My name is Rudi, and I’m from Albuquerque, New Mexico. My journey to motherhood began long before I ever met my partner — it began with me, and the hardest fight of my life.
For about eight years of my young adult life, I struggled with anorexia nervosa and compulsive exercising. It took being hospitalized, put on a feeding tube, and simultaneously being offered the job of a lifetime working for a celebrity to make me take recovery seriously and enter treatment. But even before I was ready to fully commit to healing, I had a dream. A dream of becoming a mom. I had even gotten a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on my arm because I looked up to her — the kind of mother she was — and I wanted to be that for someone someday.
I started going to the fertility clinic a year before getting serious about recovery, just to see if they could help me get my period back. They knew my history and never once judged me. I had polyps and cysts removed, my tubes checked and cleared. No PCOS, no endometriosis, excellent hormone levels. Everything looked fine on paper. I entered treatment, graduated, and spent the next three years working for the celebrity and traveling the world. And then, when that chapter ended, I met the love of my life. He knew my story, knew my struggles, and accepted every part of me. I knew he was the man I wanted to build a family with.
But my period still hadn’t returned, even though I had been at a healthy weight for some time. I knew deep down this was going to be a challenge. We went back to the fertility clinic together and that’s when they gave us the diagnosis — unexplained infertility. No PCOS, no endometriosis, great labs. Just — unexplained. And if you have ever received that diagnosis, you know exactly what it does to you. It leaves you with one devastating question that plays on repeat: then what is wrong with me?
We started with timed intercourse, then moved to medicated cycles, then trigger shots, and eventually our first IUI. With the grace of God, that first IUI worked. And in 2024, my precious Angelo was born.
We knew we wanted one more. I breastfed Angelo until he turned one, and during that entire time I had no cycle. When I stopped breastfeeding, my period still didn’t return. We hadn’t used any contraception since Angelo was born, hoping nature would surprise us. When my son turned one I went back to the clinic — partly because of the ongoing absence of my cycle, and partly because I had been experiencing extreme daily pelvic pain. They found a few more polyps, which were removed. And then came the news that floored me — my AMH, my egg count, had dropped significantly to 0.81. At 30 years old, that number is critically low. I was devastated.
There is no proven way to raise your AMH but I started CoQ10 and other supplements immediately. I convinced myself the number was skewed because of a year of breastfeeding — which can suppress prolactin and cause AMH to read lower than it truly is. I held onto that hope and we started our second journey.
My period returned a week after that appointment. We began again — timed intercourse, then medicated cycles, then trigger shots, then medicated cycles with IUI. I was ovulating multiple eggs each cycle. I tracked everything obsessively. And still — nothing. Around medicated cycle number six I started losing hope, but I kept pushing. My partner’s sperm analysis was perfect. It was me. I was the broken one. Those words lived in my head longer than I want to admit.
The costs were mounting and monitored cycles and continuous IUIs were no longer financially possible. But I kept going with the medication. By cycle seven I asked for an increased dosage. By cycles eight and nine I was on 7.5mg of Letrozole and the side effects were unlike anything I had experienced the first time around. The arthritis was debilitating. My hands were so swollen and painful I had to drop out of a race I had been training for. Some days I couldn’t even pick up my own toddler. I felt like I was ninety years old in a thirty year old body.
And then there was the toll on my relationship. There is nothing romantic about timed intimacy. Nothing fun about following a schedule when you are exhausted and emotionally empty. Negative test after negative test after negative test. Some days I couldn’t stop crying. I would look at Angelo and feel momentarily better — and then the grief would rush back in, because I was trying to give him a sibling, a best friend for life, and I felt like I was failing him too.
Cycle ten arrived and I made the hardest decision I have made in this process — I decided to take a break. One month. Not giving up, just pausing. Nearly two years of this had put enormous stress on my body, my mind and my relationship. I needed to come back to my faith, reconnect with my partner, care for myself and pour into the little boy who is already here and already mine. Because as much as I am fighting for another baby, Angelo is my miracle. He is proof that it is possible. And he deserves a present, grounded, whole mother while we wait.
Unexplained infertility is one of the hardest diagnoses to carry because it gives you nothing to fix and nowhere to place the blame except inward. But I have learned that I am not broken — I am someone who has been through more than most people know, who has fought for her body, her health, her baby and her family at every single turn. Patience, perseverance, sacrifice and love — that is what this journey has taught me. That and this: if you are not taken care of, you cannot take care of anyone else. Ask for help. Take the break when you need it. And remember that every body is different — comparison in this journey will only steal your peace.
We are not giving up. We are just catching our breath.
With love and faith, Rudi
@Rudi, thank you for sharing your story — because somewhere a woman is on her tenth medicated cycle, running out of hope, and your refusal to give up is exactly what she needed to find today.
