Welcome to Twittermoms Trying to Conceive

Hi Everyone!

Welcome! I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and discuss the purpose of this amazing Twittermoms group. I'm Kassandra, a success coach, writer, and mother of three.

It wasn't so long ago that I was a mother of one thinking I might never be a mother of two. I had my first child (TJ) with no problems. I was 19, not planning a pregnancy, and, like a flash of light, there he was. When my husband and I graduated from college, we wanted to expand our family so we did the things most people do: we bought a beautiful house, a new mini-van, and I started right away to create a nursery. After all, the first baby came so easily and naturally, why wouldn't the second?

I did everything in that nursery, from redoing the hardwood floors to painting the walls, to putting up the crib and dresser to putting up Winnie the Pooh stickers all over the walls. It was the most beautiful nursery I'd ever seen and all it needed now was my second child.

We tried for months and, after about six months, I figured there was something more I needed to learn about this whole conception thing. I was a professor at Tuskegee University at the time and I figured, "If I'm doing something wrong, there's got to be a book in Barnes and Nobles that will teach me how to fix it."

So I did the research. I read "Taking Charge of Your Fertility", I bought the dreaded basal body thermometer, took my temperature every morning, checked for ovulation, and... nothing happened. When months became over a year, I went to see my gynecologist who did a pap smear and decidedly said, "You're only 22. You're young. There's nothing wrong with you. You'll get pregnant at some point."

A year became three years and I went from doctor to doctor, dragged my husband to have his sperm counted, and all seemed fine. I finally found a wonderful Reproductive Endocrinologist in Norwalk, CT who looked at my history, actually sat down with me to do an interview, asked me about my mother's reproductive history and said, "You've got two real issues here that aren't all that major- due to the cervical cyst and fibroid that you've had removed, your cervix may have been scarred and you may be producing less than ideal amounts of cervical mucus which are necessary for the sperm to get to the egg and you've got what seems to be PCOS- Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome but no cysts on your ovaries. Diet, exercise, and drinking plenty of water to increase cervical mucus. Oh and cut out the caffeine."

And there I was, with all the answers I needed. Needless to say, I took the doctors orders and still months turned into a year. Just when I was about to give up, call it quits, and accept the fact that I would be a mother of one, I got pregnant with my second son, William.

William was born 5 weeks premature and the entire pregnancy was spent on bed rest (once you go through infertility, they treat you as high risk for every pregnancy thereafter) but he's here and he's 4 and he's my own version of dennis the menace.

After I gave birth to Will, I breastfed for a year and stopped so I could try for a third. I figured, "If it took 4 years to get Will, it may take some time to get another." I was pregnant with Ava two months after I stopped breastfeeding.

So, I say all that to say that it was an amazing journey of 4 years that I never thought I'd be on. I laughed, I cried, there were moments when life seemed to stand still. The one thing I know for sure is that I needed support, during that time, in a way that my husband could not give me.

So I've created that support to open the space for Twittermoms to come and talk about their lives, their families, their tweets, and most importantly, their journeys to motherhood: the ups, the downs, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I'm now divorced from my husband and engaged to a wonderful man so we're trying for what will be #4 for me but #1 for him. Needless to say, it's an interesting journey.

Let's share...

Kassandra

P.S. I found a great website about TTC. Check it out! http://www.essentialconceptionguide.com