I’m 20 years old and I’m so depressed. I had my first child when I was 19 and I gained some weight but my body changed a lot but I was some what okay with it, but shortly after my 1st child I got pregnant again, but with this pregnancy I gained so much weight, and my stomach is full of stretch marks, I thought the weight would drop of quickly because all the women in my family who’ve had kids are all really skinny like my mom and sisters. My kids father work a full time job 12hr shifts. I’m a stay at home mom and I don’t know how to drive so he takes the car and I’m left at home alone. I feel like I’m slowly losing myself my confidence is gone I was once a really pretty shape and was considered really pretty in high school. I feel like all my friends are driving and living life and I’m tied down ugly and miserable. My boyfriend cheated on my while I was pregnant with my second child, and it’s hurt my pride, self esteem, and everything. He’s been so much better since then he’s grew up a lot, but I still think about it time from time. I just feel worthless most days I don’t even feel like getting out of bed. I don’t work, I can’t drive, cut off all my hair, I’m ugly, I don’t have friends, I just want to scream I want my old life back I fill like a poor excuse of a women.
No Photos (Story Only)
Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day
I got this message on Facebook today from a mama. So much strength and love to all of you mamas who are going through this or know someone who has. Lifting you up.
Today October 13th is Metastatic Beast Cancer Awareness Day. I’m a mother. I breastfed 2 children. I have stretch marks and saggy skin. I fight the negative feelings I have when I look in the mirror. I also have breast cancer. I no longer have natural breast but I still have breast cancer. It’s I the nerves of my arm and in my chest. It was all around my lungs. You are in a place to help women fight the negative feelings they have of them selves. You bring awareness to to the natural beauty of a woman’s body. I am wondering if today, you could bring awareness to a disease that kills more than 100 women a day. Less than 10% of funding goes to metastatic breast cancer, yet it kills more than 30% of breast cancer patients. I really hope you can help get this information out. Thank you.
For facts and more information, click here.
My Story (Anonymous)
Age: 34
Number of children: 1
Pregnancies: 3
Age of child: 8 months
We started trying in January 2009. The global economy had melted down, Obama had just been inaugurated & I was 28. Seemed like a good time to try for a baby as we’d been together for 5 years!
Months passed. Every 29 days I’d wake up to my period. Finally, by August 2010 the doctor (our GP) FINALLY agreed to do testing (please note: Do not wait this long! A year of trying if under 35 or 6 months if over 35, then please get checked out). I’d tried running less, acupuncture, and the pink bible of fertility ‘Taking Charge of your Fertility’.
It turned out we were dealing with severe male factor. My husband had an undescended testicle at birth which turned into testicular cancer in 2005 – luckily it was caught early and was surgically removed with no radiation or chemotherapy.
To say he didn’t take it well is a bit of an understatement. I threw my hands up as he didn’t want to do fertility treatment, and I took a better job in a big city 7 hours away. After nearly 2 years apart, confirmation that IVF with ICSI – the process of finding the few good sperm and injecting them directly into the egg – was our only hope, I’d basically given up on the thought of having kids, but found a job locally and moved back.
Surprise! I was naturally pregnant! By accident! I had started gaining weight despite working out a lot and eating clean, and that was my tip off. We started getting excited and saw the local midwife as she was recommend. Unfortunately, she delayed the prenatal testing ultrasound (I had gone for the blood test), and we started telling people after 12 weeks. If I’d had the ultrasound I would have known the pregnancy wasn’t viable. At 15 weeks I started bleeding and it was confirmed it was a missed miscarriage, and the baby had stopped growing at 10 weeks. I was given misoprostol and laboured in the ER. It was heartbreaking. The fetus was a girl and had trisomy 22.
Now we wanted to have a baby and got a referral to the fertility clinic again. More tests in the spring of 2013 with an IVF start in the fall. We went for the seminar in August 2013 and surprise! Pregnant again!
But 4 days after the blood test at the clinic I started bleeding. A miscarriage at 6.5 weeks. Luckily the doctor thought it was weird considering there was no family history and everything looked good on my side, so she ordered the Repeated Pregnancy Loss testing.
I got 2 calls the next day after my blood was taken (12 vials), one from the specialist and the other from our family doctor. It turns out my feeling down, depression and weight issues that had cropped up in the last couple years were due to Hashimoto’s disease. It’s an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid and the most common cause of hypothyroidism in the West.
