You Are Not Alone - Our Infertility Journey

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.

To those of you who haven’t struggled with fertility I encourage you to read this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/21/what-couples-struggling-with-infertility-want-you-to-know_n_7101678.html.  So many of these statements are so very true.  #19, #21, #22 & #26 all really hit home for me.  I must say that I used to be guilty of asking people when they were going to have kids but this is something we all should really think about twice before doing.  Remember that not everyone gets pregnant easily and chances are you know someone who is or has struggled with infertility.