Before getting married we started fostering to adopt a 5 year old girl. I knew her mother, she had a son with my brother. We loved this girl and the idea of growing our family so after getting married we immediately stopped using any preventative measures to gain pregnancy. After a year of trying, we decided to see a specialist and went through all the tests. Our results showed that we were infertile with a male factor. Intrauterine insemination (IUI), a type of artificial insemination, was not an option. Our fertility doctor said we had less than a 10% chance of getting pregnant naturally and believed in vitro fertilization (IVF) was our only hope. On top of this poor news from the specialist, our little girl’s mother changed her mind about letting us adopt her. She wanted her back at the end of the school year. We were crushed, so we put our energy into having a baby.
“During IVF, an egg is removed from the woman's ovaries and fertilized with sperm in a laboratory. The fertilized egg, called an embryo, is then returned to the woman's womb to grow and develop.” It sounded so simple with a high chance of working. We were excited until we started to learn more about the process and expenses! Depending on your needs, a single IVF cycle can cost $30,000 or more. More often, the total bill will fall somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000.
Thankfully our insurance at the time covered 3 rounds of IVF at 90%. How amazing! We were so excited and immediately started the IVF journey, but then there were needles… I have always been proud of my ‘toughness’. Only daughter with two brothers, it kind of just happens. But needles? Sheesh. My first time ever having an IV inserted was as a young adult to get my wisdom teeth removed. I was so afraid that they prescribed me something to ‘calm my nerves’ before arriving. I don’t remember much once I started seeing birds and butterflies, but I do remember being in the room and a doctor walking in and asking if I was ready. My mother said that I responded ‘no, they have to put the IV,’ which apparently had been placed ten to fifteen minutes before he walked in. So even in my drugged state, I was very much worried about this needle going into my arm.
IVF has a very precise schedule and consists of several steps. Step 1, control ovarian hyperstimulation (COH). This step involves ALL the needles! Multiple injections per day for 8-10 days; numbers vary depending on individual treatment plans. There was no way I was going to be able to give myself injections, however, my husband was slightly overly willing to give them to me. He really did a great job, and the injections themselves burned for a bit then felt fine. It was the constant bloated feeling that bothered me the most! Typically, the ovaries are around 2-3 cm or 1 inch in diameter. The size of the ovaries can increase to as large as 10 cm or 4-5 inches during this step! This step is important to generate as many mature eggs as possible for the next step.
Step 2, egg retrieval. This step can be equally stressful. Retrieval day was tough because we would find out how many eggs, or opportunities, we might have to have a baby. Thankfully we had like 18 eggs retrieved! We were very excited going into the next step. Step 3, fertilization and embryo culture. This step was a waiting game; how many eggs would actually fertilize? Out of 18 eggs retrieved, only 5 successfully fertilized, which led to step 4, embryo quality. Only TWO of our 5 fertilized eggs were of good quality and could move into step 5, embryo transfer. This meant we had zero that we could freeze for the future. Pretty disappointing, but we were still very hopeful.
Embryo transfer day! Lots of mixed feelings on this day. Excited about the idea of ‘becoming pregnant’, but worried about everything that could possibly go wrong and having no control of the outcome. I remember the staff being just as excited as we were. Very positive and uplifting. We had two quality embryos and decided that we would have both transferred to increase our chances of getting pregnant. We left the office that day and entered into the dreaded two week wait.
If you have ever gone through a ‘two week wait’, then you know the torture. As a woman, I tried to pay attention to every single feeling/sign that my body could possibly show me that I had become pregnant. The specialist does not recommend taking a home pregnancy test because they are not as sensitive as the blood test they would do and might discourage us with a false negative. But who follows doctors orders in a time like this!? We did wait until closer to our blood draw date, and did I mention it was Christmas Eve?! How special would it be to find out that we were expecting our first baby on Christmas Eve? Well we did. And it is one of the happiest memories of my life.
When the doctor called with blood test results and confirmed I was pregnant, we were already on cloud nine! It was just icing on the cake at that point. We were going to be parents! Something we thought would not ever happen to us. Our families were so excited to hear the news. Friends were happy for us, knowing how much we wanted to have a family. We were going to have a family!
Have you ever read about all the things that can go wrong during a pregnancy? I don’t recommend it. I went from excited to worried in a short time, thanks in part to my type A mind. Reading all the things that I shouldn’t eat, activities that pose a potential risk, genetic mutations that can happen. My baby was just a blob of cells and I was already worried for their safety. As time went by, and we graduated from seeing the specialist weekly, the worry subsided and joy and excitement filled my heart.
Gender! What will our baby be? This was such a fun experience. We wanted to find out the gender along with family and friends and chose to have a popular gender reveal party. Also, my husband is cajun and loves any excuse to have a party. Well boys ruled our families. Our siblings both had sons! Boys everywhere! No girls. We were not so secretly hoping for a girl, just to diversify the grandchildren a little bit, but we were having a boy! Just learning the gender made this whole thing feel that much more real. We were going to have a baby and our baby was going to be a boy!
