Infertility is a journey that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
It is a path riddled with many twists and turns. It feels like you are completely alone without a map in a country that doesn’t speak your language. It is full of isolation, deep sadness, and that long wanting feeling that you can feel all the way to your toes. It will make you start to question whether that wanting will ever be fulfilled. It isn’t for the faint of heart but it will make you grow in many ways that you didn’t even think would be imaginable.
A little about me.
My husband and I have known each other since we were about 4 years old. We are from a small town in Kansas. Our moms were in the same high school class. We went to library time together. We had a small class with only 80 people in it so you know pretty much everything about that person before you ever even start a relationship. It is an odd euphoria but it is our love story. We didn’t really hang out in the same clicks in school but I decided I wanted a change so I asked him on a date our senior year of high school and we have been together ever since. We were only together for 6 months before he moved to another state for college while I stayed home and played softball for our local junior college. Let’s just say it was really difficult in the beginning but we made it work. We were able to build a great foundation for our relationship. Trust and communication was something that definitely got us through our infertility journey. We did long distance for a few years and then got married and finally decided after a year of marriage that we were ready to start a family.
I remember being so nervous to even bring up the topic. I was still working nights as a nurse in the ICU and typically would work 3 days back to back and he was new at his job putting in long hours, but it just seemed like the timing was right. So on our first anniversary trip I broached the subject of children. We knew we wanted them just never really discussed when we would start. The conversation went great and we were both so excited to start. I remember getting the feeling of butterflies at just the thought of creating a baby together. I knew it could take a little time as I was a nurse but boy did I have no idea that it would actually take us 6 years before we would get to hold our first born. A sweet baby girl. We had been through the wringer by the time she came but she was worth it.
We started with the anticipation of this will be the month. At first we were just letting the moment come as it may and hope for the best outcome. After a few months of trying with no success I decided to start checking my ovulation to make sure it was happening. Every time I would get a positive and of course it would be at the absolute worse time of our schedules! Why does it always happen this way! I would be working 3 in a row and he would have to work late but we made sure to follow through with all of the rules and still had no success. I remember getting so excited each time we would add something to our arsenal, thinking this is the thing that is going to get us pregnant. Never would that be the case which did lead me to become a pretty jaded and guarded person throughout this entire process.
After 9 months of trying we didn’t have success. I had my yearly OB appointment coming up and knew this would be the time to bring it up. I told them we were trying to conceive but hadn’t had any success. Now we were in our prime fertility years! I was only 25 and still having difficulty getting pregnant. This would lead to our long road as age was on our side. One thing to know is ANYTHING in the fertility world takes time. When I say anything, I mean anything. The OB decided to put me on Clomid. We tried this for 3 months. I am going to give everyone a fair warning. Out of ALL of my medications that I did during this process this is probably my #3 most disliked medication ever. It is one of those that I am sure if there were a commercial for it you would say “who would ever want those side effects?” You know what I mean. It caused a crazy range of emotions. I could be cool as a cucumber and flip a switch in an instant. Like Jekyll/Hyde sort of a scenario. Now I am very blessed as my husband is very calm individual and wouldn’t take anything to heart that was being said or done in any given situation. He is hard to get rattled which is exactly what kind of a partner I needed in this scenario. I, however, am completely on the other end of the spectrum. Along with the emotions I would have my first experience with hot flashes. Now I know some people are like, now those couldn’t be that bad. Let me tell you they have never experienced a true hot flash. I mean it is like you sat down on a searing red hot metal poker and it is heating you from the inside out. I am talking chest turning cherry red which will then spread to your face causing the most ridiculous amount of sweating you have ever seen, all while sitting in a nice air conditioned room. I mean it was miserable. They would happen all hours of the day/night. I also remember my nipples would be so sensitive. Like couldn’t even barely stand a bra touching them. I even resorted to wearing nipple covers that I had gotten from work one day because it was so intense. The only good news with the Clomid is that the side effects were not long lasting and would dissipate shortly after I had finished taking my medications.
After doing 3 medicated cycles and still no pregnancy it was time for my husband to start his testing. Now to let you know a little about my husband. He is in finance. He doesn’t like anything that is even remotely medical and has a giant phobia of germs. Needless to say producing a specimen for a semen analysis was WAY out of his comfort zone! The whole thing literally was one of the most uncomfortable things he has ever had to do. Little did he know that he was going to have to do about 13 more before he was done! In my eyes it was the easiest thing to do in this process, especially when I look back at all of the things I had to do. I will say he did it without complaint. From this testing we found out that his levels were a little low in both the hormone department and also in the sperm department. This meant he got to start Clomid. The good news for him was that he literally didn’t have one side effect. NOT ONE! I am happy for him but at the same time think it would have been nice for him to experience just a little bit of what I had been going through to give him a truly intimate understanding of how my last few months had been. Some may say I am a little bitter about that but happy for him.
After he had done 3 months of Clomid we had to retest his levels. His hormones had improved but still no change in his semen analysis. My doctor let us do another 2 cycles of me on Clomid and if that didn’t work then they were going to provide the referral to a fertility doctor.
During all of this I had made the switch from being a cardiac ICU nurse to labor/delivery/post-partum nurse. This was the whole reason I had gone to nursing school. I had a deep draw inside to this field but wanted a bit more diverse experience in the nursing world before going directly into women’s health. I felt like I needed it. It was great in the beginning as I got to be around newborn babies. I would hold them at night while giving their moms just a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. It really filled that void for a while. However it also made that deep need for a baby ever more present. I worked in a very low socioeconomic hospital. Meaning I saw a lot of things. Many unwanted pregnancies, pregnancies resulting from rapes, adoption, drug babies, babies being taken into police protective custody. I mean I saw a lot. Along with having the amazing privilege of being with a family during one of their greatest/most vulnerable moments I was also there for the saddest of days. I am talking about actually seeing someone’s heart break right before your eyes. Then having them have to go through labor to have that baby. It was so rewarding but also so incredibly sad all at the same time. I would get resentful for those women having babies and not wanting them or giving them to their parents to raise while they continued their path in life without a blink of an eye. I would listen to them say how it didn’t matter what they did they were always getting pregnant. Some were doing drugs while pregnant. Some had even tried to abort a baby themselves. I am talking dark stuff. It definitely played with my mind. I would just cry when I would get home and my husband would just hold me.
