Chapter 1: The Beginning
My name is Julie Eshelman and I am the spouse of an Active Guard Reserve Army Reservist. We just completed our fifth move in seven years all while navigating infertility and family building. Over the coming weeks, I will be telling you an incredibly personal story to raise awareness, help erase the stigma surrounding the topics of infertility and pregnancy loss, and if you are on a similar journey, show you you’re not alone. I will be honest, this might be a difficult story to read, but stories like this deserve a space to be told so people can understand what infertility and pregnancy loss look and feel like. So join me on this journey, while I take you back to the beginning where it all began.
My husband and I started trying to conceive (TTC) in 2016 about a year after we married while stationed at Fort Lewis. I’m not sure why we thought we needed to spend the first year of our marriage enjoying it as husband and wife; we had been together since 2009 which was plenty of time to enjoy our relationship. But we did, and during that first year of TTC, we had no idea what was in store for us. I thought getting pregnant would be so easy, at least that’s what society led me to believe. How does that nursery rhyme go – first comes love, then comes marriage … you know the one, that teaches us at a young age that you get married and then have babies. No one ever mentioned how difficult it can be for some.
It was probably around three or four months into TTC that I began wondering why things weren’t working. I started using ovulation tests, fertility apps, and trying every trick in the book while spending a fortune. To this day, I still joke that we should buy stock in ovulation or pregnancy tests because of how much money we spent on them over the years. Still, nothing was happening. When we hit the sixth month of TTC, I began to wonder whether or not there was something wrong with me. I confided in a few close friends but was met with the all too common and well-meaning phrases of “Just relax,” “It will happen when you stop trying,” and comments that left me feeling unseen and even more isolated in my struggles. I didn’t know anyone else who was struggling with getting pregnant or infertility. It wasn’t something that was talked about, and it wasn’t something I heard or saw in TV shows or movies. I just needed someone to listen, offer a shoulder to cry on, or who had walked this road to guide and encourage me. Looking back this was one of the hardest times because I felt like there was no one and nowhere to turn to. And to top it off I was embarrassed and felt unworthy as a woman because I couldn’t get pregnant.
With all of those negative emotions and thoughts brewing in my head, the resentment, jealousy and downright anger started to creep in. There were days when it literally felt like everyone was getting pregnant or having babies except me. Everywhere I turned I would see pregnant women. I can vividly remember watching a TV show and a character accidentally got pregnant, it was like she was rubbing it in my face. It was just getting so hard, and those feelings are really difficult to process and overcome without someone to lean on who gets it. But I didn’t have anyone to turn to, so I just kept focusing on trying everything and waiting to be able to go to my doctor.
By the time we hit the magic mark of one year of TTC and we could begin seeking help and possible diagnostics, we learned that we were going to be moving to Arizona which was a huge step in my husband’s career development. It was a good thing. At the time we were stationed at Fort Lewis, home to one of the six Military Treatment Facilities (now there are eight) that offer fertility services, but when we tried to get an appointment we learned they had a very long waitlist and couldn’t be seen before our move to Arizona. It felt like a punch to the gut. I checked all the boxes I was supposed to check, but then it didn’t matter because we ran out of time.
When I finally was able to see my doctor after establishing care in our new location, I was told that I needed to try for another year before getting a referral to a fertility clinic since my husband traveled sometimes for work. In hindsight, I wish I would have been a better advocate for myself because the standard guideline is for those under 35 to try for 12 months before seeking help, and six months for those 35+. I was 31 at this time and met the recommended guidelines, but trusted the doctor. I now know that spending the second year TTC naturally wasn’t the best, but I can’t undo that, I can only help others not make the mistakes I made. We were able to get one Hail Mary medicated cycle done before my husband left for deployment.
While he was gone, I was able to get the referral to the fertility clinic and waited for most of the deployment on the waitlist before completing my diagnostics before my husband returned home. I actually had my first diagnostics tests done on my birthday that year, during deployment, which if you’ve done any of those tests you know that is probably one of the last things you want to do on your birthday. They are painful and leave you with cramps for hours. But we were finally moving forward and hopefully would get some answers.
Well, we didn’t. All of my tests came back normal, and we just had to wait for the deployment to be over so my husband could be tested. Our doctor did come up with two plans moving forward depending on what my husband’s tests would reveal, either we try three rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI) before moving to invitro fertilization (IVF), or we would jump straight to IVF. So finally, after almost a year apart one of the first things my husband did after returning from deployment was get all of his testing done.
We were diagnosed with unexplained infertility, which is a nice way of saying there is a problem or reason you can’t get pregnant, but we don’t yet understand or have the science to diagnose it. Our medical team determined that IUI was the better and cheaper option for us. For those of you who might not be aware, fertility treatments are only covered for service members with a service-connected injury or illness that affects their reproductive organs. That means that we had to pay for everything out of pocket, including most of the medications. The average cost for IUI is $500 – $4,000 depending on the clinic, medication protocol, and if donor sperm is being used. Did I mention that TRICARE doesn’t cover this? Thankfully we started saving during deployment and cut every unnecessary expense so we could pay for treatments.
In April 2019 we did our first IUI. After weeks of my husband being a “mad scientist,” as he learned how to mix, draw up, and administer fertility drugs and me going in for constant monitoring appointments (which felt like a part-time job), we were finally one step closer to our dream of having a family. Just days after our IUI we learned that my husband was selected to join the AGR program and we would be moving in just a few weeks to the Chicago area. A little over a week after that, we learned that our first IUI was successful, we had to list and sell our house and prepare for our third move. This was an exciting time, and we felt like all of the tears, frustrations, and feelings of being unworthy were coming to an end.
While we were excited, we also knew that miscarriages can happen. Since our infertility was unexplained there was the possibility that my body wouldn’t respond to supporting a pregnancy. We were cautiously optimistic. We also had plenty of things to do to get the house ready to list, sell and move across the country to keep our minds from focusing on just the pregnancy. Thankfully, my sister-in-law and her husband were coming to visit so we had some help around the house. While they were visiting I began experiencing morning sickness and had appointments to check on the baby so we ended up telling them what was going on. Let’s be honest we were bursting at the seams and needed to tell someone the good news, but didn’t want to tell the whole world just yet. For the first time, I felt relieved and at peace.
I had no idea what was coming next.
Come back every Tuesday to walk this journey with Julie Eshelman as part of the MilSpouse Memoirs, stories brought to you in chapters, one week at a time.