Hi, Chrissy!

I'm 21 with my birthday fast approaching in June, no furry family members (yet), 3 years with my husband and 8 months actually married. I'm currently weighing in at around 322/323 depending on the time of day and my first goal is to hit 290 before my birthday. Hitting 290 will be a huge milestone for me since it'll be under 300 pounds which I haven't seen in 2 years. I packed on 40 pounds in 2 years due to PCOS, stress, and emotional struggle after the loss of a pregnancy I had just found out about barely a week prior. I wasn't handling it well and it was showing on my 5'5" frame. I mean, I was chubby before but now I'm just straight up fat and I know it.

Like you, my weight issues started WAY before infertility issues and I'm fully convinced it's the weight that's the root cause of them. I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was 16 and at that point, it didn't concern me because I wasn't concerned with having kids. I was concerned with graduating high school. It wasn't until I started dating my husband and we began to talk about starting a family even before we were married that I realized how much I let it sit on the back burner. Now I'm trying to take control of my weight so we can hopefully avoid all the doctor's visits and IVF and other treatments. I work in the medical field and I absolutely hate going to the doctor unless I HAVE to. I want to avoid them at all costs (horrible, I know, but I can't help it. Doctors creep me out!)

Hubby is in the military so he's gone quite often (7 of the 8 months we've been married have been spent separated by an ocean-) and TTC is also made more difficult that way. Because of this we've been TTC about a year before we were married and absolutely no luck. At that point, I was still in denial about any issues I have and how they were negatively impacting my relationship and my chances of having little redheaded babies (Irish hubby with beautiful red hair!) or mini-me's. What made me finally break down and address the problems I've swept under the rug since I was 16 was having some major pregnancy symptoms, taking 11 (yes, 11-) home tests, and sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing with those 11 negative tests because "What the hell did I do WRONG to deserve not being able to have something that I want so badly and other women seem to be able to have sex once and obtain with no effort whatsoever??"

After that bout of self-pity, I pulled myself up by my proverbial bootstraps and did some heavy research on which different lifestyle changes have positively impacted women with PCOS. It led me to how I'm eating now and it's mainly experimenting to see what works for my body, but I've already lost 10 pounds so I'm sticking to it no matter what anyone says! It works for my body and I'm monitoring the necessary things while I'm doing it.

Sorry for the long intro to myself! Good luck to everyone on their journeys!

Hello ladies!
I don't know how active this group is, but I thought I would stop in. I'm 31, married for 5.5 years, TTC for 2.5. We have one cat that we have had for a LONG time. (She was mine before I even met DH.) We have had some trouble getting doctors to pay attention to us in the beginning. I was just sure something was wrong, and doctors kept saying "you're young, it'll happen!" and not listening.

Anyway, 1 year in to TTC we got all the testing. They didn't find anything wrong with me other than mild endometriosis (stage 1-2). DH has "the trifecta" of sperm problems-low motility, poor morphology, low count. He tried clomid for a year, and had a mild improvement at 3 months on clomid, but then all the testing trended back down to his original baseline.

In the midst of all this: In March 2017, we magically got pregnant, and then we miscarried just 4 days after finding out. In Oct 2017, our doctor told us to jump to IVF or give up. We couldn't afford IVF at the time and weren't mentally and emotionally ready for such an invasive option yet, so we 'gave up'. (Well, more like took a break.)

In Jan 2018, I got pregnant again! It was a miracle! But, we lost that pregnancy at almost 6 weeks in early Feb 2018. (I'll never forget miscarrying during the super bowl .)

Anyway, the 2nd misccarige really solidified for us that we are not done trying to find a way to have children. I found a new doctor and we decided to try IUI a few times with donor sperm (since DH's sperm are not good enough quality for IUI), and after 3 attempts at IUI, we are going to reserach the possbility of IVF including figuring out how to pay for it. We also found out a possible reason why I miscarried twice, so treated that and hoping it won't factor into furutre preganancies.

IUI #1 was BFN. IUI #2 is in progress, currently on Clomid and estradiol and waiting for my follicle study. Fingers crossed the IUI works!

My weight during all this has been ALL OVER the place! In the beginning of TTC, I was around 140, which is ok for my height on a muscular frame. I had been really sick for a time and my weight had dropped from 230 to 140, but I was on the mend, so didn't figure that my weight would be an issue. Then, over the course of all the testing, my appetite returning, and all the medications (and let's not forgot the depression with the miscarriages), my weight increased to 220. This was a huge gain over the course of 2.5 years. I am trying to get a handle on this again, and we have been going to the gym regularly since Thanksgiving....and now I am starting to work on my diet. I have dropped to 214, but I still have a ways to go. I am hoping that with the working out and better eating, my weight won't be a factor in all this, but I feel bad that I have let my weight get this bad.