I'm in a "life after infertility" mommy Facebook group that actually has a lot of my blogger friends. It's been amazing to connect with this group of ladies that have all struggled with infertility in some way. It has been a huge support network for all of us in the group, and I now consider these gals very good friends.
This last week, everyone was assigned a day to write and share their biography, detailing each person's infertility journey (this will continue for a few weeks so everyone has a chance to share). Most of us are familiar with each other's story already, but it's been a great exercise to look back and remember all the struggles we went through to get our precious babies.
After writing my biography last week, I thought it would be fun to share it here as well. For some of you, it may just be a recap if you've been reading my blog for awhile. Maybe for others, this will be the first time you've heard my whole infertility story.
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Tony and I met our first week of college at Western Oregon
University, when I was just 17 years old, in 1992. He was 19.
We dated for 5 years before getting married in 1997, and have now been
married for 18 years this September. I
went off bcp a little over a year after being married. Another few years down the road, I ended up
having surgery to remove a cyst on one of my ovaries. We went through some testing and were told
that while it wasn’t impossible for us to get pregnant on our own, it was highly
unlikely. At the time, we thought it was
mostly due to Tony’s low sperm quality and count. We couldn’t afford treatments at the time so
we spent several years with me temping
and doing timed intercourse. Eventually
we tapered off doing that and pretty much left it in God’s hands. We definitely weren’t preventing, but we
didn’t do a whole lot other than have sex and pray.
We spent YEARS coaching softball together. We invested our time into those softball
girls. They were our family. They were our kids that we couldn’t
have. However, once the majority of
those girls graduated, they moved on with their lives and other than some
Facebook contact here and there, we lost them.
We do have a few that have remained close, but it is just not the same
as having your own kids.
In October of 2011, I turned 37 and 3 days later, I had the
honor of watching my sister give birth to her third child. This was actually the second birth I was
witness to, as I’d also been there for the birth of her second child as well. (I missed my niece’s birth because our
softball team qualified for Nationals and she came early!) Between me turning another year older and
watching the miracle of my nephew being born, I couldn’t stop thinking about
how I didn’t want to end up in my 40’s/50’s and living with regrets that we
didn’t try absolutely EVERYTHING to have a baby. Tony and I had pretty much resigned ourselves
to the fact it just wasn’t going to happen for us, but after talking with him
about how I was feeling, he said “let’s do it!”
So after 12+ years of trying and hoping for a baby, then
pretty much giving up on it, we had our first consultation with our RE in
November of 2011. We did one IUI, which
everyone expected to fail, and it did.
Our fist IVF was the beginning of 2012.
5 eggs were retrieved, and we had 3 embryos that barely made it for a
day 3 transfer. All 3 were
transferred. On the morning of beta #1,
I started spotting and I knew it was my period.
Tony didn’t understand why I was still making the hour drive to the
clinic for the beta if AF was coming, but I went anyway. At the clinic, they told me that spotting can
be normal. That afternoon, I got the
call that I was pregnant! I called Tony
at work to tell him and he started crying.
He left work early and surprised me with flowers. This was a Friday. On Monday, I went back for my second
beta. This time the phone call was to
tell me I was NOT pregnant. I had a
chemical pregnancy.
Two cycles later was our attempt at IVF #2. We did not even make it to retrieval. At the suppression check, I had 8
follicles. After stemming, I only had
one measly follicle that made it out of the gate, so it turned into failed IUI
#2.
At this point, it seemed totally insane to continue wasting
money if I wasn’t going to produce enough eggs due to my diminished ovarian
reserve. Donor eggs was something
neither one of us ever wanted to consider, but it turns out that when that’s
potentially your only path to parenthood, you start looking at things
differently. My sister was willing to be
an egg donor for us, but we weren’t sure if using her as a known donor or instead using an
anonymous donor would be our best option.
Ultimately, we came to the decision to use my sister as our donor. It was our best chance and the closest route
to getting a little Amber and Tony. My
sister and I look a lot alike. In fact,
we have been asked many times if we are twins, but she is actually 5 years
younger.