Then one day I remember I had a couple come in that had been trying for 8 years to have a baby. They were the sweetest couple and eternally grateful to be in the hospital about to give birth to their miracle. They had such an extreme impact on my life. I remember feeling that hope/wanting feeling just ache so deep in my soul and thinking I would never be able to get there. They had told me their story and said that the only thing you needed to bring to a fight was hope. Without hope there is no point in fighting. Those that continued to chase after their hopes and dreams were typically the ones that would achieve them. This helped me moving forward. I had to realize that I was helping women or families in one of their greatest hours. That is what I had wanted and I needed to separate myself from the darkness and only look at the goal in which I wanted to achieve. My husband and I decided that we would take a little break from trying to make a baby and just have a few months to go back to “normal”.
We ending up moving to Nebraska at this time. It is always such a weird thing when you are moving and you are having a long battle with infertility. The part that I find hard is housing. If you purchase a house do you make sure it has room for the growth of your potential family or do you just get what space you currently need and then work on getting a bigger house once you have the family to fill it? We were pretty much professional movers at this point and I wanted to limit the number of moves in the future so we always get the house that will allow us to grow into it. I already had a job lined up at a great hospital in Omaha. It definitely had a very different cliental than my previous hospital. It was almost like the universe knew I couldn’t take much more of what I had previously been doing. By this I mean I had mostly planned pregnancies without much of the darkness that I had endured in Kansas. It still had the saddest moments but it was much better for my current mindset.
After being in Nebraska for a few months we decided we were ready to move forward with a consultation with a fertility doctor. Basically we were wanting to know if there was anything that we could be doing to move us closer to our goal of a baby. During our consultation I remember the doctor speaking so quickly, using terminology that I kind of understood due to me being a nurse, and my husband looking like a deer in headlights. It was very overwhelming. In pretty much every meeting that we had with any specialist everyone was very optimistic for our outcome which was very nice. It made us feel like we were at least in the running of reaching that goal. Due to our history she recommended that we start with medicated IUI’s since we had already done Clomid cycles. She said it would give us more bang for our buck. I remember then meeting with a nurse that briefly went through what was going to be happening and that there would be some medications that were “a little bit more expensive”. My husband had just gone from a salary job to a commission based job and I was working in a state with some of the lowest wages for nursing so money was a huge concern. I am just going to say they were not just a “little more expensive”. I am talking probably 630% more expensive. I had been spending like $50 a month for Clomid. I remember sitting on the couch with the pharmacy trying to figure out what the cost was going to be. I had just worked 3 nights in a row and was so incredibly tired and was on hold for what seemed like forever only to find out my medications were going to cost me a few THOUSAND dollars. Good news was that we had insurance that would cover $10,000 worth of medications. Let’s just say that didn’t last long.
I remember having to work up the nerve to have this conversation with my husband. Let’s all remember that he is in finance and we have a crazy Excel spread sheet budget that comes color coded and let’s just say this was not included in our new budget. This coupled with the fact that we had already spent some pretty good cash trying to have a baby and this was not really guaranteeing that we were going to get a baby in the end. He was fine moving forward but only as long as we could afford it, which is a very justified response. We were on a very aggressive protocol. I was going to be giving myself shots daily and sometimes more than one shot a day.
Now I may be a nurse but I have a strong aversion to needles. It comes from a childhood trauma with multiple sticks for IVs when I was just a few years old and it is not something that I really knew existed until I got into nursing school and we had to do all of the practice on each other. I mean I would almost have a panic attack. I didn’t like nurses in the hospital or in the office giving me shots and they knew what they were doing. How in the heck was I going to let someone just learning how to do the shots or IV starts. I can still feel the fear from IV start day in class deep in my body.
Now I was going to have to do this to myself. Many of you are probably thinking just do it and get it over with or why isn’t her husband helping out. My husband did have to give me my big IM (intramuscular) injections but it was always a big production. He almost passed out with the first injection with me just describing what he needed to do. We came up with the plan that he would only give the injections while he was sitting down on a bench with a glass of orange juice next to him. He would do the injection, take a big swig of orange juice, and then lay down for a minute afterward to make sure he didn’t pass out. He would get sheet white in the beginning but was a pro by the time we were done with everything.
I knew if he had to do all of them that he would say it wasn’t worth it and just try to talk me into quitting. That was not an option. I remember getting all of the supplies ready in my kitchen thinking this is just a subcutaneous injection that will go in my thigh so it will be easy. Boy was I wrong. It took me 30 minutes, about 5 breakdowns, lots of deep breathing, and about 50 attempts before I actually stuck myself. It was a bizarre experience but I had to prove to myself that I could do it. I just had that feeling that it was going to work. We just needed a little assistance but were we going to get a baby with this. I would be good with the first 4 days of injections but passed that I would convert right back to where I had been with my first injection. It wasn’t like they hurt super bad it was all just a mental block that I had to push through every cycle.
We did a total of 5 IUI cycles before we were recommended to move forward with IVF. I was ovulating 3-5 eggs at a time and still not able to get pregnant. I remember being so excited for our first pregnancy test to only be hit with the glare of the negative test. I would then have to tell my husband while still keeping my composure. The one really good thing about nursing was that I had become very great at depersonalizing many things. It may not be the most mentally healthy way to deal with issues but it helped. It was almost like I could review my history without having any feeling. It was much like giving report at the end of a shift to the oncoming nurse. Like it wasn’t my history but someone else’s. I just couldn’t let myself feel at that moment. I felt like my dream of being a mom was never going to become true.
We, of course, were falling under the unspecified infertility which was one of the most frustrating things. As humans you want to fix problems. The only way you can fix a problem is if you know what the actual problem was. We didn’t know. The next question is how much cash are you willing to throw at an unspecified problem if you aren’t even sure you will get the outcome you were hoping for? That was the next million dollar question. One that my husband and I would discuss in much detail time and time again. We needed to take another break from all of this for our own mental health and our bank account needed a little rest too. I mean we were still young in the fertility world so we weren’t up against the biological clock that many are racing against.
Anyone that has dealt with infertility knows how all-encompassing it becomes. You have to really look at your schedule as you have to be available certain dates. You must have wiggle room if your cycle doesn’t fall on the date that it should or if you are earlier. Pretty much everything in your life is touched by it. Your travels, work, sex life, money allocation, everything revolves around your fertility treatment. It is exhausting. Just like the giant pink elephant in the room at all times. The other thing is everything takes about 3 times as long as you expect it to. Just know that going in. Have that expectation so they don’t cut your dreams down with a massive ax when you go in for your consultation/work up.
After getting further down the road with my own infertility journey I was starting to feel a pull to that world. I was playing with the idea of getting a nursing job at local IVF clinic. I thought it would be nice to have someone that was compassionate and had been through it all working with the same population. Almost cathartic if you will. I had placed my application but after many conversations my husband and I had decided to move out of state. I was going to be taking a travel nurse position in labor and delivery and he was returning to a banking job. I didn’t want to go to another hospital like I had first worked in so I thought that doing a short travel contract would let me see how the hospital worked and if I liked it I could sign on. If I didn’t like it I could take another contract elsewhere.
I remember I signed my contract for the travel position and the very next day my dream job had opened. It was at a fertility clinic where we were relocating. I quickly applied and had an interview over the phone shortly after. I had an in person interview scheduled the day we were arriving. This was a big deal for me and again I felt that pull deep inside. I felt like I needed this job even more than the clinic needed me for the job. I had an amazing interview and got the job. They were willing to wait for me to get done with my travel contract before I would start which was also amazing.
This is where I feel like I really got the upper hand on my journey. In nursing school you do not learn much more than the basis of the female cycle or male/female fertility. I was in a foreign land and felt like a dried out sponge trying to soak up every drop of information that was being taught to me. It gave me new life. At all of my other clinics I had never been sat down and really taught about what was happening and how we were going to be working to take over and make your body do what needs to be done. It was like my lightbulb was burned out but I had gotten it changed and was lighting up every room in my brain. It was so therapeutic to be amongst a population that was going through the same struggles I had been going through. Many of them had much more to their story including extreme sadness.
I will say one of the things that I am most grateful about our story is we never had to experience any loses. My heart goes out to you all. I can physically feel the ache in my chest and do not really know how I would get through that. It made me realize that I could have it a lot worse.
We took a year just to get acclimated to our new location as we had never lived in this area before and really needed to set down some roots and grow our village that would be needed to survive before we dove back into IVF. After many talks I had picked our clinic that we would be patients at. I could not be a patient at my own clinic and I had known that prior to taking the job and was very understanding of their stance on that. I remember going to another local clinic, one of our competitors, and having our consultation. It was the biggest joke I had ever experience and really left an extremely sour taste in not only my mouth but also my husband’s mouth. I kid you not when I say that the doctor told us that we could probably get pregnant if my husband would eat more walnuts. WALNUTS….. How does one appropriately respond to that? One thing that we did know was that clinic was not meant for us.
I finally was able to convince my husband we needed to go out of state. We did and he really liked our doctor and she was great at explaining everything. Our nurse was also very nice and liked to explain everything. I made sure they spoke to us like I didn’t have any experience in the field. I wanted him to feel like he was informed. We once again had a little bit of hope. We had pretty much always walled ourselves off from getting too hopeful but it was nice to at least feel like we were taking some small steps in the right direction. We were doing a pretty standard calendar for someone my age with the egg reserve that I had. This time I knew what to expect for the stimulation portion of things. I was preparing myself for the shots that I deeply despised once again. Knowing that I would be taking them for 9-13 days was daunting. My work was unbelievable flexible so I didn’t have to worry about having to find coverage when I was in cycle which was a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. My husband didn’t want anyone to know what was going on so it was a little bit more stressful for him but he made it work. I am pretty sure his boss thought I had cancer or something really wrong with me due to the location of our clinic and the proximity to a major hospital nearby. My husband said he was always checking in to make sure I was doing alright a few times after we got back.
Really no one but a few work colleagues, my closest friends, and my sister knew what was happening. We kept everyone else completely in the dark. We didn’t want any questions or their religious qualms that they had against what we were doing. It felt like an extremely intimate thing between the two of us and almost the more people knew about it the more real it became and the more awkward sympathy you got and a lot more directed questions. Something neither of us wanted. I had my support group set up and they were amazing and honestly I didn’t feel like I needed my family. Definitely would have stopped the questions of when we were going to start a family and if we knew what needed to happen in order to make a baby.
Cycling went rather seamless. I definitely got much more bloated than I had either my stimulated IUI’s but other than that it wasn’t bad. My one word of advice is it is never too early to start taking Colace when you are stimulating. Start it as soon as you start your meds. You will thank me by the time you have your retrieval and the days following. Also get a heating pad. Keep it on your stomach after retrieval and for the next few days following. I did not do this with my first cycle but had it with my next two and it was a night a day change.
At my retrieval I had a great amount of eggs retrieved and fertilized however I did not get as many embryos as they were expecting. I know not to expect every fertilized egg to turn into an embryo but my attrition rate was rather high. The good thing was age was on my side once again as I was 29 years old with my first IVF egg retrieval. I ended up getting 4 embryos with 3 of them being euploid (46 chromosomes). My husband and I had decided to delay our transfer as we both felt so confident in our embryos that we knew this would be the last little bit of freedom we would have. We both have summer birthdays and wanted to do a little traveling. We went to England/Scotland for our vacation which was amazing. San Diego for my husband’s 30 birthday, and Clearwater Florida for my 30th birthday. I started my calendar with the prep portion while gone for my birthday so we could have a transfer shortly after getting back. My lining built super quickly and my transfer had to be moved up but we both made it work with our schedules and had a very smooth and uneventful transfer. Our top rated embryo went in. We never find out what the sex of the embryo prior to transfer and wait late into our pregnancy to find out as I feel as though that brings on a whole other level of attachment. I knew going into transfer there was a chance that I wouldn’t get pregnant. I just really didn’t think that I would fall into that statistic. I remember it was very rainy the day before I went in for my lab draw for my hcg. We had been up in the mountains doing a fall foliage trip the day before and had taken some amazing pictures with the changing leaves. I had been so crampy and was just so sure I was pregnant. I went to work with the highest of hopes. I wanted to have something to keep my mind busy while I was waiting for the results. I remember I had gotten the call shortly after lunch time. I was NEGATIVE. My world crumbled. I had allowed myself to get so hopeful thinking that this was actually going to be our time just to get another negative test. All I wanted was to go home, take a nice long warm bath with a drink, rip off all of my patches, and just cry. I feel bad for the people in my office that day. I took the call outside as I wanted my husband to know the results prior to anyone else. I then had to call my husband to tell him it didn’t work, pull myself back together, and then go tell my office mates the same news. I thought I might be able to work but I broke down. What a horrible thing to have to witness someone else go through. I then had to go tell my boss that I needed to go home and the reason why. She was aware and wanted more than anything for me to get the space and time needed. I went home, cried, had a beer in the tub, ripped off my patches, and went to sleep.