So I started on medication and started to feel better, lost weight. Unfortunately, between long term infertility, two miscarriages and thyroid disease my work and social life was suffering greatly. going from a great to poor performance review in one year. It’s hard to explain this in a professional setting.
I started the IVF medications in March 2014. It’s very expensive, stressful, and the side effects are crazy. I was monitored in a city 4 hours away at the satellite clinic, and had to travel to a bigger clinic 7 hours away for the IVF-ICSI. Waiting rooms at fertility clinics are silent places, despite everyone going through the same thing. The most support is made through online connections.
Everything looked great but despite having 15-20 large follicles during monitoring only 5 eggs were retrieved. I was heartbroken. We’d put nearly $10,000, 5 years and so much heartbreak. But they were good eggs and 4/5 went to day 5. We transferred one and it worked!
I’m sure at this point you’ve realized we have weird luck. There was a bleeding scare at 7 weeks due to the progesterone suppository. We chose the new NIPT testing due to the ease and accuracy – and decided we were okay with non fetal issues such as Down’s or Kleinfelters, but that I could not handle a fatal trisomy again. Everything came out fine, and we were told it was a girl. But at the 20 week ultrasound, it was noted the placenta was low and the umbilical cord had one artery instead of two.
So I was put on pelvic rest (and my small office shuttered down due to lack of work, this was a blessing in some ways, although not financially). I was running, swimming and lifting before the diagnosis and had to stop high impact and lifting more than 10 lbs. Oh, and no sex.
We’d been given the preemie speech due to both conditions, that she may not grow properly and need to come out early via c-section. The week before the scheduled c-section the placenta finally moved. I ended up overdue, and after 11 days over, 60 hours of labour and an emergency c-section due to DVT in my leg, we finally met our beautiful daughter. And she is so gorgeous, even as a newborn. And large.
I gained weight, lost muscle and my upper thighs and tummy have stretchmarks from the last few weeks of pregnancy (honestly by week 38, I thought I was in the clear for no stretch marks). My confidence in my body was at an all time low. It’s coming back now as I take my baby out in the stroller and hiking, and am back lifting, but it’s hard to accept at times, especially when it seems everyone else in town in back in shape so quickly with their tiny babies (lots of 6 lb newborns). But I can workout, see the dermatologist, etc. I know there are lots of women who would gladly take some weight and stretchies to have a baby in their arms, and I think about how lucky we are to finally have a beautiful baby after so much time and heartbreak.
3 Months Postpartum, 5 Weeks Pregnant (Anonymous)
I’m 20 years old, young I know, and I got pregnant with my baby boy on my birthday haha I had a healthy pregnancy and it all went great. He was born May 24, 2015. Well after all of the after birth bleeding I got a regular period after 2 months had passed. Then the next month my period never came so I thought I was just adjusting to the changes. I did start worrying a little because me and the father weren’t being careful, so I took a pregnancy test and it came up negative, so I went to get on birth control 2 weeks later and the doctor told me that I was pregnant so we scheduled an ultrasound since I had no idea how far along I was. When it came time for my ultrasound all he could find was the sac.. he measured it and said I was 5 weeks along which honestly didn’t really add up cuz I figured I would have been like 8 weeks along but my body could still be messed up right? well I started having very light bleeding, no clots, mild cramps. Am I even pregnant?? Idk what to think or how to feel and my bf left me and I have no friends due to my bf so I have nobody to talk to..I need advice ladies please
Skin tags and scarring on anus and perineum (Anonymous)
My daughter was born 2 years ago. I was 30 at the time. Throughout my pregnancy I had hemorrhoids, which only got worse during delivery. I was so embarassed about them that I didn’t want my husband to watch the delivery. I made him stay in a chair near the head of the bed. I know that a lot of women get hemorrhoids, but no one talks about them, and mine must have been pretty bad, because the nurses made somewhat of a fuss about them (in front of my husband, which was mortifying to me).
Additionally I tore pretty badly, both inside my vagina and through my perineum, going down towards my anus. I had an epidural, so I didn’t feel any pain when it happened, but I was aware immediately after delivery when the doctor started stitching me up. I could feel him inserting his finger into my rectum to stabilize or push forward the back wall of my vagina while he did this. I asked him how many stitches I was getting, he said he hadn’t been keeping track.
The pain afterwards, when the epidural wore off, was quite bad, and I could barely walk to the bathroom for the first two days. Nevermind actually using the restroom. I couldn’t wipe for at least 2-3 weeks; I just used that squirt bottle that the hospital provides. Even six weeks out, at my first follow up appointment with the OBGyn, one of my stitches burst back open when she inserted the speculum and I was back to bleeding again for a couple days.