Fast forward to nine months, large and pregnant, we decided to stop at our local grocery store before going home after a friend’s birthday dinner. As we were walking into the store I stopped and my husband looked at me as I said to myself, “I don’t think I just peed on myself?”. He looked confused, maybe it was my question to myself or the three margaritas he had at dinner, but he asked me if my water broke. “No no, couldn’t be. The doctor said that isn’t likely to happen. Let’s go get the bacon.” I really wanted to have bacon the next day.
As we waited in the check out line, 10 o’clock at night, a rush of liquid went down my leg. I looked at my husband, who seemed shocked and confused, and I said “Get the bacon, I’ll be in the truck.” Priorities. As I waited in the truck with fluid continuing to escape my body, I couldn’t help but think of the truck. Who was gonna dry this up? I have a tendency to have random thoughts like this sometimes and often voice them.
When my husband got to the truck, he was slightly out of breath because he was practically running and said “Sorry! The lady was slow and I told her that my wife’s water just broke and that you were waiting for me, but I don’t think she believed me.” Oh my gosh! Love this man!
We were both super excited and felt the need to rush home, get our bags and head to the hospital! We had never done this before, and really didn’t know what to expect, but the movies always expressed a sense of urgency when a woman’s water breaks, so here we were! Racing to the hospital just like we were in a movie. Did I mention previously that my husband had 3 margaritas at dinner? Well, I was in no condition to drive, so he was the driver. Thankfully at this point it was nearing midnight, so the roads were dead. It was a Saturday night and the most traffic we saw was a long line at a popular 24 hour burger place. My husband drove us to the hospital, emergency flashers on the whole way.
Arriving at the hospital, we had no idea what to do with ourselves. Do we park in the emergency lane and rush inside? No, that would block ambulances. Does he let me out by the door and park the truck? No, I did not want to wait alone or go inside by myself. Do we take everything inside with us now, or will we have time to get things later before the baby comes? I am an overthinker. Every possible outcome or opportunity usually comes to mind and I have to sort them and make choices.
We decided to park in the closest spot we could find and walked together. We went into the emergency entrance, I walked up to the lady at the window and said “My water broke.” I think I expected her to gain a sense of alarm and rush to find me a wheelchair and roll me into a delivery room, but that is not at all what happened. She gave me a clipboard and told me to have a seat and fill it out… Are you kidding me? I am leaking bodily fluids, I am clearly large and pregnant, and did the pre-registration paperwork! What is the for? Anyway, I sat down and filled out the paperwork. I am very much a rule follower and do not like confrontation.
After what felt like forever, she asked us to follow her to labor and delivery. I remember her saying that she would get me a wheelchair but I could walk just fine. I wonder if anyone slipped on my amniotic fluid trail?
Labor and delivery floor. Again, I don’t know what I expected, maybe the sounds of babies and mothers yelling during deliveries, but it was very quiet and peaceful. I was taken into my room, given a gown, and a very sweet nurse made sure I had all the things connected to me to monitor baby and labor. My body had never done this before and it showed. In spite of my water breaking, contractions were just not starting on their own. This led to Pitocin, aka torture juice.
I went from day dreaming about seeing my sweet boy to struggling with a pain like I have never experienced. You haven’t heard me mention a birth plan because I didn’t have one. We were going to ‘wing it’ apparently. We felt like the trained medical professionals would know what to do and we would follow their directions. This meant that I was open to natural childbirth, without an epidural. Pitocin killed that option. There was no way I was going to continue to suffer. Bring me the meds! And just like an angel descending from heaven, the anesthesiologist appeared. Hallelujah!
I definitely forgot to mention that my parents came to the hospital that night. I am their only daughter and they were excited to meet my first child. My wonderful mother chose to take on the role of letting me know when I was experiencing contractions by monitoring the machine readings. I let her know that I was aware due to the pain that I was feeling. When this angel anesthesiologist appeared, she went on to boast about how she had 3 children without an epidural. I think she wanted a cookie or award of some sort for her accomplishment. I didn’t. I wanted to not feel contractions anymore.
Through agonizing pain, the angel anesthesiologist required that I sit up and be completely still. Sure thing buddy, except that when a contraction starts up it causes me to cripple over in pain! Can you believe he had the nerve to get upset with me for not being completely motionless? Note the ‘he’. This angel was a man, which meant he never had or never would experience this pain. Luckily for him I needed him there, so I did my best, remained motionless through tears, and received my epidural. Talk about euphoria! I was not a fan of not being able to move my legs, but was so happy to lay there without pain from contractions.
At this point it was about 5 in the morning. We were high on adrenaline, delirious from exhaustion and excited to meet our boy. All the rushing to get there, pain to get contractions going, just to be told to relax and wait. Were they serious? Relax and wait? How can I relax when I don’t know what to expect to happen next? Three margaritas at dinner guy had no trouble falling asleep. My mother, also a frequent napper, was able to relax and sleep. It was just me and my daddy awake. We watched ‘I Love Lucy’ reruns together and sat in silence. We are alike in that way. We don’t have to talk a lot to know we enjoy each other’s company. So we waited.
