Unexplained infertility.
Those words followed me around for more than 4 years. After an unsuccessful year of trying to get pregnant we started testing. Normal this. Normal that. Very slightly low thyroid, easily treated with low-dose medication and unlikely to be the cause of our infertility. Month after disappointing month. My infertile friends, one by one, all became pregnant. Women who had been trying much less time than I had came to me to complain about their infertility woes and would inevitably get pregnant while I carried on with nothing but negative pregnancy tests to my name. I resented women that complained about getting pregnant on birth control or that had “surprise” babies. How did anyone manage to get pregnant at all, much less when they didn’t want to? I did my best to support friends and their pregnancies, but felt so left out of the motherhood club.
With no known cause of our infertility, a treatment path was unclear. Sure, we could try clomid to make me ovulate, but I was already ovulating. We tried clomid 6 or 7 times total. We moved on to Intra-uterine insemination (IUI) and did this 4 times, with no success. With no clear diagnosis, the only choice left was In Vitro Fertilization. Those were big, heavy, expensive words. We were about to head out to Iowa for grad school. We certainly couldn’t spare tens of thousands of dollars for a treatment that may not work. I questioned myself a lot. Did I really want kids? Would I even like it? So many people complained about their kids. Could it possibly be worth all this heartbreak and hassle? Would I be a bad mother? Is that why I couldn’t get pregnant?
Once in Iowa, however, I got a job at the University hospital, and found, incredibly, that the state insurance helped cover IVF costs and that the University hospital boasted a very-highly rated fertility clinic. We went in for a consultation and ultimately decided to proceed. We told ourselves we would give it three tries and then move on.
There are so many emotions, so many hopes wrapped up in the process. It is intense physically and emotionally, and is a significant time commitment. So many shots. So many ultrasounds.
I was very fortunate and ended up with a large number of embryos. Some were frozen right away, others left to mature. Those ones didn’t grow very well. On transfer day they decided to transfer 2 instead of 1, and of the best embryos these were still a day or two behind schedule.
The waiting is excruciating. I had some spotting. I didn’t know if that was a bad sign or not. Finally the day came for my pregnancy test and I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. The nurse called, and the test was positive…but only sort of. My numbers were lower than expected. Two days later I had them redrawn, and they rose! I was told, tentatively, that I was pregnant and we moved forward with that. Within a day or two I woke up to intense cramping and new spotting. The nurses told me to come in for a blood draw, and my numbers were still going up, so I tried to take it easy. They said there was nothing else to do but come in for an ultrasound in about a week and a half. Later in the day I passed a huge clot and the cramping gradually went away. I passed the next 10 days or so praying harder than I ever had. I knew God could spare my baby and prayed He would. I finally went in for my ultrasound, and there was no baby there. I felt utterly gutted. Had I not prayed hard enough? Why go through all that pain and work and uncertainty only to lose the baby in the end?
We were fortunate to have embryos left over, but the grief was still crushing. I didn’t tell anyone except my mom. It was so hard to talk about it.
My husband left for his summer internship the next day. I went with him to settle into his home for the summer, holding in tears all the while. It was all too much. I finally let them flow once I was back home in our Iowa apartment, alone. So alone.
I tried to pass the time staying busy with work, visiting my husband when I could, and offering free babysitting to my friends on the weekends since I had nothing else to do. When the fall semester began and my husband was back home, we revisited IVF. We had 8 embryos left, and prepared for a transfer. We thawed 4 embryos and implanted the best 2. Because of the previous growth problem, they transferred these embryos a little earlier, hoping they would develop better in me than they did in the lab. They looked great. I felt confident in this round.
My pregnancy test was negative.
A few months later we tried again with our remaining embryos, again implanting the best 2. Again they looked great. This was it! Our last go. It had to work.
It didn’t.
The embryos were gone and we had decided to stop after 3 rounds, so that was that. I was heartbroken. It was time to abandon my dream of ever being pregnant and having my own child. It seemed the whole world was pregnant and easily having children except me. I didn’t feel good about adoption, but we felt obligated to look into it. It was the only option left to us. We called an adoption agency and they weren’t very encouraging. Since my husband was going to graduate soon, we decided to wait to move forward with adoption until he got a job and we settled into our next place.