Now, two years later, my perineum and anus look nothing like they did before. The whole region is just one big mess of disgusting flaps and folds of excess skin and scar tissue. My anus itself is a gross collection of skin tags and folds, which blurs together with the extruded fold of excess skin where my perineum once was…and then you arrive at the opening to my vagina.
Then just inside the entrance to my vagina, when I insert my finger I feel all this firm, lumpy scar tissue (like pea-to-blueberry sized lumps). This is NOT what the inside of my vagina used to feel like. Before childbirth it had a soft, silky, smooth texture with folds — not lumps. This region of scar tissue is still painful during sex, and I can’t imagine that it feels good to my husband either.
The whole mess down there makes me so embarassed. My husband is a visual person who like the lights on. He also likes the doggy-style position — which gives him the perfect view of it all, which I can hardly stand.
If it were just the childbirth scar, it wouldn’t be so terrible, as that is a relatively socially acceptable thing to talk about. It’s the excess skin from the hemorrhoids, which no one talks about, that is more of a problem. And even then, that in itself even wouldn’t be so bad if it were localized to my anus. But instead, as I said, the whole mess just runs together so that I feel like my anus is right up against the opening to my vagina. I am so self conscious that I cannot enjoy oral sex, and it’s actually even worse to be touched down there with fingers, because I feel like you can’t even tell what’s what.
I have heard many people here say how their husbands have helped them to feel better about their bodies. I do not have that kind of a relationship with my husband. We have sex very infrequently due to ED and other issues, and my husband’s troubles are enough that there is really no room to rely on him to heal my own emotional baggage around this issue.
“Mama, You’re so Pretty” (Anonymous)
This morning.
(Wake up, 5:18, ohgodwhymyalarmisn’tforhalfanhourpleaseletmesleepjustalittle)
Making breakfast, packing lunch, getting dressed, brewing coffee, queen of multitasking. Tick tock routine next step now what.
In the kitchen, slicing cucumbers and washing grapes, eggs scrambling on the stove, cooking in my slacks and bra because today’s shirt is still hanging in the laundry room, when my son says
My son
He says “Mama, you’re so pretty.” And he strokes his tiny hands across my hanging belly, battle scars bared, and he leans in and kisses it, rests his cheek on the bulge above my belly button, and whispers,
“I was a baby in there.”
My son is 4 years old, and he doesn’t know that I’m not pretty. And he doesn’t know that nobody wants to touch stretched out wrinkled up sagging old skin. He doesn’t know that his mama isn’t beautiful, or strong, or brave or smart or perfect.
Maybe he has a lot to teach me.
My Fiancé is Looking Down On Us (Anonymous)
I’m 20 years old with two beautiful baby boys, but I can’t stand my body. I can’t even look at it. Before pregnancy I was self conscious about my body but in reality it was pretty perfect.. 5’5 132lbs, 34C breasts, wide hips and flat stomach. I’ve always had self image issues and I don’t know where it stemmed from… Little did I know what my body would look like in the years to come.
I got pregnant with my first son at 17 from a man I was with for 4 years (I met him when I was very young) with that pregnancy I gained about 40lbs. I got my first stretch mark by no surprise considering that fact that it runs strongly in my genes, my mom and grandma have stretch marks ripping across their stomachs. But I was still in denial. “What is this line on my hip? It can’t be a stretch mark, is it a varicose vein? Nobody gets stretch marks on their hips.” At about 30 weeks there was no hiding the sad truth, I had already gained stretch marks that ripped over my once magazine cover ready body. I had stretch marks on my thighs, my breasts, my stomach, hips and back (yes my back).
My son was born at 36 weeks when my water spontaneously broke. Other than some feeding problems my son was born healthy. My breasts engorged to no return however, they were unmeasurable. Well past a 42DD. So when my milk dried up, it left me with two sad saggy excuses for breasts. I didn’t even want to touch them. I felt like I was in the body of someone much much older than me and I hated it… They were uneven, my nipples were dark and pliable… They felt like two empty socks filled with sand. That’s the only way I can explain it and trust me they remained that way.