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| With my sister, right after my nephew was born. |
November 30, 2012 was our baby making day. Out of 14 eggs retrieved, 9 were mature. Of those 9, we got 5 fertilized embryos. Of those 5, one didn’t cleave, so we were
left with 4. We transferred 2 embryos on
December 3, 2012. We were not left with
a lot of hope that the other 2 embryos would make it to freeze. Our clinic never freezes before day 6, and
they weren’t optimistic for these other 2 embryos making it. However, 3 days later, we got a call from the
embryologist and one of the embryos was growing strong and met all criteria to
be saved. The other was very borderline
and didn’t hit the milestones they were looking for, but they would keep it
since they like to freeze the embryos in pairs anyway.
On December 11th, I got my first positive pee
stick. On December 17th, the
bfp was confirmed with a positive beta.
Our first ultrasound at 6w3d was disappointing. We could see the sac and fetus, but there
wasn’t a confirmed heartbeat. A week
later was the second ultrasound, the fetus was measuring a little small, but
there was a heartbeat of 108. The third
ultrasound however, was excellent! We had
a strong heartbeat of 153 and the measurements were on track. At the last ultrasound appointment with our
RE a week later, we found out that Bob was dead. (That’s what Tony named the baby, so we
weren’t just calling it, IT.) I had a
D&C and chromosomal testing showed that the baby had Trisomy 18. Ironically, it came from the donated egg, a
less than 1% chance of happening.
My sister found out she was pregnant the day after our third
ultrasound where we had gotten good news.
Her plan was to wait until after we made our own pregnancy announcement
to share her news. She wanted me to have
my moment in the spotlight. It
devastated her when she found out that Bob was dead. She waited a little over a week to tell me
she was pregnant. Just one month after
donating her eggs to us, she got pregnant with her fourth. They had planned to have a fourth baby, but
didn’t think it would happen so soon. It
was a very hard time for us both. There
was no blame. It was just so unfair that
Tony and I couldn’t have kids of our own.
It was also unfair that the joy was sucked right out of their own happy
time, when my sister and her husband should have been happy and celebrating
their last baby that they had always planned on having.
On March 13, 2013, I went in for a Saline Infusion Sonogram
and got the all clear for our May FET. I
spent the next few months coaching softball, while I was also preparing for
that FET. On May 24th, we
transferred those last two embryos and I officially considered myself pregnant
that day. It was our very last chance of
having children. After this, we were
done. I couldn’t ask my sister to donate
again, and we were at our limit of what we could afford to take out in
loans. It had to work!
At 4dp6dt I took my first hpt and got a very faint
line. Over the course of the next week,
I watched that line get darker and darker.
I shared the tests with Tony, but he remained very neutral and wasn’t at
all excited. He was extremely guarded
this time around. On June 3
rd,
my beta HCG came back at 416. Two days
later, my beta was 992.
I was originally scheduled to have our first ultrasound on a
Wednesday, but I started spotting the Friday before, so my RE had me come in
that Saturday to check things out. The
good news was we were able to see and hear a heartbeat! The maybe bad news was that there was also
another baby, but a heartbeat couldn’t be detected. By that Wednesday, at 6w4d pregnant, both
babies had heartbeats! Twins!
I had a relatively “easy” pregnancy. We had a few things that caused concern along
the way, but for the most part, it was fairly uneventful. I had a rash that covered my stomach and
itched starting at around 23 weeks and continued the rest of the
pregnancy. I had pretty intense rib pain
that was potentially coming from my liver, which they monitored. I didn’t sleep almost the entire
pregnancy! I developed carpal tunnel
syndrome in BOTH hands that was quite painful, mostly at night. I had some nausea till about 17 weeks, but it
was fairly manageable except for a few occasions. Despite all of this, I continued to work….
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| Last bump photo, 32w1d |
Until one day at work, at 32w3d, my water broke! I wasn’t completely sure it was my water
breaking or if I’d totally peed my pants.
