PCOS and Fertility As a 20-year-old

 

 

Before you judge, take a step back. Maybe I’m wrong, and you’re not judging, but I also know that it sounds kinda funny to be worried about fertility at 20.

“Today, I wanted to write about my fears with fertility. I’m hoping writing it down makes me feel less alone and less hopeless. If not, I at least hope that writing it out makes it easier to have conversations with Reed. I’ve wanted to be a mom for a long time, even when I told everyone I’d never marry and I’d move to Ireland and have six dogs. Don’t get me wrong, I love my dogs, but there’s a part of me that knows that had Reed wanted kids sooner, we wouldn’t have gotten either dog. Still, they fill that lonely piece of my heart for the meantime.

My biggest fear is never being a mom. I don’t feel like we’ll ever be able to afford adoption, and I don’t know how much fertility treatment will cost. My next steps are to track hormones and hopefully make some changes to balance everything. I just feel as though life is passing me by. I want to pass the major milestones now so I can rest later in life, but I also don’t know if this is a healthy desire. It seems everyone around me is pregnant right now, and that stings. Why do I have to deal with fertility issues, and why can’t it just be easy for me like it seems to be for everyone else? I want a kid right now, but I do not know that I need one. I just need to know I can have one.”

I was considered a “late-bloomer.” I was almost a month away from turning 14 before getting my first cycle. That should have probably been the first hint that something was not 100% right, but a lot of women get their periods late. I then went three to four months without another cycle. My doctor wasn’t worried when I told him, so I was not worried either. He just said that if I was still having issues when I hit 16, to let them know. The years ticked by, and the cycles never regulated. I always answered the doctor’s questions about when my last cycles were, so I don’t know how it still being an issue always slipped through the cracks. When I was 18, I started becoming semi-concerned. I was in a serious relationship with my (now) husband, and I knew that I eventually wanted kids. I made a lot of jokes around this time about “not knowing if I could even have kids.” But it didn’t inspire me to act, after all, skipping periods meant I did not have to deal with how extreme they were whenever I did have them. It was always awful. For the first couple of days of each cycle, I would manage to bleed through heavy tampons in about an hour. I’d be in so much pain I could barely stand up straight, and yet somehow, I was still expected to behave as though my life was completely normal on those days. I still did nothing about it, though.

We got married in May of 2024. Even in the first couple of months of my marriage, we weren’t stressed about it. Hubby wasn’t ready for us to have kids yet, so there wasn’t really a reason to do anything about it. I wanted kids sooner rather than later, though. I was always secretly hoping that somehow I’d accidentally get pregnant, even if he wasn’t ready quite yet. By September, we had both agreed that if “it happens, it happens.” We were no longer preventing pregnancy. I even bought a pack of pregnancy tests just to have on hand because I figured it would happen soon. I was always afraid as a teenager (even when I was a virgin) about accidentally getting pregnant. It’s something that is drilled into a lot of young girls growing up in “purity culture.” That being said, I thought it would be easy. By May 2025, after not having a period for 5 months, I still wasn’t pregnant. I was really frustrated about it.

I finally made an appointment to see an obstetrician. My first appointment was late June, and I got my period a couple of days before. (6 months after my last one)  I remember we had talked over symptoms, weight gain, lack of cycles, and painful cycles. She believed it was PCOS, but needed to run some tests to confirm it. That cycle ended up lasting me 13 days, and was heavy up until the last day. She said she wasn’t surprised since it had been so long. (I did end up getting in a car accident around this time, which I partially attribute to my low iron at the time) A couple of weeks later, I did those tests and then met with her again. It was confirmed to be PCOS. She told me to continue to take a supplement I was taking, and to come back if I continued to skip cycles for three months, so she could re-progesterone so my uterine lining didn’t get backed up, and so that I would have better chances of conceiving naturally. She also said that if we don’t get pregnant soon, medical intervention is always an option.  (Something I am still considering to this day.)

 

Soon after all of this, I got a text message from my mom to a group chat telling everyone my older brother’s wife was pregnant. I was shocked. I didn’t even know they wanted kids that early on. I was also mad. I had wanted that so badly, so how dare they be able to do something I apparently couldn’t? My one solace was that my older sister wasn’t. Except she was. I found hers out not even an hour later. That day was filled with several tears and a lot of hurt. I don’t even know why I was that hurt. It was just too much to handle. I don’t even know if I congratulated either of them; I was just too upset. I know a lot of women have it take years to get pregnant, and I know it’s common for it to take several months, but that doesn’t make it sting less for me. I don’t have as many cycles, so in my mind, I don’t have that many chances.

 

In October, I started hardcore tracking everything. I already had an Oura ring, but I also decided to buy a Mira fertility monitor so I could track where I specifically am in my cycle daily. This particular cycle, I knew I had ovulated; it had told me, but the waiting afterwards was really difficult. Around the first week after ovulating, my breasts had gotten really sore, and my lower back was really hurting. Both symptoms are pregnancy and PMS symptoms. I remember writing in my journal about how I didn’t know if it was PMS, pregnancy, or a placebo. A week later, I had my answer. My period was a day late, so I decided to take a pregnancy test. It was positive, so was the second one I took. I was relieved, but also shocked. Was I pregnant? That quickly after getting the tracker? I remember going to work that morning in a daze. I was already planning everything in my head, even looking into birthing centers. I have a list of names in my notes, and I was already processing what our unborn child would be named. The next day, I decided to take another test just in case. It hadn’t gotten any darker. Panic now set in. What if it was just a chemical pregnancy? I wrestled with this thought all day until I got home. I remember going to the gym, coming back, and not feeling right. I went to the bathroom and realized I had gotten my period. I did basically nothing but sob that entire night. I had had a chemical pregnancy. I felt so stupid, and I was having a really hard time thinking positively. My first positive pregnancy test, and it wasn’t even real. This is still really hard for me to grasp. I have a hard time letting myself grieve it, but it’s a sad thing.

 

I haven’t really told many people in my life about the chemical pregnancy. Mostly, I feel like people would shrug their shoulders at it. “It wasn’t a real pregnancy, so why are you so messed up over it?” That’s what everyone says in my head.