I had a call with my doctor and she gave me her recommendations for next steps. Based off of the knowledge that I had in the field we had a very different idea of what the next steps would be. We were able to get a plan of attack in place.
Next step was a mock cycle so that we could perform a uterine biopsy to check and see if I had the actual receptors (beta 3 integrins) needed for embryo implantation and to confirm I didn’t have a chronic infection. In laymen’s terms I would take medications to build my lining and then right before starting progesterone they would need to scrape off some of that lining. This right here was the most painful thing I did throughout my entire journey. It literally felt like someone had placed a wired bottle brush up into my uterus and was just scrubbing the ever living hell out of the inside. The words large cramp should not be used when trying to explain the feeling you are about to experience. It felt like a year but was only maybe 30 seconds total. It sucked. Thankfully I had pre-dosed with some ibuprofen prior and had a heating pad waiting for me afterwards.
Now we just had to wait for the results. This took a few weeks which was fine as I was waiting for my period to start so we could go into another calendar. What type of calendar we did would be based off of the results. The results came back that I was negative for having a chronic infection and also negative for having the receptors in my uterus for implantation. Finally a problem we were able to fix. This would mean I would get to start most hated medication #1 Depot Lupron.
First of all this shot is a beast when you see it in the packaging. It is very intimidating and I am a nurse. It is crazy expensive. You have to mix it yourself and pray that you don’t accidentally squirt it out of the needle prior to the injection. No pressure. I invited one of my work friends over to give me the shot as my husband wanted no part in the administration once he saw the syringe. The good news was that she lived close by so this was very do able. You may remember me saying that Clomid was bad. I will rephrase that and say I just thought Clomid was bad. Depot Lupron was the worst. I had the same crazy hot flashes I had with Clomid but about every 5 minutes. I would get so hot and steamy with them that I would literally fog up my own glasses. I also got severe joint pain, crazy rage, insomnia and to top it all off my vagina was literally like the Sahara Desert. The great thing about this was it lasted for months after I took it. Anyways I took the Depot Lupron 2 times per transfer starting 2 months out from transfer date. My lining thankfully grew amazing again, embryo thawed nicely and transferred without difficulty. This time I took a urine pregnancy test prior to going to get my blood drawn. I wouldn’t look at the stick until I came back from the blood draw. I also learned my lesson last time and decided it would be best if I didn’t work the day of my result. I am so thankful that my job was so accommodating and understanding of my entire situation. This time I came home and look at my pee stick and it was the very first time I had a faint line. Now this is why I realize why I never should pee on a stick. Of course my numbers come back and they are a little lower than we would expect them to be. Not crazy low but just a little bit. Once I got the number I was sure I was going to have a biochemical pregnancy. I was expecting my next result to decrease. I then started the insane game of peeing on a stick every morning for the next week. I would compare. My follow up lab draw was 48 hours after my first and I cannot even begin to describe the amount of time I spent trying to analyze the color change from one pregnancy test to the next. My lab results came in and my numbers had increased greatly. I was excited for once but I remember that excitement being followed by immediate fear.
This would be the portion in which knowing less is actually beneficial. I knew pretty much every scenario that could play out. I was always hoping for the best but expecting the worst. That is a really messed up way to think about things. Why would this not be one of the most exciting and joyful times in my life? Why would I be sitting and just waiting for the other shoe to drop? Why had infertility made this such a trying time? Why was I literally terrified each time I went to the bathroom and wiped just anticipating there to be blood on the tissue? Why would I get so concerned if I felt crampy? Why couldn’t I just be happy? I knew too much. Once I had become pregnant I had become very detached from what was actually happening in my body. I just wanted the bump to come. I was so ready to start dressing so cute. I was more annoyed than anything as I was so bloated and had gained extra weight with all of the medications that I had been on that I just felt frumpy and anything but cute. I really just wanted to start feeling movement. I got ultrasounds all the time. I really just needed that reassurance that everything was ok. My OB went with it even though I really didn’t need them. He understood where I was coming from. I held my breath and said a million prayers before each ultrasound. I just had that gloomy feeling that one day I would have one completed and we would not have a heartbeat or something would be glaringly wrong with it. Again ignorance is bliss sometimes. It was weird that I wanted to wait so long to find out the sex. I didn’t want to know as it made everything feel so much more real and that much closer to being taken away from me. I waited until I was 29 weeks before finding out our sex. I was so sure we were having a boy. I would have bet the house on it but boy was I wrong. We were going to have a baby girl. This terrified me but also was exciting at the same time. I waited until I was about 35 weeks pregnant before I started to do anything with her room. I had purchased the big items like the crib, rocking chair, and the dresser but hadn’t done anything else.
Then the wait started as we go closer and closer to her due date. I was slowly dilating but she was still literally swimming around way high up when I hit my due date. I went in to my appointment and found out that she was breach. Of course she would be breach. Now due to my labor and delivery experience I had a whole new set of fears but after speaking with my OB we decided on a version in the hospital and I would just start my induction shortly after. She verted with minimal effort by another provider in my OB’s group and then took her sweet little time coming out. We were there for 2.5 days before she was delivered.