I called my OB and she directed me to go to L&D, where it was
confirmed that it was indeed Baby A’s water that broke. I was admitted to the hospital and wouldn’t
be leaving. I was given the first of two
steroid shots to develop the babies’ lungs and started on a magnesium IV drip
to slow labor. The magnesium made me
very sick. I was extremely dizzy and
couldn’t focus on anything. I could not
for the life of me keep my eyes open, but I also couldn’t sleep at all. It was a very weird feeling.
The goal was to keep the babies on the inside until 34
weeks. After 2 days, Baby A took a dip
in her monitoring so an ultrasound was ordered.
During the ultrasound, she was fine, but Baby B was very sluggish and
wasn’t responding. They were preparing
for a potential c-section that night.
However, by that afternoon both babies were doing well and it was
determined that the steroid injections and magnesium were starting to affect
them, so the mag was turned off. As the
meds wore off, both babies became Kung
Fu fighters and were very active.
My blood pressure climbed more and more each day and I had
extremely intense swelling. From my toes
and up through my legs and into my back.
My lady bits were sooooo incredibly swollen I could hardly walk. I gained a grand total of 26 POUNDS in the
final 6 days of my pregnancy while I was in the hospital!
One night, I got up to go to the bathroom and I felt so
sick! I was dizzy and could hardly move
because my legs and labia were so extremely swollen. I was immediately put back on the magnesium
because I had developed pre-eclampsia. The
mag was to help prevent me from having a stroke. They had been doing a 24 hour urine analysis,
but decided at that point that it didn’t matter. It was time to deliver the babies.
Until that day, I was having a difficult time deciding
between a vaginal delivery or a c-section.
I was terrified of both! However,
Baby B decided for us by turning breach that last day. Turns out it was a very good thing, because
Baby A had her cord wrapped around her head pretty good.
On December 23, 2013, at 33w2d, the babies were born.
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| Rylee Viola, born at 8:27pm, weighed 4 lbs 10 oz and was 16 ½ inches long. |
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| Ayden James, born at 8:28pm, weighed 5 lbs 4 oz and was 18 ¾ inches long. |
I found out later that I had
hemorrhaged during the c-section. Apparently,
I also developed sleep apnea, because I stopped breathing every time I dozed
off while they were cleaning and stitching me up. It seemed like I had to stay in recovery
forever, but they eventually wheeled my hospital bed to the NICU so I could see
my babies. I was only able to see and
hold Rylee because Ayden was on a c-pap at the time. I was only able to stay for about 10
minutes. Tony stayed with the babies all
night while I had to go to my own room, where they continued to monitor me for
the pre-eclampsia.
Thankfully, Ayden only needed the
oxygen help for about 5 hours and they were able to remove the c-pap. He had an IV for a few days to help regulate
his blood sugars. Rylee was a rockstar
and only needed an IV for a little bit.
Both had feeding tubes for about 2 weeks.
The day after they were born, the
doctor finally approved for me to be wheeled back to the NICU in my hospital
bed. I was only able to stay for an
hour, but I did get to hold both my babies.
I barely got to see them for the first 2 ½ days. Tony was the most amazing daddy and husband
during this time. He spent almost every
minute with Ayden and Rylee doing skin to skin and learning how to care for
them.
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| Holding both my babies for the first time |
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| Kangaroo care with Daddy |
Ultimately, we had 19 days in the
NICU while Rylee and Ayden learned how to keep their body temperatures up and
learned how to suck, swallow, breathe so that they could eat. From the time I was admitted until the babies
were discharged, I only left the hospital once.
It was the longest month of my life, but we came home with the two most
precious bundles we could have ever imagined!
Now, we have two toddlers ruling our lives and we are so incredibly
blessed beyond words! We thought we
would never have the opportunity to be parents, but we just had to be patient,
for many, many years….
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| The day we brought them home |
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| This past weekend. Almost a year and a half! |
