation kits that month and said, ‘Well, if you want another baby tonight’s the night!’ I was SHOCKED, when about 2 weeks later I started feeling really light headed and swollen down there. I thought well, I am maybe late (run like clockwork) - took a test and it was positive.
I have one friend, she got married in May and the first time they went to try and get pregnant, she got pregnant. Same thing happened the second time. She finished nursing her oldest, and got pregnant during weaning. She said she will drill this into her daughter’s head about getting pregnant the first time!
I was always hurt those times where we tried NOT to get pregnant, and then when we wanted to get pregnant and couldn’t
Thanks, I’m still practicing the art of not being the bitter infertile in polite company. Hopefully I’ll get there before March I think the moral to our story is that you can be doing everything ‘right’ and still not get pregnant.
I’m so glad everything went well for you - hopefully the transition has not been too hard.
(We’re definitely going to be trying your post pregnancy contraceptive plan too - in our house, a pregnancy without advanced fertility treatment is know as a freebie and we could definitely use one of those after paying out of pocket for this one).
One of the reasons my mother (She Who Was Infertile) wanted to strangle SiL when SiL moaned about the “unexpected” (unexpectedly fast, really) pregnancy is that I took 4 years to arrive, Middlebro then took 6 more and Littlebro arrived 2.5 years after Middlebro. Her nickname comes from having been told that she could not, in fact, bear children. The doctors were clearly wrong, but it certainly wasn’t easy. {{{{{{{Neeps}}}}}}}
Oh, but you aren’t doing everything right. You are obviously stressed. Just relax and you’ll get pregnant. Or adopt - that’s what I did and it works every time! Have you tried boxers? A friend had her husband switch to boxers, and BAM! twins.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
The only thing worse than doing “everything right” and not conceiving is when you do everything right and some busybody still manages to come along and blame you for your lack of success.
Good thing the doctors were wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t be here You’re right though - it aint easy, which is maybe why I felt I had to butt into this thread with a ‘yeah, but…’ post to balance out all the (lucky) fertile dopers out there.
Oh my god, it’s like you’ve met my friends! We were too obsessed with getting pregnant to actually get pregnant. It’s amazing these people didn’t open their own fertility clinics so they could rake in the cash with all the sure-fire advice they had to give. Apparently, in their world, lots and lots of really relaxed sex gets you pregnant.
Or tell you that you’re so lucky because you get to have all that fun trying to get pregnant :rolleyes:
No, I was infertile myself. And did get pregnant by surprise after adopting - and while the upside is wonderful, it means I’ll never STOP hearing “see, all you had to do was stop worrying about getting pregnant.” I swear, I’ll be 90 and in the nursing home and upon hearing about the arrival of the children, my roommate will say “It always happens that way, you just needed to relax.”
So instead I will say the platitude I know is true…however long children take to enter your life, and however they get there, the frustration of now will become a distant memory. And should you decide that the better path for you is to not parent a child at all, that too, will be fulfilling.
But you’ll always want to strangle anyone who says “just relax.”
I suspect that there is a ton of variance, even for one woman. My wife got pregnant with our oldest the first time we tried. The second took about a year, though of course we had more distractions. My mother tried for 5 years or so before I was born - she got pregnant with my brother about 10 months after I was born. Neither my wife nor my mother was particularly young.
That’s part of the reason I posted in this thread. Each of our children was a different story. (Of course, that’s true for them from birth after, too.) My sister’s kids arrived when planned, and only when planned. If ours had been that way, our youngest would now be the age that our second one is. Instead, we have six years between the first and second, and slightly less than two between the second and third. I would never give anyone advice about how to get pregnant, because it’s so obviously different for everyone. I will celebrate with them as called for, and commiserate as needed
With a very close friend I might try to see if there were ways to help her feel less stressed, but only because stress isn’t good for anyone. And only as a friendly thing, not to help with the fertility issues. Those aren’t mine to deal with.
I think the moral to our story is that you can be doing everything ‘right’ and still not get pregnant.
:rolleyes: