My fiancee and I decide to move back to my hometown in Canada. I make an appointment with the same fertility specialist that saw me 10 or so years before. It was a brief conversation. I was to stop taking birth control and begin cycle monitoring. My fiancee was to have his sperm checked.

I walked out of that office feeling confused and frustrated. There was no conversation, no questions, no relationship. I was just another woman with PCOS who eventually wanted to get pregnant. I chose to forget the appointment and revisit  the idea of cycle monitoring later. 

Two years later, February 2013, we are married and back in the clinic. I decided to independently take myself off birth control in October 2012 and so far no sign of a period. Four Months. A woman at the front desk is yelling at her partner about getting his sperm tested. My husband looked at me just as the nurse came to bring me into the examination room. I was to get my blood taken again and to start taking birth control again to bring on my period to begin cycle monitoring. 

I’ll never forget walking out of that clinic. I was to start taking birth control pills again. I couldn’t understand why or how I was supposed to do this. We went to the pharmacy and filled the prescription for the birth control and brought the pill pack home. I stuck it in the bathroom cupboard and shut the door. Something inside me was starting to build. If I eventually want to get pregnant and I had already been off birth control pill for four months, why on earth should I start taking it again?