To my surprise though despite the breasts I now hated, I had lost the pregnancy weight rather fast over the rest of my body, I wasn’t doing anything special and I wasn’t nursing. I shed 40lbs in just weeks.. I then continued to lose weight with a combination of staying busy and not eating as much as I had before pregnancy. I dropped down to the skinniest I had ever been when my son was about 6 months old. Because I could easily hide my breasts and my stretch marks I was pretty confident and proud of my mom bod. When my son was 7 months old I met the love of my life who accepted me and my son, he was fully prepared to be the father figure to him and even planned to put his name on the birth certificate. When I was with him I continued to see progress in my body. He accepted me. He made me feel sexy, he kissed my tummy and always told me how beautiful I am- boobs and all. We got engaged pretty fast, about 5 months into our relationship. But I didn’t care, he was perfect to me and my son. We were together about 10 months when I fell pregnant and although he was scared and I was scared, we were so very happy. We found out we were having a boy and he thought it was sexy that I was carrying his child, I loved it- but I knew soon my body was going to plummet down to that nasty, saggy, wrinkly state once I had given birth. Hearing horror stories of how much harder it is to get your body back the second time around worried me to no end.
But something horrible happened. It’s hard for me to talk about but I need to share my story, maybe for my own closure. When I was 7 months pregnant my fiancé, the love of my life, the biological father to the beautiful baby boy in my tummy and the soon to be adoptive father of my older son… He passed away. He was only 23. It was a tragic accident and he was in the hospital for 1 1/2 weeks. He slowly declined as far as his reflexes and eventually the doctor preformed tests and told me he was brain dead. He was an organ donor so they artificially kept his body alive for 4 days. I was at the hospital every second of every day. At 7 months pregnant I quickly dropped 12 lbs in 12 days. I didn’t eat. I slept next to him. I put his hand on my belly. I kissed him and knew it would be the last time I felt him. I prayed, I cried, I lost it. But what kept me going was knowing I had a piece of him inside me. The nurses were so very worried about me. They tried so hard to get me to eat for the health of my baby but I just couldn’t. I’ve never been so sick in my life. I felt cheated and ripped off. It wasn’t fair that he wouldn’t get to meet his son. We were so close- I was due in two months. I quickly became jealous and bitter toward all the happy pregnant couples and the women who got to see the father of their child’s reaction to meeting their kids… After his funeral I started to eat again. But I didn’t care how much weight I gained. I didn’t care about the stretch marks or my breasts sagging. I knew I had to bring his baby into the world by myself and it would be all we have left of him. I didn’t care if I got stretch marks up to my neck, I didn’t care if my breasts sagged to my knees or if I gained hundreds of pounds I just didn’t care. I just felt blessed that I had his baby in me. I don’t know how I would’ve taken it if he hadn’t left anything behind. I knew my fiancés legacy lived on inside me and I would soon get to see a part of him face to face. Overall I gained 43lbs with my second, gained more stretch marks, my breasts got worse. My stomach is saggy. I’m about 3 pant sizes bigger. My belly bottom is blown out, wrinkly and dark. I’ve only lost 23lbs out of the 43 that I gained. When I see pictures of myself I cringe. I don’t see how anyone could love this body. And the fact that I’m going through it alone is 100x worse. My youngest boy is only 3 weeks old and you know what? He’s a spitting image of his father. I even named him after his father. He’s perfect. I feel so bad for him my heart hurts that he will never get to meet his dad. And that pain is so much more than any emotional pain I’ve ever had over my self image. I know I have a long time to go as far as letting my body heal- but I can tell this time around I’m not ever going to feel comfortable in my body again.
I may not have a great body- but what I do have is two PERFECT children, one of which is the product of a miracle. Both of which will never judge me for my body. After losing my fiancé I am so very lonely. I don’t have anybody here to tell me how beautiful I am or kiss my tummy like he did. I don’t get the pleasure to see his reaction when looking at his son who looks exactly like him. He was so excited about his first biological born son.
But I will never be truly alone because I have my children. They will never look a me differently for having stretch marks and a saggy body. They won’t care that their young mom has the body of someone three times her age. One thing that sticks with me when I look at my body in the mirror today is my fiancé telling me before he passed, that he didn’t care if I didn’t shed a single pound after pregnancy and he would love me no matter what. And I know he is looking down on me, being a guardian angel for his kids, kissing his boys foreheads and holding them, and his spirit is kissing my stretch marks and caressing my saggy stomach.
A pain I would never wish on anyone. (Anonymous)
Age: 29
Number of pregnancies: 1
Number of births: 0
It’s very hard for me to write about my experience because I’m a very private person. That being said, I don’t know if my heart can withstand all the pain and sadness I’m feeling, so I figure it’s best to try and get it out.
