Gosh, sitting down to write this is hard. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but actually doing it is not easy. I’ve been told that sharing my story could be of comfort to others, though, so here goes nothing.

I was 22 the first time I was told I was “reproductively different”. I had gone years without anything resembling a normal cycle, and as time and many of the assumptions of why that could be passed, it was time I talked to someone about it. I never really had an answer when someone at the doctor’s office asked me when my last period was because I never knew. The longest I can recall going without a period was 18 months, and when it finally came, it. was. simply. awful. Horrific, really. The doctor at the time told me it was nothing to worry about at my age and simply to be aware that when the time came for me to desire children, I would probably need some help. We would discuss it more then. At 22, it was overwhelming information, but it also didn’t carry any realness to me at the time because parenthood felt like a very far off hope for someday. Nothing to occupy my mind at the time. Go on being an early-20s idiot. (I say that lovingly to my old self.)

So, I spent the better part of my 20s oscillating between being on some form of birth control — I’ve tried lots! — specifically to regulate things and going spells without being on anything to see if somehow my body got the hang of things and started behaving predictably. (It never did.) Along with the medications and the gaps came terrible headaches, changes in my skin, mood swings, and all sorts of other undesirables. I didn’t talk about it much with anyone, a theme you’ll find is consistent in how your good friend Megan copes with things. It wasn’t fun, especially paired with all the other things a 20-something trying to figure out life is experiencing. I maintain that my mid-late 20s were the hardest part of my life to this point, and that’s really saying something.

Let’s fast forward a bit to age 28. I went to a new doctor in a new town and finally got a diagnosis. Yay! The “reproductive difference” has a name! As it turns out, I have a fun little disorder called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, more affectionately known by its sufferers as PCOS. There are several ways PCOS can present itself in women; my personal cocktail of symptoms is cysts on my ovaries (when they rupture, the pain is indescribable), amenorrhea (fancy way of saying the abnormal absence of periods), facial hair (middle school was fun!), and… you guessed it… infertility.

At 28, hearing the “reproductive differences” phrase change to the “i” word hit harder. While I certainly believe getting married and having children don’t have to be mutually exclusive life experiences, I wanted them both. I hadn’t committed to sharing a life with anyone (at least not the person with whom I would actually commit to sharing a life), but hearing "infertility” as something I was going to experience felt like the loudest noise wrapped packaged in bubble-wrapped silence. Everything and nothing at the same time. I remember crying the whole way home after leaving the doctor and feeling this weird mix of defeat and hope. I simply didn’t know what to do with the information I had been given about myself. It was a paperweight I had already carried for years, but now the enemy had a name. I wasn’t told anything I could do: no dietary changes I could make nor exercise habits I should consider. As it turns out, a LOT of women have it, and the doctor made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. I was told the same thing I had been at 22: we’ll talk about it again when you are ready to have children.

The unknown is so damn scary, and infertility smacks it in your face on a daily basis. Going into relationships with the knowledge that you may or may not be able to have children just sucks. There’s no other way to say it. How do you bring that up in conversation (especially when you aren’t talking about it much with friends and family)? Do you casually throw it out there while making what you hope will be an impressive drink order on a first date? If it’s a deal-breaker, at least you didn’t waste any time. Do you wait until you’re really grooving and then risk everything falling apart? And what if you don’t ever find someone? Do you go at it alone? (I was fully prepared to do that at a certain point in my life.) I have several examples of my telling potential suitors and it ending badly. To spare you from secondhand embarrassment of those details, let’s just suffice it to say in general terms, this knowledge made dating challenging, at least on my side.

And at this point in my dating life, I was freaking over it. (You can fill in the blank for what “it” might have been. I can assure you, whatever you say there, you’ll be right. I was over it all.) I had just been dumped and was in one of the darkest seasons of my life when I finally met my person on my 29th birthday. One of the reasons I knew it was right was how the conversation about the “i” word went. I told him really early. I don’t know if it was the first date, but it really might have been. In the same conversation I told him what my faith looked like, what I wanted out of life, how I expected to be treated in my next relationship, what my physical boundaries are, and what my reproductive opportunities looked like. God only knows how this angel of a human stuck around for a second drink, let alone our next date. But I put it out there. I held nothing back. His response: “I’m sorry you’ve gone through that. You know… I’ve never tried to have kids. I could have issues, too, I guess. Someday if that’s in my cards, I hope I have someone willing to figure it out with me.” I cannot imagine a better response a human could have shared with me in that moment.

Scott and I got married when I was 31 and he was 33. Knowing what I knew of my situation, I wanted to start whatever treatments we were going to have to do immediately in the event it took a while to have success. I didn’t want to wait the standard year of “trying”, and I definitely didn’t want the unknown of infertility to harm my relationship with my husband. Within a couple months of being married, we met with my OBGYN and had that conversation. The one I had been prepping for over 9 years. I — we! — were ready to start having children. And that’s when it got harder.