Our IF Story (part 1)

As of tomorrow I will officially be 21 weeks pregnant. This totally blows my mind. I can't believe that literally a year ago I thought I would NEVER be pregnant. It's crazy how much things can change. I want to share our story because while it was difficult and heartbreaking at times. It's something that I don't want to forget. And something that I want our little one to know about and I'm afraid if I don't write it down I will forget. So, not that anyone is actually going to read this... but if you are bear with me because it might get kind of long. I promise that in general I probably won't post crazy long posts. :)

The beginning...
I always wanted to be a mom. My plan was that I'd get married at like 18 over the course of the next few years I'd pop out 4 kids. Well I didn't meet Mr. Right until I was 22.... so that made my timing a little off, but no big deal. I'd grown a lot in the years between 18 and 22 and I wasn't sorry that I didn't get married until I was 23 (which I now realize is still VERY young!). After being married for about 10 months I convinced my sweet hubby that we should stop preventing and just "see" what happens... after all it could take a few months and I didn't want to be an old mom! He didn't want 4 kids, he thought 2 was plenty... so I figured that we'd probably compromise and have 3.
Fast forward a year and a half later and still no BFP. By this point I was truly beside myself, unable to grasp that this could actually be happening to us. After some testing it was determined that our problem was male factor and pretty bad. We both went on Clomid for three months. It was supposed to possibly help hubby's male factor and if it made me extra fertile then that certainly wouldn't hurt anything. Clomid did nothing to help hubby's counts, and it literally made me a crazy person. I had hot flashes and night sweats and every other terrible side effect that that drug can cause. The Dr we were seeing basically said we would have to do IVF, and not just regular IVF, but IVF with ICSI. I was devastated, to say the least. A few months later we had our first visit with a local fertility clinic. Looking at all of our records (which really wasn't too much at this point) they suggested we try a medicated IUI round. We were cautiously optimistic and hopeful that this might just do the trick. The medicated IUI involved me doing a shot every day of an injectable hormone to make sure that I would ovulate and possibly have more than one egg to help our odds out. I was pleasantly surprised that my side effects from the hormone shot were minimal, if any. And everything went smoothly until the day of our procedure. I will never forget laying there as the nurse told us that hubby's counts were so low that this was probably not going to work, but you never know. As I lay there for the 15 minute wait before they let you get up and go home tears just ran down my face. We left there knowing our odds had gone from 1% to a whopping 3% at best. I prayed that God would intervene and that it would work regardless. It did not. And I said that I was done with treatments. I had no desire to try things that wouldn't work, and didn't really feel all that comfortable with IVF.

When you go the valley of infertility, it is a struggle that hurts and leaves you feeling quite helpless. And for those that say, "well you can just adopt". I say, it's just not that easy. But we did our due diligence and looked into every kind of adoption option that we could think of. We went to a meeting for a domestic adoption agency and while what they do is AMAZING, we didn't feel like it was right for us. We looked at international adoption, but the costs were staggering and it again, just did not feel like it was a good fit for us. We finally thought after much prayer and consideration that a foster-adopt program might be a good fit for us. We attended many meetings and filled out TON of paper work. As I went to the meetings and trainings I could not help but notice that most of the people there already had children, and were opening themselves up to foster care because they felt that this was where the Lord had lead them. It seemed that the farther in we got, the less comfortable we were with this option. Almost like we were walking down this path because it was the path that we had started down and we were scarred to change direction even though we weren't really sure about it anymore. Hubby finally came to me one day and said, I know that you are struggling with this and afraid that you are a bad person for wanting so badly to be pregnant, but I am struggling too. I've already dealt with a lot of loss in my life and I am concerned that having children in and out of our home and not knowing what ever happened to them would be too much for me to deal with. He assured me that foster adoption was something that we could do at a later time, it just didn't feel right for this time in our lives. It was also around this time that a wonderful woman who did not know that we were struggling with infertility emailed me and basically said, "I'm sorry if this is weird but I feel very led to let you know that the Lord has placed it on my heart to pray for you to become pregnant."

