Our Long Road of Infertility & Pregnancy Loss

It seems only natural to start my blog off with this journey, the most difficult but most important time in our lives. It has become such a huge part of us and we will never be the same people that we were before we embarked on this journey. I think about it and live it every single day. It has become as much a part of me as breathing or eating. One of the many difficult parts is finding a way to not let it consume you or define who you are. But is that even possible??? For any of the ladies who are reading this that have struggled with Infertility and/or pregnancy loss, please know how strong you are. Knowing that there are other women out there who have the same feelings, who battle the same monsters that I do, has been invaluable.

To make a very long story short-ish, my body, more specifically my reproductive organs, have been crazy for a long time. As a teenager, I never got many cycles. Maybe one every 6 months or so starting at age 13. At age 16 they stopped coming. My ovaries do not ovulate on their own, so needless to say, when my husband and I wanted children, we knew it would be no easy task.

We started seeing our fertility specialist in May '07, deciding that if my body hadn't spontaneously worked in 6 years, there was no use in waiting around. We did the initial fertility workup; DH (dear husband) was fine, I was obviously anovulatory. We started off with Clomid to induce ovulation. For anyone who is familiar with Clomid, I am sorry...for you and me. And our DH's. The first two rounds of Clomid were failures. I did not ovulate. We were scared but held on to hope that maybe I just needed a stronger dose. It wasn't till our 3rd cycle of Clomid that I actually ovulated. Although we did not get pregnant, we were ecstatic that my body actually had a cycle on its own, for the first time in almost 6 years. Three more cycles of clomid, all the way up to the max dose of 200mg, and nothing. Yeah, we were terrified. What if nothing worked? How would we afford it? The RE's office is 4 hours round trip. We were scared and frustrated.

My RE decided it was time for us to move on to Injectables hormones, Follistim to be exact. What did that entail? About 16 hours worth of driving in one week. A lot of time off work. My DH giving me shots in my stomach with bruises as my battle scars. But guess what?? We got our miracle! I will never ever forget that day in my entire life. On April 17, 2008, one week after my husband's birthday, we got our very first BFP. We had never been so happy in our entire life but sadly, it wasn't meant to last. On May 5, 2008, we had our hearts ripped from our bodies. That will be yet another day that will live with me for the rest of my life. We lost our baby. We never made it to the first ultrasound, which was supposed to be one week later. I had never been more scared in my entire life. For three weeks, we watched my hormone levels fall and then rise and then I had to have a D&C. It was the hardest thing I had ever experienced. Sad doesn't explain it. Heart broken barely scratches the surface.

While battling IF, bitterness is just a norm. You don't want to feel anger and jealousy over those who are blessed with what you want most, but you just can't escape it. My bitterness and anger got worse. Sadness consumed me. We went to church on that mother's day, and I collapsed upon hearing the preacher say, "look at all these pregnant women up on the stage".

My husband, my rock, is how I survived. How I keep surviving. How I keep hope. We started to heal and became excited with starting our next treatment. We couldn't wait. Again, Follistim, our doctor and God brought us our second miracle. On August 9, 2008 I took a test and those two beautiful lines appeared. I was so happy, so blessed....and so terrified. I started Lovenox (a blood thinner) after a blood test confirmed pregnancy. On August 27, we found out we had been blessed twice. Twins. With two beautiful heartbeats. I knew the chance of m/c went down significantly after seeing the heartbeats, so I breathed just a little easier. We were so happy. Then our happiness was ripped away from us two days later. I woke up to bleeding. On the u/s, we had lost one of the twins but the other still had a heartbeat. We held on to hope that God would let us keep our one remaining miracle. But for some reason, which I will never understand, we went back 4 days later for another ultrasound...empty uterus. My heart stopped. I felt like it turned to stone.

I sit here now with that unbelievable tightness in my throat and tears in my eyes. I still can't believe they are gone. That it happened again. All I can think about is why us? What did we do to deserve this? WHY US? That question doesn't get answered. I can scream it at the top of my lungs and I will not get a response. It will not make things better. And it doesn't bring my heart any relief. Looking at our best friends in the world (who are having their first baby 2 weeks after we would have had ours), being jealous and asking "Why us?" does nothing. So the title I chose seems appropriate. Because being angry, bitter and asking why isn't helping me. I haven't been able to move past this. And I don't know when the pain will lessen or when the fear will stop consuming me. But what I do know, and what I must tell myself everyday, is that we WILL have our baby and it will have 3 guardian angels looking over it.

Where are we now? We saw our RE yesterday and we got the karyotyping tests done and finished out the Recurrent Pregnancy Loss panel. I have to have a hysterosonogram towards the end of October. Hopefully soon thereafter, we will have an idea of when the next treatment begins. We will keep on keeping on until we have our baby in our arms.