I remember the delivery being such an odd day. I was so sure I was going to have a c-section. Finally things started to move in the right direction. She had a little meconium in her fluid so we had the NICU team there. I had prepped them all in regards about my husband. He had strict instructions to sit on an appointed chair that was facing up to the head and he was to eat some protein and chug a juice prior to pushing. I didn’t end up pushing for too long, and before I knew it she was out. I had the feeling like I was at work again in labor and delivery. I was cleaning someone else’s baby off it just happened to be on my stomach and then they put someone else’s baby in skin to skin. I had pushed every thought of her actually being mine out of my head for so long it took me a good day for it to really sink in that she was all mine. Well my husbands too, but we made her and she would forever be our girl.
We knew we wanted to have one more baby. We had always talked about having 2. Now that we had proven that we could actually have children we almost immediately started thinking about how far apart we wanted them. This meant that I started looking at timelines on when we would ideally need to transfer to get what we thought was the ideal space between our children. Little did we know but this was going to be a very trying time.
The timeline that I had look at had me breastfeeding for 6 months. By breastfeeding it was more me pumping and then her getting bottle fed but still I did it for 6 months. I then started the weaning process. I had never felt so guilty in my life. Already stealing some nutritional needs of one to start working towards having another baby. Seemed a little selfish. Not going to lie I was so ready to be done pumping. I felt like a milk cow and would spend a few hours a day pumping and cleaning by parts. By the time she had gone back to daycare she was not interested in breastfeeding so even when I was home with her I would have to pump and feed and clean over and over again. I will say it was very liberating once I finally got all weaned off.
I then had to wait 2 months for my period to start up and then I was ready to schedule my work up. Once we got everything back and was given the green light it was time to start my beloved Depot Lupron again. Another 2 shots and then started my medications for my lining prep. The embryo had thawed beautifully. Transfer was seamless. Then we were in the waiting timeframe. I will say it was much easier with my third transfer as I had a baby at home so I was just sitting there thinking about it every spare moment I had during the day. I did feel a little pressure as it was our last embryo but I had a pretty good feeling.
We hit the 9 day mark and we did our routine. I was sure not to be working that day. I would do the urine pregnancy test, not look at it, and then go in to get my labs drawn. Come home and look at the test. This right here is another reason why I do not even know why I did this to myself but I saw a very faint line. It was so much lighter than the line I had on my first test with our girl. I knew this likely meant that it was going to be a low number. I did like the fact that it had already given me the mindset that I was not probably going to get the best news when my HCG was actually called to me. I believe it was on a weekend because my husband happened to be home and I had prepared him too. He was ready for the news also. I believe my number was 18 or something really low like that.
Now I do know that there have been completely normal pregnancies that can come from this number but the likelihood is very low. I remember being a little shocked but hoping it would either increase at a great rate or hoping it would just completely decrease to less than 5 and that be it. I was now in what we call the “gray zone” at work. The unknown. No one wants to be in the unknown. I didn’t want to have the number rise at an appropriate rate and then get to the first ultrasound and have a blighted ovum or have the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy. I wanted it to either work or not work. The 48 hour wait to draw labs was a long one that included horrible nightmares and not much sleep.
I had continued the nonsense of peeing on the stick and trying to decipher whether or not the line was getting any darker. It is almost humorous looking back at the amount of time I spent so close to something that you literally just peed on trying to decide. I remember my husband being all up in the space of the stick and I have pictures on my phone so I could show some people at work and get their opinion. It was starting to get a little lighter so I knew it was likely a biochemical pregnancy. The number was so close to being negative at the 48 hour recheck that honestly gave me a sigh of relief. I have had patients have to wait a few weeks with weird numbers just to get their hearts broken at ultrasound and that didn’t look like the fate that we would face. A few days later we rechecked again and my HCG was negative.
We now knew we would have to create some new embryos. I had to then complete the work up for another retrieval. It was easy and my numbers looked almost exactly the same as they had just 3 years earlier. Typing this I cannot believe there was a 3 year gap between retrievals but as I have said multiple times before anything that happens in the fertility world takes time.
We were going to be using the exact same protocol as we had the time before. We had been successful and knew that my body would respond to this. Now the pep talk to myself about all of the shots I was going to be giving myself. I knew what to expect but stiming was never my favorite. Just as always I hit about day 5 or 6 and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to give myself the shots. I hated the Cetrotide injections. They burned so bad. I remember trying to find any way I could to get through it. I would pinch my skin with my thumb and middle finger and scratch my skin about an inch outside of where I had stuck the needle. I would scratch my skin really hard to try to override the pain receptors. It helped until the Cetrotide. I did find having a very loud, guttural moan would help. Sounded absolutely ridiculous while I was doing it but it did take some of the pain away. Still it sucked. You get deep into stim and you stare at your stomach and try to manage your way through all of the mini bruises you have or areas that really hurt the last time that it does get a little more difficult to find a spot. Oddly once I had gotten to the level of IVF I couldn’t give my injections in my thighs anymore. No idea why I couldn’t but it was a hard no so that just left my little stomach taking it all in.
I looked to be stiming well. One side always does really well and the other lags a little but it was not much different than before. The biggest difference was that I started my Colace from the beginning and boy did that make a huge difference! This time for the retrieval travel looked a little different. I would have to take my daughter with me but with all of the lifting restrictions and my husband’s work restrictions I was going to have someone else come with me. I was trying to get a friend to come with me but she was a nurse and the way my stim was going it didn’t look like I would line up with her scheduled days off. This would mean that I would have to take my mother with me.
My mother had no idea when I had done the stimulation process with my first born nor did she know everything that went into it. I think it was a very eye opening experience for her. She would have to be the one to give me the trigger shot. I had discussed it with her multiple times and she was sure that she was going to be able to do it. The first time I was able to just do a Lupron trigger but they added just a little HCG to see if it would help with my egg quality. It was such a production but she got it done. Now my husband just had to fly in for the fresh specimen and to take care of me back at the hotel. This time I was sure to stay on my Tylenol around the clock and to keep a heating pad on my abdomen the rest of the day. We had to fly out the following day at 6 am but were home super early and was able to take it easy. I was then right back to work the following day. Honestly the heating pad was a game changer. Literally takes all of the little cramps away. Recovery went pretty quick. Now I just had to wait and see what we grew.