By this point we had been trying to conceive for almost four years and we felt very much like we were stuck. We did not know what to do. It was at this time that I started to research embryo adoption/donation. It seemed like an interesting option. Much less expensive than IVF, and you still get to be pregnant and experience everything that goes a long with that. Yes, there were no guarantees, but nothing in life has a guarantee and it seemed much easier for us to deal with a loss where we knew the out come (heaven) versus always wondering what happened (foster care). Through my research I came across a blog that mentioned a Dr that did embryo donation at his clinic and he seemed like he had a lot of success. Only bummer was that his clinic was about three hours away. We set up a meeting with him and felt very comfortable with him and what he had to say about our situation, embryo donation, and IVF. He laid out our options as he saw them from the tests that we had done and the records that we brought with us. And it quickly became very clear to us that we had two real options... embryo donation, or IVF. And it was something that we wrestled with for about four months. During this time I also had laproscopic surgery to remove some endometriosis that Dr. K discovered I had.

Ultimately after much prayer and council we decided to move forward with IVF. I can't really explain how we knew what to do, other than God lead us. And I strongly believe that everyone who deals with infertility is lead down the path that is right for THEM, and is part of Gods plan for THEM. Not everyone is called to the same solution. And no solution is BETTER than another, they are just simply BETTER for that family. It is also something that you have to agree upon as a COUPLE. I had to learn to submit to my husband and some of his concerns. And he had to learn about leading us as a couple. There are no easy answers, and in a perfect world this would not be something that anyone would have to wrestle with.

IVF
This process is crazy... and any fears I had about "playing God" were quickly put aside when I saw that no one can really play God in this process. There are so many variables and things that have to go just right for the whole process to work. And I had to learn yet again to trust, and know that even if it didn't work, God would still be God, and He would still be GOOD. For this process I was on a LOT of medications. I became an expert at giving myself shots and for the most part the side effects weren't too bad. We did spend a lot of time driving back and forth to our clinic. But it was a time that I will always treasure. I love my husband and having that special one on one time traveling with him was so special. We made the most of it and found new favorite places to eat and looked forward to EVERY Star.bucks stop. Things went very smoothly. I remember being SO nervous at every visit. Wondering how my eggs were doing and hoping that enough would mature, but not too many because that can make you sick. On the day of our egg retrieval they were able to get 28 eggs! About 10 of them were not mature enough to use, but still having 18 to fertilize was so encouraging. And then the longest 24 hours of my life, waiting to hear how many had actually started dividing. The lab finally called and said we had 14 little babies growing. Oh what joy. For the first time that we had knowledge of we were parents. They didn't check the embryos again until 48 hours later, at this phone call we had 12 that were still growing. Some looked really good and some not so good, which is to be expected. The morning of our embryo transfer was very anti-climatic for me. I thought I would be excited but instead I just felt blah. I think looking back that it was because this was the end of the journey so to speak. There wasn't anything more for me to do, other than hormone shots and patches, it was just a waiting game from this point on. We learned at our transfer that out of the 12 only two had reached the 5 day blast stage. I was initially bummed that more didn't get to the blast stage, but I know feel that God spared us for having to try and decide which two embryo's to use. They assured us that they would let the rest of them keep growing and then freeze them as they reached the blast stage. The next day the lab called and said that 4 more embryos had gone to blast and were going to be frozen for future use. They didn't think that the rest of them would continue to divide but they would just wait and see what happened. The day that we left to come home from the transfer we got the call that the remaining embryo's had stopped growing. I remember holding hands in the car and crying for our little babies that did not make it. We decided then and there to stop and buy a few pregnancy tests. We knew we wouldn't need them right away, but it seemed like an optimistic thing to do.

Waiting
It was a long 10 day wait to see if our two little embryo's were going to stick around. I didn't really feel pregnant, and so I just prayed and tried to enjoy the time that I had with them. After all I was "technically" pregnant. I finally caved and on day 8 I took a HPT test. The line was SO faint that I wasn't really sure if it was there, but I had seen quite a few negative tests, so I knew that it was different from those. The next morning I took another one, this one was a little darker. And on the morning of my blood test I took yet another test. This one was the darkest so far. So while I knew that my HCG numbers might not be very good, I felt pretty good that there had to be some HCG in my system or I wouldn't be getting any lines on the HPT's. We my blood draw at a lab in Bakersfield and then I went to work. I know I'm crazy, but I just felt that sitting at home would make me crazier. At about 9:50 that morning I got the best news of my life. My blood work was positive and my level was at a 77. As the nurse put it, I was definitely pregnant!