Clomid and Family

Today is day three of my third cycle of Clomid and I'm already feeling the side effects. Last night, I had crazy night sweats. I woke up this morning to painful ovaries. My back was aching. I was totally exhausted. I, of course, consulted Dr. Google. What I found online said that these can all be normal side effects of the  Clomid. The night sweats come from elevated hormone levels. The ovary pain, back pain, and exhaustion is most likely from my ovaries working hard to produce at least one, if not more egg(s). If this is anything like previous cycles, these symptoms will continue until I ovulate. But this cycle the pain started much earlier than it has before. Ovulation for me has become painful on Clomid. Before baby making, I never paid attention to my cycle or how I felt a different times in my cycle. Since we have been trying to have a baby, I have tried to listen to my body. I have tried to correspond what or how I feel with what is happening in my body. Since practicing, I have started to feel myself ovulate. It was always a little painful, I just didn't always know it was ovulation pain. But since being on Clomid, the pain has increased exponentially. It now rivals period cramps.

After a long afternoon nap, DanRo and I visited my parents. My mother and I had a very long talk about fertility, and some of our family history. After my mother became yet another person reaching out to me to share her story, (there have been so many and I thank each and every one of you) we started to uncover clues in our family history that could contribute to our infertility problems. On my mother's side of the family, while she comes from a family of five children, almost every other family had no more than two children. Most had one. A lot had none. This spans a couple of centuries. What really struck something with me is a lot of these people were from a time and place when/where it was common to have upwards of ten kids, yet their families were so small. I wish there was a way to know what the whole story was. But those stories are long gone.

I wonder how all of those couples dealing with infertility in the past dealt with it without modern medicine? I can at least feel a little more proactive about my situation by seeing my doctor and taking this medication. Were there ways to actually increase fertility in, say, the 1800s? Were they effective? Were they more natural than a lab made chemical? Sometimes I think natural is the way to go. These side effects just feel so artificial and they are not pleasant. I pity poor DanRo when the mood swings set in. But I have yet to find something natural that can do for me what Clomid does. More research must be done.