Emily's Story - Part 1

The start to a beautiful story.  I hope that Emily continues to share her story and that is it able to provide insight into the feelings of someone battling with infertility.   
Thank you!  Your strength could inspire an army. 
 

Emily's Story - Part 1

This was not in the plan. The plan. Oh the plan. I had it all laid out by the time I was 14 (that was 1999). I was going to find my college sweetheart and then marry him after I graduated college…full honors of course. A few years after that we were going to make babies and lots of them. I wanted, no, I want 4, yes 4. I had my whole explanation planned out too. Not 1, I didn’t want an only child, Not 2, I had grown up with just 2 kids (we are 13 months a part - we hated each other until I moved away for college) and when you are fighting with your sibling, there is no one else to play with, Not 3, I didn’t want to have a middle child, so 4, both my parents had grown up in 4 children families and they seemed to be doing well. :)

So back to the plan…I found my college sweetheart in 2005…I didn’t anticipate him being almost 9 years older than me, but you can’t help who you fall in love with. I clued him in on “the plan” and he loved it, thought it was great, perfect, it would work for us. There was just one problem, he wanted 5 children. He had grown up as only child and he wanted his own basketball team. I told him that he could give birth to the 5th child and he said if technology had advanced that far by the time the 5th child came around, he would gladly do it. With that, I knew I had found the love of my life.

So why all the back story you might ask, I just wanted to show you how far back the plan goes and where I am now. You might also wonder why I add humor to my story…certainly it is not a laughing matter…but I determined a long time ago, if I do not laugh then I might as well give up on life and let the grief/fear/sorrow consume me and I’m not about to let that happen.

So again…back to the plan…we married in the fall of 2009. I knew I had to change my plan a bit. Initially I wanted to wait a year and a half before we started to make babies. But, given that Mr. Man was quite a bit older and didn’t want to be having kids when he was 40 (he was 32 and I was 23 when we married), we need to get ‘busy’. So I waited about 5 months and in March of 2010 on his 33rd birthday I told him I wanted to start trying. We were ecstatic! We did everything most couples do at this time…I’ll spare you the details.

Unfortunately, we made the terrible mistake of telling our families and closest friends that we were trying to conceive. Six months passed and still no baby. From our friends and families we kept getting the ‘You just need to relax,’ ‘You should be having sex this many times’ and ‘Are you pregnant yet?’ At eight months, I started googling. ‘How long does it typically take a woman to conceive?’ ‘How long do I wait to see a specialist?’ ‘How to get pregnant.’ It is then that I leaned that after a year has passed, you should consult a specialist. So in March of 2011 we went specialist hunting. It helped that Mr. Man’s mom had a lot of expertise in this area, she had miscarried more times than fingers. Mr. Man is what we like to call a miracle baby.

We made an appointment with the fertility specialist (let’s call her Specialist #1) that was covered in my network of doctors on my insurance, because if you haven’t figured it out yet, as I’m sure some of you will, fertility treatments are expensive and I needed all the help my medical could give me. At the time my medical would pay for $2000 of my fertility needs. We went in to see Specialist #1 and decided that we were both going to get tested, might as well. So we did all the obligatory tests and answered all the questions and they took blood, so much blood. Any one who doesn’t know, I’m deathly afraid of needles, so up to that point that was one of the hardest things that I had ever had to do. I also had my first of many vaginal sonograms. Turns out my uterus is tilted to the right, my right ovary is where it is supposed to be and my left ovary is way off to the side (by my hip bone). All of which, I was assured, was fine.

A little side note…I was 24 at this point…every nurse and I mean EVERY nurse kept commenting on how I was so young. At the time I thought nothing of it, I mean yeah…I was 24, this is the last place I should be…I mean I wasn’t 35!! (that was old back then ;-P ) Also, up to this point I had never had an irregular period, I mean I was as regular as the moon, you could even set your watch to my period…if periods had a poster child, it would have been me.

So after Specialist #1 runs our labs; turns out, Mr. Man has perfect semen, like 99th percentile perfect, like if they took the SAT they would get a 1599 or 1600. So I guess it was all my fault! So Specialist #1 was as nice as she could be as she explained to me that they would need more tests because my initial results were inconclusive…what does that mean? So while we were waiting on labs to come back she immediately recommends an IUI (Intrauterine Insemination). Which basically means at my time of ovulation, they squirt Mr. Man’s semen up my vaginal cavity. By the way…if you haven’t figured it out yet…Specialist #1 wasn’t very good, but what did I know…it was my first specialist. I barely had time to react and take in my infertility before she set me up for a procedure.

