P.S. I type very fast and don't claim to be an expert in grammar. lol.
Part III: My third pregnancy and continued battle with infertility.
After my first miscarriage I hoped that I, nor anyone, would have to experience the hurt and confusion that comes along with that type of loss. After talking with the doctor they had no strong evidence to convince themselves or me that if I tried on my own again it would end in a miscarriage. My doctor told me that more than 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage and half of the mothers don't even know it happened because it was so early in the pregnancy. I felt that for now, my husband and I would move on with our lives enjoying the wonderful little blessing we already had and approach the thought of another child at a later time. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans. A year and half later I found out I was pregnant again. My husband and I were both surprised and thrilled! We didn't plan it, expect it, but it was definitely wanted. I visited my doctor to confirm my pregnancy. I was five weeks along and they scheduled my ultrasound for 7 weeks. My blood tests (hcg levels) started out good but were not doubling every 48 hours like they should. The doctor didn't seem to be too concerned about this. He said every woman is different, just because your betas (hcg levels) don't double every 48 hours doesn't mean its not a viable pregnancy and that as long as they keep going up there is no reason for concern. So being the nervous and curious person I am, the research began. I saw that the doctor was right and that there was many stories of successful pregnancies who battled low betas. So I went on with planning the birth of our second child. What would it be? What would we name it? The normal stuff that women go through when they find out their pregnant. My sister-in-law accompanied me to my ultrasound to watch my little man because my husband had to work and it was supposed to be just a routine ultrasound where they measure the baby and make sure I am on track for a successful pregnancy. Well.... as soon as the ultrasound tech pulls up the screen, I had seen that look before. A scared and confused ultrasound tech who knew something was the matter but was not at liberty to tell me since she wasn't my doctor. So I asked the heart wrenching question myself to her, "I don't see or hear a heartbeat?" The way she looked at me with such sorrow and disbelief confirmed my suspicion. I had an empty sac on the screen. At seven weeks that is not normal. You should see a yolk sac, fetal pole and heartbeat. Sometimes its difficult to hear the heartbeat at seven weeks so they will test your betas to confirm the miscarriage. She urged me back to the lab for my blood work. I sat in the dreaded waiting room for my results watching tons of beautiful, happy pregnant women pass me by. That hour seemed like it went on for days. The doctor came in and confirmed the miscarriage. I was scheduled for another D&C since I was so far along. At that point I was almost 7 1/2 weeks. Again, this never gets easier. Calling your husband who is as eagerly excited as you and telling him the bad news is probably the most difficult part of the whole process. Of course he and my family wanted to know what happened. Unfortunately, it is so hard for the doctors to tell at that time. The baby just stopped developing. That day all happened so fast I never had time to grieve. My husband could probably tell you the date and time of the procedure, but I honestly do not even remember the month. After the procedure I did learn was that my eggs do not mature like they should and without the use of fertility I would never be able to get pregnant on my own. Any pregnancy I developed on my own was destined to end in miscarriage. Ugh... what news, way to beat me while I am down! I didn't have such good luck the last time with fertility so the thought of having to go through that again was really upsetting. The crazy thing through all this is I am not an extremely open emotional person so I did not go through the emotional process that you should after having a miscarriage. Don't get me wrong - I did cry and I did grieve, but I felt like God would want me to move on and try to understand that there were so many reasons that pregnancy could have ended. God knew that something was the matter and he didn't want to see me or the baby suffer any longer so he had mother nature step in. What else can you do? I didn't want to doubt the Lords plans but come on... two miscarriages back to back? You begin to feel a little angry and negative. I had to quickly nip that attitude in the butt and be reminded of my blessings around me. I quickly learned that what didn't kill you, would only make you stronger. In conclusion I wanted to share 1 Corinthians 10:13. You know the one that says God won’t give you more than you can bear … But wait a minute, that’s not really what the Bible says. It says you won’t be tempted beyond what you can bear. In life, you will go through situations that are more than you can bear alone. It’s only in those times that we realize our full dependency on God.
Part IIII: Another shot at fertility!
After our two miscarriages, when we felt the time was right we began another fertility treatment to try for our second child. Some people would probably think, why in the world would you put yourself through that again? I can understand their thinking. But if you look into the eyes of your child and tell me you wouldn't do whatever it took to bring them into this world, then you can understand our reasoning. NO matter how many cycles it took or how much money it costs, there is not a price you can put on the beautiful life of a child. Some people are naturally blessed with multiple children, some of us have to work a little harder at it, but we all feel the same about our children. We all wouldn't trade them for the world. My husband and I wanted the same opportunities as those around us and that was to create a sibling for our baby. In January of 2011 we started our first cycle for sibling #1 (I can't say baby # 2 because I have been pregnant with three babies). I was confident in the first cycle. We were doing exactly the same thing we did when we consummated our first child. The shots were taken daily, the pills were taken every night, the doctors visits were twice a week for a month and then we had the IUI (insemination) procedure. After that we just waited for two dreadful weeks. I was put on a progesterone pill which gave you pregnancy symptoms and made your body think it was pregnant. So of course I had all the normal pregnancy symptoms and thought I was pregnant, while like the first three cycles I did with my first child, Aunt Flow (period) showed her ugly face and it was all over. Boo! Another disappointing cycle. Usually they encourage you to do the cycles back to back. But honestly, I was little discouraged. That would have been my fifth fertility cycle in three years and they are expensive and tiring. I thought I was ready to give this a shot, but what I learned was that I needed more time. My body needed a longer break to recover from the emotional ups and downs of my miscarriages and the cycles of fertility. I prayed about it continuously and leaned on the Lord to open the door and let me know when I was ready to start again.
