I was always the careful one who did everything to prevent pregnancy. My Husband and I had been together for 6 years before getting married and then we waited a couple of years to try to have a baby. I thought it would be easy…. everyone else was getting pregnant around me. At first when we were unsuccessful naturally, we started charting temperatures, reading about foods to eat and not eat etc. month after month we kept getting negative results. We both were over 30 when we started trying and so were hoping that it would happen fast. After multiple doctors’ appointments and tests and a surgery to have cysts removed from my ovaries, we were told to start on IUI. I thought finally we have the answer. More temp checks, more ultrasounds, more visits to a special room and for me to pick up a special vial that I had to put in my cleavage and drive across town to the specialist’s office. I really thought I would get pregnant right away. That was not the case we did IUI 5 times until we finally saw that highly anticipated positive test. My body had been through it, and we were both so excited. My pregnancy was normal I felt great, and we welcomed a beautiful healthy baby boy 3 days early. (I think he knew we had waited long enough) after he was born life was perfect, but we knew we wanted one more.
We decided to start trying again about 8 months after he was born. I thought maybe my body had” figured it out” boy was I wrong. We ended up back doing IUI and had 8 failed attempts, at that point we were told we should try IVF. I was worried, so much medicine so invasive and much more expensive. After much consideration we decided to go for it. We got our drugs, I gave myself needles at work, I almost over stimulated and was very close to them calling off the whole thing. Thankfully when it came time for egg retrieval day, I joked that they were going to get a couple dozen…… and wouldn’t you know it they did just that. Twenty-four eggs were retrieved and now it was time to wait for them to be fertilized and see what kind of embryos we ended up with. I will never forget the call that told us we had 11 perfect embryos……. And they would pick the most perfect of those for implantation. Thoughts that went through my head were, why didn’t we do this all along I wish I would have known that I would have been so good at IVF. All the money spent on IUI for our second attempt at pregnancy and even our first could have been avoided.
We were lucky to have that one perfect embryo implant and get the great news that we were pregnant. The next 5 months would be the scariest though. I went 3 times to the hospital with heavy bleeding in those 5 months only, on the third time did we find out it was placenta previa and we hoped that as the uterus grew the placenta would move. After going through all of that to get pregnant again seeing blood was terrifying. After the 5th month the placenta seemed to have moved and we thought we were in the clear until the baby pinched a nerve in my back and made it nearly impossible to stand and walk. I was stuck in a chair or bed for the last month of the pregnancy. I should have known from the beginning that our Baby was a girl….. my pregnancy was nothing like the last one. She caused us much grief but also came into the world 3 days early.
Going through this over 15 and 11 years ago I wish that more people talked about what they were going through or what they had gone through. We didn’t know anyone that had gone through what we were or that had been successful. Or at least that’s what we thought. We have come to find out that we were surrounded by other people who were doing what I was and who also ended up with children. Over the last 10 years it has become much more common for people to share their infertility stories. I am so beyond grateful that we were able to conceive twice and have 2 healthy children, however no one’s journey is easy. We don’t know what people have gone through or might be going thru. People would always ask me when we were going to have kids and I wanted to scream at them, “We Are Trying!”
To anyone out there that feels alone or thinks they won’t be successful what kept me going was being positive even after all the negatives. I tried support groups once and couldn’t handle hearing all of the sad stories. I surrounded myself with positivity and made as many jokes along the way. The entire process of becoming a mother is actually pretty ridiculous when you really think about it and so I tried to find humour in any and all of it and that is how I coped. Fifteen years later I am in the thick of teenage years and I wouldn’t change a thing. We were so incredibly blessed with our two miracle babies. Sending everyone out there in the thick of the struggle Love and Light and Grace.
~Sheldene