So we prepare for the IUI. They put me on Clomid, which I later found out is not good…at all…the side effects are worse than any other drug out there. Clomid is from the 50s and its success rates are low…so low. When you do an IUI they have you take an ovulation test so that they can determine the precise time when to inseminate you, but just in case they schedule you on a specific day in your cycle. My first clue should have been when I took the ovulation test, I always got negative…always. So they called me a day before and asked if I had gotten a positive test, I had not, so we went for the procedure any ways. And surprise, surprise, no pregnancy. Nothing.

Specialist #1 wouldn't give up that easily, so she decides on a dye test. In a dye test, they inject a florescent dye into your uterus that they can see in an X-ray. They mainly do this test to see if there is an issue with your fallopian tubes; to make sure that they are not blocked, etc. We do the test and the dye goes down my tubes and empties into my ovaries, so that was a win. Specialist #1 decides that’s great and starts me on another round of IUI and just ups the dosage of Clomid. I’m sure you can guess how that went…no pregnancy.

My labs finally arrive back at this point (they sent them off to be crazy tested??) and it turns out I have really low hormone levels…like pre-menopausal low. Turns out, a woman at my age level (24) has a 78% chance of conceiving a child naturally. My chances…11% and will only decrease as I get older. So what did this mean to Specialist #1? Another cocktail of drugs will do the trick! So into Round 3 of IUI and of course…no pregnancy. It was at this point that we had run out of money for the year. We had drained all of my savings and what little money we had left from what we received at our wedding. So we started saving again in hopes that next year we could pick up where we left off. What was I left with? The most empty feeling, I would never be able to conceive my own children by myself. I felt like I had let down my husband and my family. Where was my plan now?

Thank you for reading. I would just like to thank the creator of this blog for the strength she has shown in being able to put her thoughts to metaphoric paper and share her story. When she first told me that she was going to create this blog, I was in shock, although I hid it well, I think. I couldn’t imagine sharing my story, my private story that I didn’t want any one but my closest of close friends and family to know about. It took me 3 years before I was openly able to share my story; 3 years of holding on and internalizing my suffering because I didn’t want anyone to know. I was just so embarrassed, the one thing we are supposed to do, reproduce, I could not do. Her story and the many others I have heard and read posted here, help me to begin to let go. I hope you find comfort in my story the way I have in many others. I am so glad that this blog gives people an opportunity to share their thoughts, feelings and hopes. Part 2 to come soon.

Jen's Story - Baby Abigail

A special thanks to Jen for sharing her story.  I very much agree "With God all things are possible" and you and your Rainbow Baby are proof. 

Last Wednesday was Baby Abigail’s 2^nd birthday in heaven.  Unfortunately our/her story is far too common.  Just like the title of this blog, we thought having a baby was going to be easy.  People get pregnant every day without even trying.  We followed all the “rules”.  We had a five year plan that included buying a house, practice parenting with dogs, and making some advancements in our careers.  We kicked of “The Year of the Baby” with a grand two week trip to Europe.  In my mind we would go on this trip and come home with a souvenir baby.  A baby that would of course be cultured and worldly due to being conceived in Europe.  When it didn’t happen that month I really wasn’t all that upset because it was kind of a crazy dream to begin with.  However, two months later those famous pink lines showed up and changed everything forever.  I had seen tons of creative ideas of how to tell your husband you’re pregnant but when it came down to it I was so excited/nervous/anxious I couldn’t muster any creativity.  So I just handed him the pee stick and started making plans.  I went in to my doc for bloodwork to confirm I was indeed pregnant and everything came back perfect.  A few weeks later, July 18^th (I’ll never forget), we were scheduled for a sonogram.  When the picture came up on the screen, there was nothing there.  Of course it’s not like I had spent a lot of time looking at sonograms so I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at but I knew it wasn’t right.  Shouldn’t there be a gummy bear shaped baby in there?  Aren’t we supposed to hear a heartbeat?  The technician didn’t say anything other than ask when my last period was and then passed us along to my doctor.  She told us that more than likely I had a Blighted Ovum in which the yolk sac and placenta develop but the fertilized egg either stops developing at an early point or never develops at all.  She said that I would naturally miscarry within a few weeks.  I cried the entire way home.  I called my mom.  I laid on the couch on a towel the rest of the day thinking my insides would fall out at any point.  I read far too many articles online about miscarriage and saw far too many references to the baby as “medical waste”.  The physical miscarriage itself wasn’t too horrible I guess.  It took two weeks which seemed like forever but it started slowly and only by the grace of God I was able to mentally block out what was going on with my body.  The big day happened while we were on vacation with family in Georgia.  I somehow managed to get through the day, stopping at every bathroom along the way.  That night though I said I didn’t feel well and stayed home while everyone went to dinner.  I basically rotated between the bed and the bathroom all night.  It was painful mentally and physically.  I cried more than I knew I could cry.  But somehow I knew it wasn’t in our plan to have that baby.

