Blog 7: Finally!

Imagine walking into a movie you’ve been highly anticipating—something with action, excitement, and, of course, an epic love story. You sit down and recline back in your reserved seat with your oversized popcorn. The trailers play and anticipation builds. Your heart pounds as the movie begins on the massive screen, and instead of the funny, lighthearted blockbuster you were expecting, the movie projector plays a grueling science documentary about reproductive endocrinology. 

This was the switcheroo life handed us. My husband and I expected a fairytale. We fell in love, got married, and built a life together preparing for children, but children never came. After thirteen years of marriage and seven years of infertility, there were many times our fairytale felt much more like a science documentary. I’m not dissing documentaries. They’re interesting, and everything we have learned has brought us to where we are today. This journey is not something we ever expected, but we have lived some epic plot twists, some devastating losses, and we owe so much to the award-winning supporting characters in our everyday lives. 

We had our first embryo transfer on June 14th.

Driving home from our embryo transfer with the picture of our hatching embryo.

The doctor gave us excellent odds for a successful transfer, but I’ve been in the minority so often that percentiles don’t bring me the comfort they once did. After years of medical specialists saying, “You’re so young. This should work.” Nothing worked. I’ve become conditioned to hear hopeful things only to receive bad news. It’s made me reluctant to rely on hope and even forced a sort of detachment from my emotions at times.

It’s changed me in a big way, and I don’t mean just when it comes to infertility. It’s leaked into other aspects of my life. When we were getting our puppy a year ago, I kept expecting it to fall through. I expected her to get yanked out from under us. The day we picked her up, I thought we might get into a car accident or something horrific because it all seemed too good to be true. 

Anticipating negative outcomes is not where I used to spend my life, but infertility has molded me into a more cynical person. I wouldn’t say I’m a glass-half-empty kind of person. I’m more concerned with the apparent crack in the glass that no one else seems to acknowledge.

I am in several infertility support groups, which are wonderful and helpful, but also confusing and sometimes overwhelming. I relate with the women in these groups, but our journeys are all different. I’m in a group chat with several women who had embryo transfers the same day I had mine. It’s beautiful to have the support, but it was challenging when everyone saw positive pregnancy tests and mine was still negative. I was happy for them but devastated for me—something I’ve experienced a lot in the past few years.

Pregnancy tests are fireworks that light up so many people’s lives and give them a symbol of hope. For me, those tests have been more like explosions that trigger infertility PTSD. If you don’t think that’s a legitimate thing, then I’m so happy you’ve never had to struggle through it. In 7 years, I have never had a positive pregnancy test. To me, they became hope-destroyers, slapping me in the face with proof things didn’t go the way I desperately wanted them to go.

Six days after my embryo transfer, I was still getting negative tests while other women rejoiced in their positives. I thought it was over for us and was trying to find a way to do our next transfer sooner. That afternoon, Amazon delivered different pregnancy tests that I’d promised our donors I would take. I expected another negative. In my mind, I had already moved on in search of what was next. 

The test was positive. I took another one to make sure it wasn’t defective. Both were positive. Big, ugly, happy sobs escaped me. After pulling myself together, I went downstairs to relay the good news to my husband. He instantly saw my tear-stained face and wobbly smile and said, “It’s positive, isn’t it?” He knows me well enough to know the difference between my sad tears and my ugly-happy ones. 

I choked on more sobs, unable to speak. All I could do was nod as I collapsed against his chest. It was our first moment of pure joy in the long stretch of agony that is infertility. And it just happened to be Father’s Day.

Now I get to say something I’ve dreamed of saying for a very long time and something I didn’t know if I’d ever get to say. But here it is. After years of battling infertility, I am pregnant.

We are so very excited, but being pregnant is not at all how I imagined it. In fact, I got so laser-focused on getting pregnant, I thought little about how it would feel to actually be pregnant. I’m thrilled about this pregnancy, but terrified because I know something could go wrong at any moment.

After the first positive pregnancy test, I rechecked test after test, analyzing the progression lines of each one. Then came the blood draws. My first number was good, and two days later, my numbers doubled, which indicates a true pregnancy. Then my reproductive doctor was scheduling my first ultrasound to ensure the baby was where it should be. I was five weeks one day pregnant for my initial ultrasound. The pregnancy clock starts on the first day of your last period, which means the day they transferred the embryo into my uterus, they already considered me two-and-a-half weeks pregnant. Weird, right? But most people don’t know precisely when they conceive. 

Not twins. It’s just two pictures of the same baby.

The pregnancy ultrasound was the first appointment my husband was allowed to attend. Everything looked perfect, and my husband was over the moon while I was still in disbelief. Six days later, I woke with terrible cramps and bleeding. All signs pointed to us losing our baby. Our fertility doctor got us in for an ultrasound, and we got to see our baby’s tiny little heart pumping away. I was shocked and overjoyed, but I was still terrified that I would start bleeding again. That terror took weeks to fade and some days I still fight the fear.

In the IVF support groups, many women have had miscarriages, and it’s almost impossible not to absorb everyone’s worry. Just because someone’s normal embryo became a baby doesn’t mean ours will, and just because one woman miscarried at twenty weeks doesn’t mean I will lose this pregnancy. We all must take it one day at a time, and I choose to celebrate this growing life for as long as possible. 

I feel like the last few months have crawled by. Because of the plethora of hormones that go along with an embryo transfer, I’ve had extreme fatigue since the beginning of June, and nausea has been an almost constant presence since the first week in July. This process has not been a walk in the park. It’s been mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. My husband gave me intermuscular injections in the buttocks for sixty-three nights in a row. After each shot, we put a heating pad on the injection site and used a massage gun to work out the terrible knots the thick oily injections left behind. A week after my last shot and I’m still bruised and sore, but it is all worth it, and my husband is now a pro at giving them. 

At week nine, I had my fourth ultrasound, and we graduated from our fertility clinic. Week ten, I had the first ultrasound with my OB. Our little baby kept measuring a few days behind, but her heartbeat has always been strong, and by week twelve, she was measuring ahead of schedule. She even did a little dance for us as we watched her on the ultrasound screen. 

Graduating our fertility clinic!

All the ultrasounds so far

You heard right. We’re having a girl. We found out when we did our embryo transfer, and they confirmed it again with the genetic screening at ten weeks.  

Just a reminder, our baby shares none of our genetic makeup. Another couple who went through IVF in 2013 had several embryos frozen. They’ve since completed their family and decided to gift their remaining embryos to other couples who were struggling to conceive. They donated to three families. The first family had their first baby earlier this year and they have several embryos remaining for future transfers. Unfortunately, the second family was unsuccessful in getting pregnant with their donated embryos. It’s heartbreaking that there is no guarantee it works for everyone. We are the third family, and I am officially 12 weeks 5 days pregnant. 

Our donors have been our cheerleaders through this process, and I’m unbelievably grateful for them. We give them regular updates, sending ultrasound pictures and hopefully one day, baby pictures. I also love receiving photos of their adorable children. It’s like we’ve added more members to our extended family. 

The part that still gives me all the feels is that while we’ve been trying for a baby for seven years, little did we know, our baby was frozen and waiting on us for eight years. She was frozen almost exactly a year before we started trying. I always felt there was a baby for us and couldn’t understand why none of our treatments worked. Everything coming together the way it has feels like way more than a coincidence. I feel like we are right where we are meant to be. This precious girl is already so loved—by her genetic parents, by us, and all our family and friends. We will try our best to be amazing parents, but even if we fall short, one thing I know for sure is our child will never wonder where they came from or how much love went into creating them.

For our entire story, continue to the next blog.