I must have dozed off because I remember feeling startled when the nurse came in, followed by a doctor and a few other people in scrubs. It was time to push! This was it! It was happening. My parents were asked to wait in the waiting room, I requested this before they arrived with the nurse. I wanted this experience to be ours. We went through quite the journey to get here, and I wanted it to be a special memory to share between us.
After 13 minutes of pushing, our boy was here! They took him over to the cart to clear his airway, warm him up, weigh and measure him. I just watched. I had so many thoughts going through my mind. Why does he look so gray? Why is his head slightly cone shaped? Why is his face so scrunched looking? Clearly I had never seen a baby fresh from the womb and had questions.
After they cleaned him up, they brought him over to me and I melted. Holding him in my arms for the first time changed my life. Things in my life that had previously consumed me suddenly seemed so insignificant. The only thing that mattered was this little boy and how much he would need me. I had never felt love like this. This was motherly love. I was meant for this.
Fast forward two years, two amazing years being a momma, we were ready to try for another baby! We met with our specialist and found out that our insurance had changed! They were only going to cover one more round of IVF. This was upsetting, but after success with our first round we weren’t too worried.
We went through the entire process again. Each stage exactly the same as our first round, even having only two of quality to transfer and none to freeze. This startled us a bit more this time knowing that our insurance would not cover a third round, but we were still confident that things would go our way, and we would get pregnant.
Things did not go our way. There is no way to know why it was unsuccessful. It just happens this way sometimes. We were devastated. Yes we were so thankful to have our son, and reminded ourselves that some couples were not so lucky to have even one child. I wish this would have been comforting enough, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t fair that we knew IVF could work for us to grow our family, but we could not afford it without insurance coverage. After days of feeling sad and then angry, we finally decided that we would just save up. It might take years, but it was worth giving it a shot to have another baby.
The very next month, on my birthday actually, I had noticed that I didn’t have a period since the failed IVF, and out of curiosity, decided to take a pregnancy test that we had left over. IT WAS POSITIVE! How did this happen?! We were thrilled and confused. Did the IVF process work and there was a false negative blood test? We called the specialist to tell them the news and they immediately scheduled us for a blood test. It confirmed, POSITIVE! The doctor said this pregnancy was unrelated to the IVF cycle that failed, and could not explain how or why, but only that it happened.
Nine months later, our beautiful baby girl was born. The only girl out of nine grandchildren for my parents, and the second out of ten on my husband’s side. That definitely meant there was some spoiling. Our little family of four was complete. Or so we thought…
When our girl was only 9 months old, I got pregnant! How did this happen? We weren’t supposed to be able to get pregnant naturally. Our girl was a lucky, failed IVF cycle gift. Well we went in for our first ultrasound at 9 weeks and the technician said that she would get the doctor, never really talking with us about what she saw. The moment she walked out of the door my heart sunk. I knew something was wrong. When the doctor came in I could tell that she was being careful with her words. Measurements were not what they should be, but she wanted us to wait two weeks and come back in for a check up.
That was the worst two weeks. Remembering my two week wait during IVF, the excitement and anticipation, this made me feel sick. Not knowing if my baby was growing or if it was already ‘gone’. Then there was some guilt, we weren’t planning this. We were not ‘wanting’ another baby when we found out we were pregnant, our daughter was only 9 months old. But once we found out, we were excited. Now that it might change, we tried to prepare ourselves for the worst. It was the worst. Our baby had stopped growing at 9 weeks. We were then given the option to have a procedure to remove the ‘fetus’ or let my body do it on its own. I chose to let my body handle it naturally.
I had no idea what a woman goes through during a miscarriage, but it is so much more than physical. It is such an emotional experience. I left that appointment so sad. Did I do something wrong? Was this because we really didn’t plan to have another baby or know if we wanted another baby? I knew that this happens to women all the time, and knew that I had done nothing wrong. It just happens. I cried and kept to myself a lot for the next week or so. When my body recognizably did pass the ‘fetus’. I was so emotional. I remember looking at it in the bathroom trying to decide what to do. The doctor said just flush. I balled as I flushed knowing that it was supposed to be my baby.
Over the next several years, I struggled a lot with ‘should we have one more kid?’ Literally on the fence about it for years. It was a monthly conversation. My husband and I are both one of three children, and always talked about having three because we liked growing up with two siblings. There were many factors to consider; expenses, time, living situation, daycare. The biggest concern for me was actually more of a fear. What if we couldn’t have another baby? I could not go through another miscarriage. What if we decided ‘yes, we are going to have one more’ but actually couldn’t get pregnant at all? This fear was my excuse to say no for a very long time.
About a year and a half ago, my mother in law finally decided to move in with us! We have been pressing her for years. Even saying “we’ll have another baby if you move so you can watch them”. Well sold her house and was coming! This was kind of our final push to make a decision on baby #3. A lot of our logical reasons wouldn’t be a factor if she cared for the baby and lived with us. So, facing our fear, we decided to go for it and if it was meant to be we would have another baby.
Her middle name is Grace and she completes our family perfectly. Watching our older children with her is the best feeling. They are so sweet and gentle. We often look at them and reflect on the days when we thought we may never have any. We are so very thankful for each of them. I can’t remember life before them and definitely could not imagine it without them.
