My Infertility Story
**Warning: This post may contain triggers for some people on their infertility journey. Please know it is not my intention to cause harm to anyone. I am simply sharing our story and what we went through. **
If you want to read about my struggles with birth control prior to conception, you can read about that here.
I found out I was pregnant on our one-year wedding anniversary. Honestly, I knew before I even took the test. We were not trying still at that point. We were so excited to know we didn’t have any problems with conception. Because I was born with a heart defect, I knew my pregnancy would look a little different than most. I began setting up the appointments necessary to monitor both me and the baby. We had our first appointment with the OBGYN and heard and saw our sweet baby. We scheduled our second appointment when I would be about 12 weeks along.
All day that day I felt like something was wrong and was very anxious to get to the appointment. As soon as she began the scan, I knew we had lost our sweet baby. At 10.5 weeks, our baby left us, and we were absolutely devastated. I had to have a D&C later that week and we were left to pick up the pieces of our broken hearts. The next 6 months were the hardest we had ever experienced as we learned how to cope with this loss and decide if, and when, we would be ready to try again.
Even though we were not trying initially, we were so ready to be parents the moment we found out we were expecting. Eventually, we began trying again. Never in a million years did we think we would have the troubles we did since we got pregnant without really trying that first time around.
We began really trying in December of 2014, about 6 months after our first loss. In June of 2015, almost a year later, we had an early loss and honestly almost missed the fact I was pregnant because it happened so quickly. In September of 2015, we had our 3rd loss. It too was an early one and was only caught by accident. I began seeing our doctor to figure out what was happening. At first, they said everything checked out and they weren’t sure what was causing the problems we were experiencing. We were so frustrated and heartbroken that we had now lost 3 angel babies, with no answers as to why. And we couldn’t understand why we were having so much trouble with this process. Don’t people get pregnant by accident all the time? I mean, we had in the beginning. Why couldn’t it happen again?
Through various doctors and testing, charting, Google searches, and thousands of questions, tears, and prayers later, we started getting some answers. I was diagnosed with low progesterone and even though I wasn’t testing positive for a blood clotting disorder, they began treating me as if I had one. My husband was also diagnosed with low sperm motility.
I was given progesterone pills and Clomid without success initially. I began seeing a fertility specialist a few days after beginning my 2nd round of Clomid. He told me our chances of conception without help were 1%. One percent. How could that be? Even with the help of progesterone and Clomid he was not giving us much boost at a rate of conception. He told us that if opted to try Intrauterine insemination (IUI) we had a 10% chance of conception and for In vitro fertilization (IVF) we had about an 80% chance of getting pregnant. Then we had to figure out how to keep me pregnant if one of these options happened to work.
The plan was to do a medicated cycle to prepare for IVF the following month. I would finish the Clomid I had started, begin baby aspirin, take a trigger shot after scans for forcing ovulation essentially, and blood thinner injections following ovulation with progesterone. Since we had decided we were not going to do the IUI this month, the timing of the trigger shot was not as important as just getting it done that day.
The morning of my scan to determine if a trigger shot was going to happen that day, we decided to add in IUI. This meant I had to time the trigger shot to align with the timing of the IUI. I did the trigger shot at lunch that day and went in the next day for the IUI. It was such a surreal experience and honestly, my husband and I laugh about it all the time because it honestly is such a weird thing to go through. This happened on a Wednesday.
We left on Saturday for Turks and Caicos for a week with his family to enjoy time together. On Monday, I was strangely sick. I chalked it up to being on the medications and eating different foods. It was the only day I had terrible heartburn and got sick on the boat while fishing. We got home on Thursday night and had our IVF introduction appointment the next morning. We filled out all the paperwork and learned about all the medications and how everything would work. I was to come back on Wednesday for a blood draw to confirm we were not pregnant and begin the IVF cycle.
I dreaded that appointment so much. Seeing negative pregnancy tests and hearing the nurse call and say “I’m sorry, you’re not pregnant” over and over again had become so painful. The nurse drawing my blood that morning asked if I took a home pregnancy test. I wanted to cancel that appointment so bad and was not feeling it at all. I told her “no, it’s going to be negative I don’t want to see it” and walked out of the office. That afternoon I logged in to check on a different test result and they had posted the blood results. There was a number next to the test name. I sat there in shock because I hadn’t seen a good number next to an HCG level in such a long time. The nurse called an hour late to confirm what the patient portal said.
I walked out of the office and went to get something to share the news with my husband. We were over the moon and shared the news with our family that night.
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