This week marks 27 weeks of pregnancy for me with our sweet
little monkeys. It is also National
Infertility Awareness Week. The main
message this year is “You Are Not Alone.”
Because of that, Mark and I have decided to share our story with
you. We have discussed when and how we
would share our journey with our friends, family and the world. At one point we thought about sharing it
early on and then decided to wait until after our sweet babies arrived but have
ultimately decided to join in the campaign this week to bring awareness to
infertility.
Infertility is a very personal journey and different for
every person/couple. There are no two
journeys that are exactly alike. But the
reality is that about 1 out of every 8 women/couples have difficulty conceiving
or carrying a pregnancy to term. I would
have never imagined the number to be so high before we started on our own
infertility journey. I really didn't
know anyone personally who had faced infertility until my own journey
began. But since my journey began I have
discovered many women who have had similar struggles to mine. The issue is most people never talk about it
because it is such a personal journey.
You might notice I call infertility a journey because that
is exactly what it is. It is also an emotional
roller coaster. When trying to conceive and
start a family you never imagine you will be faced with fertility issues. So each month that passes and aunt flow comes
on time or you are late and get a negative pregnancy test result it is truly heart
wrenching. Once you decide to seek
answers as to why you cannot get pregnant the roller coaster ride
continues. You are searching for answers
and hope. When you are ultimately told
that you need to see a reproductive doctor if you’re to have any chance of conceiving
children it is scary and very emotional.
Of course, those doctors are very busy and can take weeks or months to
get in to see. Those weeks and months
seem to last forever because all you want to know is what your options are or
if there are even options. Then there is
the financial burden that can come with treatments as insurance may not pay a
dime. Also, there is no guarantee that
any treatment will be successful.
Once Mark and I were told that we had very little chance of
getting pregnant naturally it took us 2 months to get into the reproductive
specialist. Those two months seemed like
an eternity. Once we saw the doctor we were
told that our best and really only option was IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). We were not completely surprised by this news
as we had been told by a previous doctor that would probably be our only
option. IVF is the process of manually
combining the egg and sperm together in a lab and then transferring the embryo
to the uterus. The IVF process is not an
easy one. I will try to make a long
story/process short. IVF requires the woman
to take several shots every day, while also getting sonograms and blood work
done every other day. The shots help to
produce extra mature eggs during a cycle while the sonograms and blood work
help to determine the dosage of meds and when the eggs are ready to be
retrieved. Once the eggs are mature
enough they are retrieved and fertilized.
After 5 days an embryo or two are transferred back to the uterus. Then the waiting game begins. More blood work follows to determine if you
are pregnant or not. (Note: The process and timing can differ for everyone. I also know that many couples are not as
lucky as we are and may never get pregnant.)
Remember that roller coaster I talked about. Well it just continues. Once we found out that we could try IVF we
were scheduled in the next cycle the clinic was doing. Unfortunately my body decided to not cooperate
and we were cancelled from the cycle.
That was heart wrenching as the next cycle was several months away. They changed my plan for the next cycle to
try to get my body to cooperate. My body
did cooperate and we were able to successfully harvest 14 out of 14 mature eggs. Of those 14 eggs, 10 successfully fertilized. By the day of transfer
we only had 5 embryos that had survived and were developing properly. We then had the very difficult decision to
make of how many embryos we would transfer.
We could do one or two. Prior to going in for the procedure we had discussed what we were going to do but had not made a decision. Once we arrived for the procedure and I was laying on the table we continued to struggle with what to do. Multiples can come with more complications and financial burden. We were told our expected success rate per embryo was around 50%. We ultimately decided to transfer two embryos. And let me be VERY
clear. We were not seeking to have twins
but we felt that if we only did one and did not get pregnant we would regret not
doing two. So we decided to give
ourselves the best chance possible to get pregnant. Well the roller coaster continued. Transfer was successful and my first pregnancy
test came back positive. We were very
excited but my hormone levels were pretty low.
I ended up having a miscarriage between weeks 5 and 6. Our sweet baby would have been due less than
two weeks from now. This was devastating
for both Mark and I. But we still had 3 embryos
frozen. We were scheduled in the next
cycle. One of our embryos didn't survive
the thaw so we were left with 2 embryos.
We once again made the decision to transfer both embryos. This was very emotional as this was really
our last chance as we had made the decision we would only do one full round of
IVF. We were VERY blessed to get
pregnant a second time. I mentioned
earlier about all of the shots which I had to give to myself every day but
there was also another shot that had to go into my butt muscle. Mark had to give me this shot every day. That shot began about a week before transfer
and continued the first time until we miscarried. The second time the shots began around the
same time and continued until I was 10 weeks pregnant. My last shot was on Christmas day. Mark was such a trooper to give me all of
those shots. We figured at one point
that total I had to take around 200 shots through the whole process.
We found out at 6 weeks that we were expecting twins. Because of the miscarriage it took us many
weeks before we both let ourselves get excited.
Still to this day we worry about possible complications but just have to
have faith that our sweet babies will arrive into this world healthy and happy.
I know this post was really long and I left a lot of
information and details out but I wanted to share our story with you. Again, the reason we share our story is to
let those of you who may struggle with infertility to know YOU ARE NOT
ALONE. We want you to know that if you
need someone to talk to we are here to support you and listen to you. No journey is the same but we definitely understand
the emotional and financial struggles. I
wish I would have known someone who had been through the process to turn to for
support. Our friends and family who knew
our struggle were very supportive but they couldn't really understand what we
were going through. Infertility can
consume your thoughts and life. I know I
blocked out a lot of people during our journey because I wasn't ready to talk
about it but it was the only thing I thought about.
