PCOS and Hormones

PCOS effects sooo many different hormones, it’s not even funny! 

For one, it is really common to have thyroid problems. I have hypothyroidism, because of my PCOS.
But PCOS can also affect things like weight, sleep, and others. 

Another set of hormones pcos affects are the androgen hormones, more commonly known as male hormones (like testosterone) even though women produce them too, just in smaller amounts. Imbalances in these hormones cause problems like male pattern baldness and hair where you don’t want it growing; like chest, face, stomach, etc… as well as having the acne of a teenager. Not very fun! I know several women that have to shave their face daily because of this lovely side effect.

A lot of women also end up with too much estrogen and not enough progesterone, which causes problems when it comes to trying to become and STAY pregnant. If untreated, women with PCOS have as high as a 50% chance of miscarriage! For normal women; it’s around a 15% chance.

So on top of having an extremely hard time even getting pregnant, you have a huge risk of losing that baby, too. After loosing Kayleigh, it took Jason and I almost 1.5 years to get pregnant, and even than we did not know we were pregnant, because I had no period! 

With Alex and I, we have been wanting a child since a little before Gabriella turned 3 years old. In April 2012, when this blog started. That makes approx. 5 months since Alex and I have been TTC, and even before Alex, I wanted to have a child when Gabriella was 2 or 3 depending on where life put me. 

I try not to complain because I am one of the lucky ones. I have Gabriella and she IS my miracle child, but that does not stop me from wanting more. A lot of my friends call me "baby crazy" which I take offense to. You truly don't know how it feels to have fertility issues unless your going through what we go through. We take meds daily, IUI, IVF, spend thousands of dollars between OPTK's, Hormones, Meds, and other fertility procedures and still don't get our miracle child.

I try not to complain because I know women that after over a DECADE of trying to get pregnant still don’t have kids, and I don’t know how they do it. It was hard enough for me to be told that after Gabriella my fertility would be normal again, and find out it was not, I can’t even imagine going for 10 years.

For most it is not impossible, just very VERY difficult to have a baby. PCOS is the #1 infertility problem in women. For some, the only possible way to ever have a biological child is to go through invitro fertilization, which can easily cost $15,000+.

Some women go through several miscarriages before they finally get their miracle baby. Infertility is extremely taxing mentally, emotionally, and physically. It is something that unless you have personally gone through, people have no idea what it’s like.

There are times that it physically hurts to not have a baby to hold like you want. Your arms actually ache to hold a baby of your own. You think about all of your friends and family having babies left and right and it makes you cry. You go through times that you wonder if you will ever even be able to have a baby.

Before Gabriella, I even started looking into adoption because I didn’t know if I would ever be able to get pregnant. This time around is not as bad as before Gabriella, but TTC is not easy! It is still hard going month after month, getting into a couple of years of wanting a baby with no luck.

We both know that we would be happy just having  Gabriella if it comes down to it, though we would like one more. It’s just taking a long time again for that to happen. Thanks to PCOS and Hormonal Imbalances. Because of this, PCOS Sucks, and makes it very hard to get hormonally stable.

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