Part IV: And the Lord spoke....
I went in September (9 months later) for my yearly "female" appointment. Lots of talk with my OB who I adore and I walk away knowing that my time is limited to have children. From the two miscarriages, my uterine lining (which is crucial in pregnancy) was thinned out from the scraping of the D&C. My endometriosis had come back pretty heavy and this was going to make it even harder to conceive a child even with fertility. I felt like this was God saying "Let's get the ball rolling". Ok so maybe not exactly what he would say, but in my own interpretation I felt like this was his sign to me that it was alright for me to try again. So I left that appointment and scheduled my next fertility cycle. My fertility doctor reiterated what my OB said after looking at my file and agreed we needed to try and conceive before my endometriosis got worse. So cycle #6 was started and to save you the trouble of reading - we were unsuccessful! My fertility doctor was stunned. He didn't know what else could be done but to go to a more aggressive approach and our last resort - the dreaded In-Vitro Fertilization. Oh I have heard my fair share stories about IVF - for starters the octo-mom thats all over the news. The financial constraints that IVF puts on its patience brings enough stress alone. We really needed to think about this. My doctor said he felt like this was our only option unless we wanted to see if we could have a surrogate try and carry our child later on. Ummm.. not an option in my mind right now. I left that appointment and prayed and prayed and prayed. If it was the Lord's will he would have to show me how this was even possible. For starters - where would we get the money? I think my doctor is great but I am pretty sure he wouldn't do this for free.. ha. And how do I feel about sinking the price of a car into a "chance" that this might be a success. There are no refunds if it doesn't work, there are just the bills left over to pay. Well to make a realllllllyyyyy long stressful decision short, the Lord showed us the financial stability we needed and gave me the emotional support I needed to give this a try. My husband and I did not want to look back in 15 years when our son is older and think that we didn't try EVERYTHING we could have to provide him with someone to share his life with. January of 2012 I started my first IVF cycle and that brings us up to speed too today!!!
Part V: IVF and all its amazement - Our 7th shot at fertility treatments.
Technology can be scary and sometimes "pushing" the edge but in this case, the medical technology used to create IVF gave so many infertile parents the chance at the child they have always wanted. We were one of those couples, trying for a second child, continuing our battle with infertility and taking a chance on amazing breakthroughs in medicine. This is not the time nor place to debate procedures such as IVF, but what I can tell you is that my husband and I are Christians. We relied on God to open the right doors and I firmly believe that without a doubt, he guided us in this direction. Infertility is a disease and it is nothing that I did to bring it on myself. It took me a long time to realize that. But if you believe in the Lord then you believe he made you as you are, flaws and all. So if the opportunity arose for someone to cure a disease they had, in my opinion the Lord would not frown upon that. Especially now there is a lot of debate on IVF and the process of freezing the eggs, but there is a lot of uninformed people and I was one of them until I heavily researched the procedure. What IVF does is what your body already does itself. In the IVF procedure when your follicles reach a certain size, they produce an egg. Women produce these every single month. The IVF procedure is an invasive procedure for women who suffer infertility in egg development. The doctor retrieves the eggs (that a women would release each month if she didn't use anyways) and fertilizes them. My problem is my eggs do not mature like they should. We retrieved 14 good eggs. The test was seeing how long they would make it because my eggs generally don't develop like they should. After five days I only had 4 eggs survive. Of those 4 eggs, 2 were implanted back into me and 2 were frozen - at this point they were not viable pregnancies. An egg is not a viable pregnancy until it attaches to the uterine wall and implants. If I didn't get pregnant this time, I only had 1 more chance (you implant 2 at a time) and that was it for my chance at a sibling for my son. Stressed?? Yeah to the max!!!!
I am now two weeks past my embryo transfer and I found out last Monday I was pregnant. So excited!!! I went Monday for my blood test and my beta was 211 which is really high for only three weeks pregnant, thinking twins!! Then I had to go back in on Wednesday for more blood work because of cramping =( I was really sad, I knew what this meant but I was being optimistic. My ultrasound showed two tiny dots on the screen, looks like twin sacs were trying to form but you could barely see them. Unfortunately, my blood work dropped to 191 instead of doubling to 422. Devastated.. um yeah! But the doctor said he wasn't concluding it a miscarriage yet. He had suspicion that one of the twins didn't make it but there still may be another one. We will see tomorrow at my appointment. At this point I am hoping for the best, but I can feel my bodies pregnancy symptoms slowly disappearing. I would have to say that the hardest thing through this whole procedure is the waiting. I am always at the mercy of a blood test and ultrasound. That gets frustrating at times. But while I sit in the waiting room I am surrounding by people who have no child to go home too and who are on their third or fourth IVF cycle. It brings a lot of things into perspective, one being that the child I have now is truly a miracle and without our persistence and faith in the Lord to guide us, he may not be here and I could be sitting right where they are. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that my betas are high tomorrow! If not, we will cope like we have before and keep our faith and strength in the fact knowing that the Lord has a big plan for my little family! I can feel it in my gut. Let me just add that IVF is not for the weak. It is one of the hardest things I have done. The stress alone will break you. So kuddos to anyone who has had the courage to do IVF.
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