My cycle has been completely crazy since I got my first period. Never have I had a regular cycle. In high school, I spent nine months without a period, and then spent agonizing days in the hot midwest summer, curled in bed waiting to die. Just like mom, so many years before. I went on the pill before my sophomore year of college to regulate my cycles. I had it in my head that the pills were helping to cure whatever it was that was wrong, rather than just giving me a synthetic cycle and not fixing anything.

I asked my new OB a question about it – told him my cycles were always off and he said, “Oh, you have polycystic ovarian syndrome.” He explained how the ovaries would develop many eggs in the cyst sacs but wouldn’t necessarily ovulate, so no ovulation, no hormones to spark the period 14 days later. I asked about the implications for getting pregnant, he said, “Oh, you’ll need to take Cl0mid to spark ovulation.” He said this casually, like “Oh, do you want fries with that?” I put a couple facts together and said, “So what’s the chance of multiples?” He said (looking rather … surprised that I’d caught this so quickly) “Oh yes, the chance of multiples goes up (spouts some statistic).”

Oh goody. Okay, so I never really thought fertility drugs were the way for me. I’d always assumed that getting pregnant might not happen for me, so this news wasn’t crushing for me, it was just a confirmation that I might be buying myself fancy new toys rather than baby clothes.

Scout did the math and we decided I was actually more likely to get pregnant ON the pill than OFF the pill, and fully supported my choice to go off the pill. After all, if it wasn’t healing anything in my body, and my chances of getting pregnant were nil, we didn’t see much of a need for it. I could go get pills to spark a period every 3 months if I needed them. He always knew that we might not be having children, so that wasn’t something that I had to worry about being a deal breaker in our relationship.

Through the next 3 years, I saw 3 other doctors, all said my fertility was sketchy, only one ran actual tests to see what was up. I read everything I could find on PCOS and decided that the original diagnosis was crap because the only symptom I had was the strange cycle – nothing else fit. I worked on some fertility enhancement things (which I suppose might be an entire week theme of postings in itself) and my cycle started to regulate, went off again, got rebooted by some Pr0metrium and stayed more or less predictable. I learned how to keep track of my cervical mucus (yum, I know), and we managed to not get pregnant for three years when we didn’t want to be pregnant.

So much for all those really SMRT OB/GYNs, we’re the assholes who got pregnant on the first try when we were ready to be pregnant.

(Ten Steps for Creating Breast Health)