Then, unexpectedly, I got a phone call from the IVF clinic. What could they possibly have to say to me now? It turned out to be one of the doctors that directed the clinic, and what he told me next was completely unexpected. He explained that an air filter had been removed from the embryo lab during my IVF cycle, changing the carbon dioxide levels, and adversely affecting some of the embryos during that time. Their success rates went down before they discovered the problem, and so they decided to offer a free cycle to every couple that had a failed cycle during that time period. Would I like to try again for free? I was stunned. I had closed the IVF door, and now I had the chance to try again. Should I? Did I even want to?
My husband and I talked it over. I had been feeling completely burned out on the IVF process, but somehow found that, yes, given the opportunity, I somehow felt up to trying again.
This time the embryos grew beautifully. They transferred 2 and froze 11. Two nail-biting weeks later, I had a positive pregnancy test. My numbers looked perfect on the first and second draws. But still, when do you celebrate? When is a pregnancy a sure bet? I waited in agony for the first ultrasound at 7 weeks. I wondered if there would be a baby in there, or if we’d be gutted again like the last time.
There was indeed a baby and the most beautiful little heartbeat I could imagine. I just couldn’t believe it. And I was still uncertain. I couldn’t relax, still worried about miscarriage or something else going wrong.
The next week, while visiting family out-of-state, I started bleeding. A lot. I panicked. I cried. Luckily I had an uncle that was a doctor and worked nearby, and helped arrange an ultrasound for me. The baby looked ok, but there was a large collection of blood, called a subchorionic hemorrhage, where the placenta attached to the uterus. This might resolve on its own or it might grow and pull the baby off the uterus completely, causing a miscarriage. I was told to take it easy, to avoid any strenuous or vigorous activity whatsoever. Short, slow walks only.
I had been through so much to get pregnant with this one precious baby, and my stress levels were through the roof. We were staying with my in-laws, and I didn’t know what on earth to do with myself. I kept bleeding and could think of little else. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing this baby. Weeks passed and the bleeding gradually lessened. All the time I had no idea if the baby was even still alive or not. I wasn’t very sick and didn’t have many pregnancy symptoms to reassure me. We eventually left for Iowa, where we packed up our things and moved to Cincinnati, where my first order of business was to find an OB and try to check on the baby.
After 5 interminable weeks since the bleeding first started, I finally went to an OB, 13 weeks and 6 days pregnant, and the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. He tried and tried, and my heart sank further and further with each silent minute. He finally said we needed to go right away for an ultrasound, that he should be able to hear a heartbeat by now. On the way out the receptionist, not knowing the bad news, offered us to enter the drawing for a baby gift basket. I wanted to throw that dumb basket at her head. I probably wasn’t even going to have a baby! We drove in silence to the hospital and sat miserably in a cram-packed waiting room for almost an hour. Didn’t they know we were in agony? The minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness.
Finally the tech called us back and we started the ultrasound, full of dread. And there, on the screen, wiggling and hiccuping away, was a beautiful, LIVING, baby. I don’t know why the doctor couldn’t hear a heartbeat, but for the first time in weeks, even years, I let myself hope. Not only was the baby alive and measuring right on schedule, but it looked like a BABY. That was the moment I first really fell in love with that baby and we left that appointment walking on sunshine. I reflected back on that beautiful image many times throughout the rest of my pregnancy, which from then on was uneventful. 6 months later we welcomed our oldest daughter–a true miracle.
To finish the story, down the road we did another round of IVF in which all 11 of our remaining embryos perished, but we eventually were able to conceive 4 more children on our own, one of whom passed away shortly after birth.
I often look around at my children now, wondering how I, of all people, ended up with 4 living kids. Infertility and loss are part of my story and part of my motherhood. Motherhood is at once harder and more beautiful than I expected. On the worst days infertility gives me the gift of seeing miracles in the mayhem. God never abandoned me during those years of childlessness, but knew what growth those experiences would bring to me as a person and as a mother. During difficult periods of time I looked to God for comfort and strength and found them, in ways I could never achieve on my own. I learned that infertility grief is valid, even if the loss is not visible to others. I have greater compassion for other women experiencing infertility or whose family doesn’t look the way they expected, and the shared experience has forged beautiful friendships. I would never wish infertility on someone else, and yet am grateful for the unexpected ways that my experiences have blessed my life. And while every fertility story plays out in a unique way, I hope that sharing my story, and stories of others, will bring greater community and hope to those experiencing infertility than I ever had.