I met my husband 10 years ago. We dated for a long time before getting engaged, and we were engaged for a long time before getting married. I really wanted kids right after we got married, but we waited because we wanted the timing to be such that we were more financially stable, more mature, more confidant in ourselves. We wanted to set ourselves up to be the best possible version of ourselves before we had a baby. It was hard waiting, but I was so excited when we finally felt ready.
What worried me about getting pregnant is my history of anorexia and bulimia. My self esteem, especially self image, is incredibly fragile and delicate. I am overcome with feelings of inadequacy about myself, my accomplishments, and my looks. I was worried what my body would look like after I had a baby, but then I was so angry at myself for feeling like this, and kept thinking that I would never let my future child see how much I struggled; how I would lay in bed and cry when I felt like I ate too much that day, or how I would work out at the gym until I felt physically sick to assuage my guilt for eating a hamburger or some ice cream. I couldn’t handle the thought of my future child learning to self loathe based on how they saw me treat myself.
January 2015 finally seemed like the right time to start. I work in healthcare, so I’m familiar with the do’s and don’ts of pregnancy. I started prenatal vitamins a full cycle before we started trying to conceive. Once we started trying, I cut caffeine down to one 8 oz cup a day. I stopped drinking. I was very careful about exposure to radiation in the workplace. I stopped using my face cream because it had a vitamin A derivative in it and I didn’t want to chance it. I worried about the sunscreen I was using and if the ingredients were potential endocrine disrupters for my developing baby. I washed my hands like crazy to minimize exposure to pathogens. I stopped eating deli meat. I even stopped green tea because I was afraid that my prenatal folic acid wouldn’t get absorbed properly, so I stuck to water. Whenever I went out to eat, I’d bug the servers and ask if the cheese they served is pasteurized.
After one month of trying to conceive, we got pregnant. I was so happy that it happened so quickly, and so scared, because all I could worry about was miscarriage. Scheduling my prenatal visit at 8 weeks seemed like forever. I stopped my one cup of coffee, stuck with my workouts at the gym as best I could (though exhaustion prevented me from running as much). Every day was constant fear of wiping and seeing blood, but I was always OK.
Until that first appointment.
My baby measured 2 weeks behind at 6 weeks when it should have been 8. My doctor was cautious and said things could go either way. There was a heartbeat, but he couldn’t measure it. He scheduled me for a follow up in a week. He also said my cervix was friable, so when I spotted dark brown the next few days, I didn’t worry because I figured the pap smear and the transvaginal ultrasound had irritated my cervix.
But then 4 days later, the spotting became heavier, and it was red. I went to my obgyn that morning and the baby still had a heartbeat, but it was slow. He still couldn’t measure it. The baby had grown over those few days, but the bleeding was a bad sign. He said I have an 80% chance of miscarriage.
So here I am today. It is the afternoon of the appointment where I was told my baby is almost certainly going to die. My heart hurts. My head hurts. Everything inside me hurts. It’s wrong to judge people, but I can’t help but feel angry at all the women I’ve seen throughout my career in healthcare who have so blatantly abused themselves and have had healthy babies. Women who have done meth, heroin, Percocet, and smoked while they were pregnant only to have healthy babies. I just wonder why my baby can’t be healthy when I have tried so hard to do everything “right.”
I don’t care if I get stretch marks or varicose veins. I don’t care about gaining weight now. I just want to meet my baby, to hold it and love it and hopefully teach it to love itself the way I never loved myself.
I hope things work out for me and my husband after this entire heartbreaking ordeal. Thank you so much for reading my story.
