Our Fertility Journey: We are Pregnant! 

Before I dive in, I want to acknowledge how hard pregnancy announcements can be. If our announcement is triggering, it is only because you are human. I have been there.

I also want to recognize that we are lucky and privileged to have had IUI success, as well as partial fertility insurance. Although what we went through was not easy, I feel it is important to acknowledge many journeys including IVF are far longer and more difficult. You are warriors.  

Every medical experience and all bodies are different, this is just our journey, what worked for us, and what our doctors advised. Please know, whatever your path looks like, I am rooting you on.

This is a very abridged version of our experience.

It still feels surreal to be typing out these words…we are pregnant! Andrew and I are simply overjoyed. Like many, our road to pregnancy had unforeseen obstacles. But, our journey brought us closer together and we grew a lot from this process. After two miscarriages, fertility struggles and a successful IUI treatment, our baby is now on the way. I have shared parts of our experience openly, which brought a world of support, connection and community. Infertility and miscarriage are both common. Yet, every single fertility journey is different, even journeys with the same diagnosis are all incredibly different. So, I knew I wanted to share our experience in the hopes that it contributes, even if in a very small way, to the efforts of many who are normalizing the conversation around it. Initially, we set out to be parents years ago. But, instead of “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage,” we were met with a set of challenges that you know could be a possibility, but feel devastating when they become a reality.

In short, I experienced two miscarriages and after our second, we struggled to get pregnant again. My first miscarriage was in 2016. We tried again between 2017 and 2018, getting pregnant again in 2018. My second miscarriage was in 2018 at 10-11 weeks, after a complicated pregnancy, which left me feeling broken. Both of my miscarriages were challenging, but the second pregnancy and miscarriage brought a kind of emotional pain I struggle to put into words, even today. Between late 2019 and early 2022, we had tried on and off to get pregnant, and 14+ months of those were with the assistance of ovulation kits. When not using the kits, we were “not not trying”. The negative tests began to really wear on me. Last summer was the most challenging time for me mentally and emotionally with fertility, having really come to terms with how things were going. So, my OBGYN recommended that between my losses and struggles to conceive that followed, we make an appointment with a reproductive specialist. This brings us to the last week of February 2022. We had our first appointment with RMA, The Reproductive Medical Associates, meeting with a reproductive endocrinologist who specializes in what my history had been.

While we had been trying and struggling to get and stay pregnant for a few years, we were with our fertility clinic for only about 4 months before we graduated (in the fertility world, this is incredibly brief-we are grateful). In those four months, it felt like I was living at my clinic I was there so often. This period of time included in-depth testing, diagnostic procedures, and our IUI treatment. The testing process was a month and a half long and covered everything surrounding repeated loss and infertility. All of our results were “normal,” and while this is a good thing, it was hard to walk away without an answer or something specific we were targeting. But, we were able to conclude that I did not have PCOS, we did not have male factor issues, my losses were likely a chromosomal issue, and all other aspects looked “appropriate”. My diagnosis was recurrent pregnancy loss and unexplained infertility (my clinic aligns with the ACOG definition of recurrent loss being two consecutive). Our doctor felt that IUI was reasonable, and suggested three rounds before moving on to IVF. If you are not familiar, IUI is Intrauterine Insemination with medication to optimize timing, insemination, and ovulation in a semi-controlled setting. However, there is still a lot that is out of your control with IUI. So, in Mid-late April, we began our first IUI cycle.

For the IUI, they monitor you very closely through ultrasounds and bloodwork over the first two weeks of your cycle. Medication wise, I took Letrozole for follicle growth and an Ovidrel injection to induce ovulation. I also did acupuncture through RMA, took prenatals and vitamin-D supplements, cut out caffeine and alcohol, and focused on low-impact exercise and sleep (all of these were more so for my mental health and overall well being). Around day 13 of my cycle, my doctor gave us the green light for our trigger injection and our IUIs would be the next two days. Our IUI consisted of two back to back IUIs (also known as a double IUI), where we went in one day for IUI #1 and went in the next day for IUI #2. Not all practices do this, but mine does in cases of unexplained infertility. Then we waited two weeks. We went into the process not expecting our treatment to be successful, but maintained cautious optimism. We were given between a 10-20% chance that our IUI would work (this changed a couple of times), which felt intimidating but promising. Two weeks later, I was driving home from acupuncture when I got a call from my nurse with our results.

I pulled over and immediately felt sick to my stomach. Then, I heard the words “Girl, you are PREGNANT!” I entered a complete state of shock, and said “What? Are you sure?” I broke down into tears. I expressed how shocked I was and my nurse said, “believe me, we are just as shocked as you are! We did not exactly expect this on the first round.” From there, I just sobbed. Then, my tears shifted from happy tears to tears rooted in a deep sense of fear. I think everyone experiences fear entering a pregnancy, knowing that loss is a possibility. When you have experienced repeated loss, without the experience of knowing what a healthy pregnancy feels like, it can be even more challenging to believe things could be okay. But, I decided I would work through those complicated feelings, allow myself to enjoy this, and reminded myself I was in the best possible hands that I could be in with RMA. It was a complete mix of being over the moon, grateful, and afraid. But, with each passing day, those fears became quieter and my happiness continued to grow. We then graduated from our fertility clinic when I was about 9 weeks along and moved on to my OBGYN (I am not a high risk pregnancy). We did the ten week NIPT test to screen for chromosomal abnormalities (all negative, thankfully) and this is when we tested for gender too. I was all but certain I was having a boy! We truly would have been so happy with either.

When we found out it was a girl around 10 weeks, we were thrilled. My husband is the most patient, kind, and gentle person I have ever known, and I cannot wait to see him be a girl dad. I’m excited for the bows, the pink and the little smocked dresses. For now, I’m just enjoying being out of the first trimester and will get to the shopping and the nursery later on (we have plenty of time). But, I truly feel like I am dreaming. Motherhood has always been something I wanted so deeply, but, not everyone has the same path towards it. We all deserve it, so I am very thankful for reproductive technologies that helped our family grow. I cannot stress enough how lucky we are that our first fertility treatment worked, that we had the partial insurance coverage, and that we lived in close proximity to a renowned clinic. Those are all things we are tremendously grateful for. Without minimizing the pain, longing and loss on our own journey, I know things could have been a lot harder. We are simply over-the-moon excited for our baby girl.

Infertility and loss taught me a lot. They were undoubtedly some of the hardest things that I have ever walked through, as my own person and as a couple. In the future, we will likely be up against these same obstacles. Infertility and repeated loss bring a lot of painful, complicated, and hard emotions. Some days, I truly felt like I was in internal agony. Other days, I felt more hopeful. When you want something so badly from the depth of your being, and it just isn’t happening despite doing everything you could possibly do, it can be heartbreaking. But, it forced me to work on myself, to find joy in my life as a whole, and treat my infertility and losses as one aspect of who I am, not the entirety of who I am. Even with the pain of this experience, we were lucky enough to have a joyful life and came out on the other side stronger. From this, I know that the kind of mother I will be today vs. in 2016 when we began this journey is entirely different. The mother I will be today is a woman who knows herself well, can fight through anything, and has a completely different perspective on life.

Remember, no matter what you are going through, or what your fertility journey looks like, it is valid, you matter and you’ve got this.