An update on where we are at with this journey to have another baby! Also, filling you all in on my diaphragmatic endometriosis battle from a couple years back.

First, these are a few new things I’ve had going on.

  1. I am now on Liketoknow.it !! That means you can shop for items that I am wearing or Dakota is wearing right through the app. I’ll also link home items I love and use everyday. Download the app and find me – jessicalynngustin
  2. I setup my Amazon Storefront to make it easier for you to see the items I mention all of the time. If you shop through this link I do get a small commission but it costs you nothing! https://www.amazon.com/shop/jessicalynngustin

Now on to the more dramatic portion of this blog post…

It’s February now, which means it’s another month to wonder, will it happen this month? If you’re new here, Im talking about pregnancy. One of my best friends got me and our other 2 girlfriends these Mantra Band bracelets for Christmas. Each one had a significant saying that applied perfectly to our current situations. Shout out to Hadleigh for being an awesome friend. ❤️

“One day at a time” is the inscription on mine. It’s really how I have to take life right now. I’ve been stuck in this cycle with trying to conceive each month. When I am being honest, its really scary! My body isn’t really back to normal after the miscarriage. My cycles are all over the place and they never were before. I keep getting let down once I am back in a good place. It’s hard, frustrating and upsetting.

I am trying SO hard to look at all of the silver linings. Like this month, if we get pregnant a future babe would be born in November. Dakota could share her birth month and be 3 years apart exactly. It would be after Halloween and before Thanksgiving. I’m also considering that cars, college and marriages are expensive so having a couple years between would be good for the bank account! Ditching all timelines would probably be the best thing to do, but its really hard!

I know some may think Im being a little crazy to put this kind of pressure on myself. That I am getting worked up over nothing and it will happen when it’s supposed to. While I believe it will, I can’t help but be scared because of my reproductive health history.

Most of you don’t know that I was told in my early 20’s it would be hard for me to ever get pregnant. I had PCOS which is the number 1 cause of infertility. In fact when I met Jon I told him this a couple dates in. I wanted to be transparent about the possibility of it being hard to have a child one day. Then, to my total surprise the PCOS was no longer detected. 

I went a couple of years feeling pretty normal until a pain in my shoulder became unbearable. It was hard to identify at first that it fell in line with my menstrual cycles. I started realizing that it would come on like a beast at that time of the month. It got so bad I was breaking out the old Vicodin in my cabinet because I couldn’t sleep from the pain. My right shoulder would radiate with a very sharp nerve, burning and stabbing pain. It intensified every time I would take a breath. It was awful!! Lying down was the most uncomfortable, but It was constant.

I went to the doctors and described what was happening, they had absolutely no clue what it was but guessed it was pleurisy. I was sent home with a steroid and pain pills. Each month this would get worse and worse. I was so deserpate that google became my obsession!

Do you know what? I found out what it was and the doctors would have never figured it out because they had never seen it before. Googling right shoulder stabbing pain around menstrual cycle helped me piece it all together. I found forums of people talking about endometriosis in your diaphragm that causes referred pain to the right shoulder. WHAT?!

No one in these forums could get their doctors to take them seriously once they mentioned it possibly being endometriosis. These people had experienced the agony that I had too and I just knew that was the answer. I took my information to the doctor and he looked at me like I had 3 eyes.

Thankfully, he suspected that I had endometriosis from a couple other symptoms so he promised to check it out while he did the laparoscopic surgery. Lo and behold, he took a nice picture of my diaphragm with a spot of endometriosis on it! He had never seen that in his long career, lucky me. It is called diaphragmatic endometriosis. 

I have actually never met anyone else who has had this rare form of endometriosis. I really don’t think that it is the cause of any problems right now. If you’ve had endometriosis, you know when its getting bad. You know when you have pains where you should have any. Right now I am pretty sure my hormones are just very out of balance.

I am trying to do whatever I can to stay healthy so that my body will regulate again. I just ask that you pray for me friends! Pray that my cycles will be normal and that I will ovulate normal again! I appreciate all of you for reading this.

xoxo,

Jessica