I remember waiting for the lab to call on Day 5. I did not have a Day 5 embryo in my first batch so I was not surprised when they called with the update saying they were still holding a few embryos to see what they were going to do. They then told me that I would get a call on Day 6 if they froze anything and if they did not they would call me on Day 7. I remember receiving the call in the middle of one of our staff meetings the following day. I had my phone on silent on my lap and was checking it every 5 seconds just anxiously awaiting the news. I finally got a call from the lab. Since everyone was in the staff meeting I went into my office. That is when I got the news that I never even thought possible. The embryologist had informed me that none of my embryos had grown to blastocysts. I had nothing. I know that my initial response was not a nice one. I was almost yelling when I said “What do you mean you didn’t get anything. I’m only 32!” She said that there were 2 that they were seeing what they would do and they had stopped growing and started to breakdown which meant they were not going to be a viable option.
I felt like the world had stopped. My heart had sank and then exploded with the intense pain. I had not ever even really thought of the option of not having any embryos. Why couldn’t anything in this entire journey just go smoothly? Why was there always some weird loop hole we just happened to be lucky enough to be in the group of a small few to fit into? Why? How?
I worked in a clinic where our specialty was creating embryos for women with advanced maternal age. I’m talking early 40’s and they were getting an embryo a cycle. How was it that I was 32, didn’t have the diagnosis of diminished ovarian reserve, good AMH, and a history of making multiple embryos in a previous cycle just a few years earlier not make any embryos? I was shell shocked. I sat down on the ground with my back against the wall and just silently ugly cried. I don’t think I had ever felt so helpless.
I slowly regained my composure and had to call my husband with the information. He also was caught off guard. What do we do next? I tried to call and schedule a regroup with my doctor but they told me it would be 3 weeks before she would be able to speak with me. This frankly pissed me off. Even at our clinic where we are insanely busy our physicians will almost always reach out if there is a terrible cycle. I remember going back into the staff meeting and sitting and staring with the glazed over look. I am sure I looked like a hot mess. My eyes were blood shot and red, mascara was all over under my eyes. I had no business being there. I just had felt so much in the last few minutes that I was now numb. My body was shutting down so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain. It couldn’t take that pain any more. Needed an escape.
The worst part was that there were many people at work that knew I was cycling. They knew when I would be getting my results. They were just eager to hear good news. I kept getting asked every time I went anywhere outside of my office how my cycle was for about the next week. I broke down again when I had to tell my office mates. I remember one of them asking if they could give me a hug which normally makes me feel so much better but this time I didn’t want anyone to touch me. I was beyond sad and also extremely pissed at the same time. It is a little crazy how those two emotions typically go hand in hand. I knew on one hand I was so extremely lucky to already have my sweet baby girl but I had that wanting/longing to provide her a sibling. What if I could not do that? Where do we go from here? There were going to be some very big conversations that were going to be happening over the next month and I already knew what had to be done.
I remember coming home that night and just having my husband hug/hold me while tears just streamed down my cheek. It is hard in that moment as you feel like it is only happening to you but I knew he was hurting also. He just really isn’t one to express those feelings but I could tell in his body language. We both had very long hugs for our daughter and both just staring at her with that longing look. I remember rocking her to bed that night with tears coming down my cheeks and my head hurting so bad since all I had been doing was crying.
I went back to work and cried silently most of the day. It was extremely hard. I care for patients with an extremely complicated history. Most of them have had to endure much more than I ever had but I started to get a really bad taste in my mouth when I was being told I just didn’t understand how they were feeling. It isn’t my place to say actually you have no idea what I have been through. Some people find comfort in knowing that their nurse or their doctor has walked the same path they are currently walking. Some people do not. I totally understand but it was making it very hard to be empathetic with my patients. I was not responding to them in a manner in which I thought was appropriate. It was really pulling at my heart. I was getting angry all the time at little things. I clearly was not dealing well with my recent news. I was crying at my desk multiple times a day. It all in all was not a good situation.
After about 4 days I received a call from my doctor. She was very sympathetic and shocked with my results. She apologized as she had been out of town and didn’t know what had happened but called me as soon as she heard the news. She knew I wouldn’t be taking it lightly. They were launching a lab investigation to make sure it wasn’t something with their supplies that could have possibly caused this outcome. At the end of the investigation it wasn’t the lab it was me. Hard news to hear but something that needed to be said. She was wanting to do another stimulation cycle but try to give me a full hcg trigger and maybe use a different way to pick the sperm. I told her I was going to have to think about it.
My husband and I were both finally in a place we could talk about this after about a week. I had discussed how badly this cycle had affected my mental health and if we were going to move forward with another cycle it was going to be my last one. I did want to try again but just couldn’t take multiple times if this was going to be the outcome that we would face. He was concerned with my well-being as I was clearly in a bad space. He knew that work was getting harder and harder for me. He was wondering what would be different if we did another cycle with our current provider. I discussed the difference but had this nagging feeling that we needed to leave that clinic. I needed someone that I trusted to give us the best shot. I needed the embryologists and the lab at the clinic that I worked for. If we couldn’t make embryos there then it wasn’t going to be in the cards for us. I would be able to face the fact that we would have just one child and we would move on with our life as we did have one amazing blessing.
The only problem with this scenario was that I was going to have to quit my job. This was my dream job. One that I felt like had been part of my fate. One that made me feel like I was actually helping people on a daily basis. A job that I loved. Also this brought up the fact that we would be dropping to one income and IVF is not a cheap thing to take on. After some looking at our budget we knew we could make it happen. This was really happening. I was going to quit my job and do the craziest trust fall I had ever done. Now that we had made that decision it was time to have the very hard conversations.
First I had to let my office mates know that I was going to be quitting. They all had expected it and totally agreed with my decision. This meant their caseloads were about to get very heavy. After I had told them I went directly to my manager’s office and gave her my verbal notice. I was bawling and told her it was the last thing I really wanted to do but I knew I had to do it and knew that I needed some time away as I was dealing with all of my own fertility issues. She was so understanding and told me there would always be a place for me. I gave them a month notice and started to go through my load and make notes to make it the smoothest transition it could be for my patients. I could literally feel the weight being lifted off of my shoulders.
Secondly I had to call my current IVF clinic and let them know I would be transferring my care and get all of my medical records sent over. Then I had to decide who I wanted to be my doctor at my current clinic. This may seem like a no brainer and honestly I would have felt comfortable with any of them. I would trust any of them with my life. I really was trying to fit the right doctor to my husband as he was a little hesitant moving forward. He knew the respect I had but I needed the personalities to get along. I finally came to my decision and made my consultation appointment.