Skinny Girl Gone Wrong (Anonymous)
Hello, can i just say thank you so much for creating this website, it actually brought me to tears to see other women feeling the same as me, and being so proud of their bodies! :) Before my son i was a tiny toned size 6, with a large perk chest. my son was 10lb and from 20 weeks pregnant my stretch marks had taken over my stomach, and after breast feeding my chest could hold an entire pencil case under it! I was about 1 stone heavier for the first two years after pregnancy, but am now back to my original weight. But its not the weight that bothers me, my stomach is now made up of loose folding skin and deep dark stretch marks, in honesty i have gotten used it to now, but unfortunately my husband has not… its not like he tells me hes not attracted to me but its things like one month after i had my son we went out for halloween, my costume was tighter than i had hoped it would be, but my sisters had told me it looked great, it was all in my head, wen i showed my husband the costume an hour before we were due to leave, his face said it all, he didnt even try to make me feel better, i remember crying in the bathroom with cling film tightly wrapped around my waist in a desperate attempt ( my husband helped me wrap it) thinking how can i go out looking like this? I ended up coming home an hour after going out. My older sister has always been an inspiration to me, she had two children at the time and she too had suffered stretch marks badly, we all took the kids swimming (my sons first time and mine since having a baby, he was around 3 months old) my sister wore a bikini and her confidence rocked it! She told me to wear a bikini and not give a s*** what others thought, and i remember thinking the old me wouldnt let it bother her, but because my husband was going i wore a huge swimming costume and still hid behind my son when i was getting in and out of the water. We had almost zero sex once my bump started to show, and even less after my son. We split up shortly after that (for other reasons) and it wasnt until we broke up i realised how badly hed made me feel about myself, i slowly started to get back to my self, wearing clothes i would of before, doing my hair again, i even started to date. I couldnt have sex with my partner for 3 months as i was so embarassed of my body, and when we did i was waiting for this disgusted looked, but no, he loved my body, it honestly didnt seem to faze him at all, and it made me feel beautiful again. Fast forward and my now husband and i got back together, the relationship is better than i ever imagined, and i am very happy but the body issues remain. If i wear a dress that is tight and shows my stomach isnt toned hel say it looks gd but then stare at my stomach with that look he does (im not paranoid, this look should be in the dictionary next to ‘grossed out’) He wont do doggie in bed because he cant put his hands on my waist because hel feel my stomach, and if he accidentily does hel pull his hand away like i have fleas! he wont look at me if i am naked in a lit room or getting changed. He complains i dont wear sexy clothes or lingerie any more, do you know how hard it is to find lingerie that supports a sagging chest this size and covers 90% of your stomach? I do, and then they dont even look like lingerie! Or super skinny jeans that wont just push all of my fat up and over? And when i do dress the way i think hel like, i spend the whole time feeling self conscious and constantly checking myself for flabs. I am looking into plastic surgery again, i had considered it when we were together before, but now that i think about it i never even thought of it when we were seperated. And now it absolutely breaks my heart when he encourages it, the one person in the world i want to love my body and he hates it, it doesnt matter how much i diet or excercise, or how i dress, when it gets down to it, i just dont do it for him any more. I dont even think its that it makes me feel bad about myself, i think its that i love him so unconditionally, i would never make him feel like that, i would love him if he gained 200 lb! Ive dated men with all different appearances, many times people assumed i was using them for some thing due to the difference in our appearance, but it didnt even register with me because i loved and cared for that person, so i just loved their appearance too! Now my concern is do i want this surgery for me or for him? I think of myself as a strong minded woman, i would never change myself or my beliefs for any one but myself, but am i now sacrificing that strong woman (that cost me a lot of popularity points in school) for some one else? But is it his fault? Can he help not finding me attractive any more? Is it selfish of me to just label him an unsupportive husband because hes honest about it? What if his face was horribly deformed and i couldnt bring myself to kiss him, would i encourage him to go under the knife? I guess in summary for those women whos husbands truly love them unconditionally, you are blessed, make sure you cherish that love because so many are desperate for it! Anonymous :)
A hole in my heart so big it could swallow an ocean. (Autumn)
AGE 32, 5 PREGNANCIES/0 CHILDREN
My wife and I got married two years ago after a whirlwind courtship. I knew when I met her, that I wanted a family with her. So after 8 months of blissful matrimony, We chose a sperm donor and went to the fertility doctor. I had been tracking my ovulation date for a few months and boy, were we surprised that I got pregnant on the first try! We were so excited, that we went ahead and told everyone. 5 weeks later, my HCG dropped off and there was only a blighted ovum. I was okay, so we tried again. Same thing. Third times the charm? Not so much. I had a miscarriage at 14 weeks, and had to have a d&C. The clots I started passing were huge, then came the fever. I had retained some products and was sick. After a long while(and a LOT of medication), I quietly slipped into a deep depression. My 13 year old cat, whom I loved more than life, also was very sick and rapidly declining. I kept taking the oxycodone my neurologist prescribed. Then, we thought we would try to inseminate me one more time. That same month, my body stopped responding and my period vanished. I found out that the pain medication is making me infertile. My cat died, my marriage is suffering, I have zero sex drive and it seems that every day, there is someone new on facebook announcing their pregnancies. Its killing me. If I stop the medicine, I might regain my cycle, but I will be in severe pain. My wife is supportive, but I need more hope. Has anyone gone through this neverending darkness? When will the light return?