 For me, the mental aspect of this miscarriage far outweighed the physical.  I had a really hard time coping with the fact that I had lost something that I never really had.  It is crazy how attached you become to your baby so quickly and then to have it taken away in an instant.  I have always believed that life begins at conception so I knew in my heart that a life had existed but wasn’t sure to what extent.  I didn’t know how long our baby had lived or how much of our baby had developed. Was our baby a boy or a girl?  I felt an extreme need to acknowledge this life and give our baby the respect he/she deserved.  I firmly believed that our baby’s spirit was in heaven and I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me if I just moved on with my life.  I felt like I was grasping at thin air.  I prayed a lot but what I prayed for the most was to know our baby.  One day God placed the name Abigail in my heart.  It’s not a name that I would have chosen on my own so I knew it was from God.  Just having a name and the identity of a girl made a world of difference.  I could pray for her.  I could grieve her.  I could acknowledge her.  I looked up the meaning of the name Abigail to see why God had chosen that name.  It means “My Father’s Joy”.  In the Bible, Abigail is the wife of King David and is described as intelligent, beautiful and humble.  There’s a lot more to the story but that much sounded good to me.  Even though I felt better about our angel baby, it was still weird to reference those 9 weeks that I had been pregnant.  It was weird to start sentences with “when I was pregnant….” Or “hey remember that time we went to Top Golf when I was pregnant”.  It felt like a vacuum of time that didn’t really exist.  Fast forward a few weeks.  I had recently learned to be open to “God Moments” and to recognize the sometimes small presence of God in every day occurrences.  One of these moments was when I was flipping through the TV channels and came across Joel Osteen talking about the verse Matthew 7:7.  “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”  He made a point that I will never forget that sometimes you have to speak things into truth. I looked up one of the verses he had referenced.

“Have faith in God.  Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.  So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours”

Mark 11:22-24

He specifically said that if you are wanting a baby and it hasn’t been your time yet, that you should buy something for your future baby, thank God for your baby and pray for that baby every day until they show up.  And so we did.  We picked out an adorable froggy outfit from Carter’s.  Teeny tiny pants. Impossibly small bodysuit.  And a silly frog hat.  I hung it from one of the knobs on my dresser.  Every morning I would hold the little froggy close to my heart and pray.  I asked Baby Abigail and Mother Mary to pray with me.  I cannot describe to you the overwhelming peace that this gave me.  I knew in my heart that someday, somehow our baby would wear that little frog outfit.  I didn’t know how or when, but it wasn’t for me to know.  Fast forward a little more…now we are in November.  In the Catholic Church, November 2^nd is celebrated as All Soul’s Day where we pray for the faithfully departed in Purgatory.  I had read and heard a lot of conflicting information about where unborn babies go for their eternal life.  This is a sticky subject I know.  But I had been encouraged by a friend of mine to attend.  The mass was beautiful.  The lights were low.  The music was slow.  Everyone had candles.  At some point in the mass we were encouraged to come to the front and say the name of our departed loved one and place our candle on the steps leading to the alter.  So husband and I cautiously went to the front, said “We pray for Baby Abigail” and set our candle down.  This felt like the end of a long journey.  I had finally found peace with what had happened and had found a way to respect the life that had been given to us for such a short time.  Six days later two pink lines showed up again.  This pregnancy started out a little rocky and at moments I seriously doubted it.  Sometimes it was hard to be excited when I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.  But I kept reminding myself of God’s promise of the rainbow.

Our Rainbow Baby wearing his silly froggy outfit.  With God all things are possible.