While all of this was happening there was a little thing happening on the other side of the world known as COVID. It had just started and was beginning to spread. The last day at my job was 2/14/2020 and the whole world shut down in March. Pretty much right after I had my appointment all the rules were changing. I was told that it looked like my egg quality was not the greatest and there were a few things that we could try to assist that in the time we were waiting to go into my stimulation calendar. I was starting the Mediterranean diet, supplements, and exercising like mad to try to lose the weight I had gained with my two previous cycles. I was wanting to get back to the weight I was at for my first cycle. I only needed to lose about 15 pounds which was not a huge number but still a task. I also had to quit drinking. I was not an over the top drinker but did enjoy a beer most days. This all started out just fine but became increasingly more difficult as COVID progressed. My daughter was still able to go to daycare as we didn’t want her to lose her spot as I planned on returning back to work after I graduated to my OB for care. We were buckling down to make this happen but could not chance the year wait to get back in.
Sounds like a dream right. Well it was working really well until COVID happened. Everything shut down. My daughter didn’t have class most of the time and it didn’t really seem like a great idea to have her exposed to that many people while we were on a pretty strict quarantine as I could not test positive or my cycle would be cancelled. AKA we would lose a lot of money so we kept her enrolled but pulled her out. My husband was starting to work exclusively from home so it was just me and my daughter together 24/7. She was 2.5 years old when this all started and boy let us just say that we did not see eye to eye on a lot of things and she was the most stubborn individual I had ever met! It was a very trying time. I would make her go on these long walks with me in the mornings we would spend tons of time washing our groceries when they would arrive at our house. I mean it was foreign territory. Who ever thought you would be wiping down literally every surface of anything that had been out in the public. I was cooking every meal/snack all day every day. It was exhausting. I knew what needed to be done and what our goal was and had laser focus but boy was it difficult but I met all of my goals.
We got to the point of doing our stimulation cycle and everything was looking just as it had the two prior cycles. We had discussed using a test to try to pick out the healthiest sperm prior to insemination and we were also going to use calcium ionophore on half of our eggs. This was still in the experimental phase but was showing great results with embryo development so far. This along with the supplements and high doses of antioxidants we were doing literally everything possible. We knew this was the best place for us and our only shot so we gave it everything that we had. My doctor was very optimistic. The head embryologist was working on my case and it brought me such peace knowing that we were in the best hands. If we were meant to be the parents of two children this was where we needed to be. Stimulation went great. One of our other physicians did my retrieval and everything had gone great. We had great numbers to start. A little lower on the number of eggs but not much. Now we just had to hope we had better quality. Recovery was pretty easy and now we were in the waiting phase of things. Thankfully summer had come and we were able to be outside a lot during this time as I would have gone nuts being cooped up in our house.
I got a call on Day 5 saying that we had one embryo that they had biopsied and frozen and two more that they were holding to see what they had done the next day. I had never had a Day 5 embryo so I was beyond excited. I was still very nervous as we still had less than my first cycle and I just prayed that they were going to be genetically normal but we at least had an embryo to work with. The next day I was watering the flowers out front when I got the call that they had another embryo to biopsy/freeze and the other had degraded. This meant we had 2 embryos total and were now just waiting for their chromosome counting to make sure we were good to go. The plan was to wait for my period and start my Depot Lupron as soon as it came to prep for a transfer even if I didn’t my results back. I took my shot and the next day I had my results. We had one euploid embryo and one that had inconclusive results. Good news was we had something to transfer. I did ask if these had come from the calcium ionophore batch and they both had which was very interesting. That right there justified us moving clinics as this was not offered at our old clinic.
Things seemed to be looking up. I was having all of the lovely side effects of the Depot Lupron in the middle of summer which was just swell but we were moving forward and had a chance. This was a lot of pressure to put on one embryo but I felt a strange peace with our decisions. I felt like I could theoretically be okay with whatever the outcome was. We literally did everything we possibly could to give us the best chance. Now we just had to hope the little embryo was meant to become a baby. The embryo thawed perfectly, transfer was seamless. Now we were on the excruciating 9 day wait to see if this was going to work.
Just like our previous test days I peed on the stick and left for the blood draw. My husband had looked and knew way before I ever had. I came home and went directly upstairs to look at my test and it had a very dark line. I had hoped this would mean we had a great starting number but still has very reserved knowing that I needed the actual number to feel completely at ease. I got the call from my doctor with congratulations and we had an amazing starting number. It was almost better than our second number with our first pregnancy. I knew we had a long road to go but I could just feel the relief start to take over my body and the tension release for a few minutes. We were on our way. Many things that had to be done but we were at least pregnant and had a good starting point.
We tested two days later and the number had increased more than expected which was fantastic news. Now to wait for our 6 ½ week ultrasound to see exactly what we were working with. The wait is always long and then the nerves leading up are almost uncontrollable but all of that eases away once they get in there and you see that little yolk sac with a little flicker. We were pregnant with our second baby, it had a heartbeat, and everything was measuring accordingly. This is when my anxiety took a drastic turn for the worse. I thought I would feel better but I had this constant fear that it was all going to disappear. Almost like an impending doom. I had this a little with our first but this was in hyper drive. I had insomnia paired with the crushing lethargy you experience in the first trimester. I was terrified. I was doing breathing exercises, walking, and trying to talk through everything with my husband but it was still very present. I think this also had a lot to do with we were still very isolating from everyone. We did not even want to take a chance on the possibility of getting COVID with me being so newly pregnant and there not being enough research on what this could mean. I started this massive collection of chalk drawings on our driveway as I found it oddly relaxing and then took this into sketching/water color painting in the evenings. I was by no means an artist but had found some step by step instructions on Pinterest and was getting pretty good. My daughter loved it and so did our neighbor kids.
Anyways pregnancy continued without issues. We decided to find out the sex when we were 24 weeks. We had a friend make us a reveal cake and had our daughter cut it open for us. She was so very excited to see the pink inside as it was her favorite color. She had no idea what this actually meant but could tell we were very excited so she went with it.
