Life was going as we had planned. We were happily married, on our way thru optometry school with two beautiful daughters from two easy, perfect pregnancies. Infertility was a word I never thought that I would use to describe us, but, here we are.
About a year after having our second daughter, we decided that we were going to try for our third child so that they could be close in age, and in my mind, best friends. We got pregnant pretty quickly, just as we had with the first two. We were elated after the positive test. After going to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy we found that my levels weren’t as high as they should be and after a few more blood draws we found that they were dropping. I was having a miscarriage. We were heartbroken, but hopeful that this was a one time thing. We waited till the doctor gave us the green light, then started trying again. It took us longer this time, and after about a year the positive pregnancy test graced us again. A little over a week after the test, I started to bleed and cramp. I knew something was wrong, and after some blood tests the doctor confirmed our fears, another miscarriage.
The second, of course was even more difficult to bear than the first. We didn’t know why this was happening, and tried to stay hopeful. We took some time to recover, mentally, physically, and spiritually, then decided to start to try again. We tried for about nine months and with the help of clomid got pregnant a third time only to miscarry a few weeks later. The third miscarriage really took its toll on me and I felt really hopeless and confused. We were ready for some answers.
Three miscarriages is the magic number for
specialists to look at you, so we got into Idaho Center of Reproductive
Medicine pretty quickly. We ran more tests and found that my fallopian tubes
are blocked. This answered one question, but in turn raised many more. When and
how? How did we have two perfect pregnancies?(clearly a miracle) And most
importantly, what is the solution? We could try surgery to unblock the tubes
but that could cause some scar tissue which could block them all over again.
Or, we could bypass the tubes altogether and do IVF. After a lot of prayer and
discussion we decided to move forward with IVF. In August of 2015 we did our
first round of IVF. We ended up with 4 great embryos so we transferred two and
froze the other two.
On August 21, my birthday we got great news
that IVF was successful and I was pregnant! After my 3rd beta test
they called with bad news, my levels were dropping again and I was having a
miscarriage, AGAIN. I can’t even describe the shock and pain that ran thru me
at that moment. We were so happy and so confident, it all came crashing down on
me. It was a dark couple of weeks for us. We knew that we had two frozen that
we could move forward with, but I needed some time to heal. We decided to wait
a while and talk about it in the new year. Then, in November, my period didn’t
come. Amazed and curious I took a pregnancy test that came back a strong
positive. Was this the miracle we had been waiting for? Well, that was
definitely too good to be true. After going to the doctor we discovered that I
had an ectopic pregnancy. Of course! We decided to not do the surgery and wait
as my body terminated it on its own. It seemed to take forever. After several
weeks of blood draws and one terrible night in the E.R. It was finally over.
Our doctor ran some tests to make sure that nothing was damaged during the
ectopic and I was healthy and ready to talk about our next steps to baby.
We took some time and decided that we are
ready to move forward with our frozen embryos. Thursday, April 28 we are
transferring our two frozen embryos with faith, hope and trust that we can
bring another angel into our family.
Thru all the ups and downs of the last
4 years we have learned so much. We feel so blessed to have the two miracle
babies that we have. They carry us thru this trial everyday. We have also
learned how many couples are facing similar trials and we hurt and pray for all
of them. We are not alone. The biggest thing we have learned is that our faith,
and hope can get us thru anything.