I am a big planner and decided I was going to have an induction scheduled as we needed to make sure we had child care for our daughter. We have no family in town but they could be here within a few hours so we had neighbors/friends that were on call leading up to my delivery. This baby was a mover and a shaker. She would flip back and forth from head down to breach so many times it was ridiculous. I was ready for another version if needed but she finally decided she wanted to stay head down. My mom had decided to come out a day earlier than expected as I had been contracting a lot and she had the time. It was great. However the day before our induction scheduled, baby girl stopped moving nearly as much. This made me go into panic mode. She was moving just not meeting the required kick counts and such. I was drinking orange juice and eating donuts to see if the sugar high would get her to move but nothing. This is where the crazy nurse/mom side of my brain have conversations. As a nurse I knew that she was moving but knew if someone had called in with the same description I would have them be seen. I really felt like I needed to be seen but also didn’t want to be one of those people that was going in constantly for false alarms. After about 3 hours of this I finally called my OB office and they wanted me to come in for a non-stress test and see what baby was looking like on the monitor. I was sure to have all of our stuff packed up in the car and ready to go if we needed to be admitted. We were already pretty much ready to go due to the fact that we were scheduled the following day. Due to Covid my husband was not allowed in for the non-stress test. When they put baby on the monitor she was moving and looked ok but still not the way she had the previous week so we were being admitted for our induction.
We got checked in, they broke my water and started pit and away we went. Literally was the easiest day compared to the 2.5 days that it took her sister. She was here and I felt such an ease of accomplishment knowing that we had our family. She didn’t glow from the calcium ionophore as my husband often joked would be the case. She was absolutely perfect.
I remember getting her home and my oldest daughter’s world getting rocked. I just cried and she did not like me at all and really did not like her little sister. She did not want to share our affection with anyone. She really could have cared less about me but didn’t want her dad to care for anyone else. After all that work to give her a best friend for life and she was not impressed! It was rough but we made it through it. Baby girl 2 was a breeze of a baby. I was trying to soak in everything as I was sure this was going to be my last baby. Remember the look of her little toes, the way they love to snuggle when they are first born, their little smiles from gas. Everything was being logged in my mind and I was feeling rather sad. I felt like I needed another one but knew not to get my hopes up after everything it took to get them both here. We had another embryo that did not have conclusive testing but we could always arrange for that to be tested should we ever want to go down this path again.
I went to my 6 week post-partum OB appointment and had the whole discussion about birth control. I almost died laughing when she asked if I wanted to get and IUD or on the mini pill. I had just spent thousands of dollars for both of my kids and gone to hell and back and knew that I statistically had less than a 1% chance of getting pregnant naturally. I had just been on so many hormones for such a long time that I decided I was going to give my body a cleansing break that it needed. I told her I would gladly take another baby if that miracle happened but I knew that was not going to be possible.
Fast forward to being 9 months post-partum. I had been feeling really off. I had a very short temper, was bloated, crampy, and was crazy tired and it had been going on for a couple of weeks. We had gotten out of the winter holidays, moved into a new house, went to Great Wolf Lodge, I had gotten Covid (very mild case), and just gone back to work but I felt off. I had just chalked it up to we had done way to much in the past 2 months and now it was really starting to catch up with me. I had just stopped breastfeeding the month before but had my periods regularly for months. Now my period was all over the place and I thought it was likely due to just completely weaning from breastfeeding and Covid. My husband and I had joked that I could be pregnant and both almost laughed hysterically at the thought as we knew that was not even possible. I decided to take as test as that had always been my lucky charm when I was younger as my period we literally come either that night or the following day. I remember sitting on the toilet trying to make sure I was peeing on the stick when my oldest walked into the bathroom and asked me what in the heck I was doing. I just casually played it off and put the stick down and washed my hands and left the test for a few minutes while I got her situated playing. My 9 month old was still in her crib and I wanted to make sure to check it prior to forgetting about it. I went in, looked and I bet my jaw dropped to the floor. I could not believe it as it was a darker than dark positive line. I was in such shock that I literally walked straight down into our basement, where my husband was working, and told him you are never going to believe what I am about to tell you. He looked at me with such a concerned look. I said I am freaking pregnant. There was a long pause and he seriously thought I was trying to pull a prank on him. I said “No I promise I am not lying” and then brought him the test to prove it. I literally felt like I was in an alternate dimension. There was no way this was happening. How was this happening? I didn’t want to get excited but holy cow the thought that this could be possible was very exciting.
I called my OB to let her know and she wanted to bring me in for an early ultrasound to make sure everything was looking ok. I went in right at 6 ½ weeks again and there our third spontaneous baby was. Still such an amazing miracle. We went through all of that to have our first two and now we finally got a bone thrown to us on the positive side of things. It was truly the best blessing and looking back he has fully rounded out our family. He was meant for us. His oldest sister hated the idea of having another baby. She literally did not even start liking her sister until she was about 2 years old but she loves her baby brother.
I feel like your destiny is already set out for you. There are things you will have to fight so hard to achieve. Sometimes your path isn’t what you thought it was supposed to be but once you are able to look back and actually sit with what happened, you will see that you are on the path that was meant for you. I look back on when our journey began 11 years ago and it is wild to see the twists and turns but every aspect of that journey has formed both me and my husband into the people we are today. It has strengthened our relationship. It has brought a mutual respect for each other. I look at my children and I am eternally grateful. They do drive me crazy sometimes but they were worth it. I am proud of my journey. It was not for the faint of heart and it challenged me in ways that I did not think possible. Sometimes I didn’t feel like I would be able to recover or how I was going to move on but I did. You will be able to also.
The advice that I always give is to set your goal. In my case it was a child. It may sometimes be too daunting to take that goal straight on. That is very understandable. Many things that you truly want in life are multifaceted. You need to set the little check points for yourself along the way. Check the box once completed and then move onto the next step. You have to complete each little check point to get closer to that goal. Focus on the individual task that is in front of you as that is an achievable goal and know that achieving that goal you are moving closer to the overall goal.
I know this was long but to those of you that stuck around to read it thank you. I would encourage you to keep a journal while you are going through your journey as it is very cathartic to be able to look back see everything you overcame to get you to where you are today. I wish you all the very best.
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