I wanted to open up and share my journey with you on the ups and downs of trying to conceive. A lot of people don’t know and I thought it would be good to share with whoever was interested. One, because the journey is hard when you struggle getting pregnant and second, it will give you an idea of all the emotions, tears, money and time spent to get that bundle of joy you’ve always wanted.
My journey started back in 2008 when I found out I was pregnant with my first marriage. We weren’t trying and got pregnant with twins. We miscarried twins at separate times, one at 6 weeks and the other at 13 weeks. My doctor advised to wait a couple of months and to start trying again. Little did I know 2 years would go by and we would end up taking Clomid fertility meds to get pregnant and that would end up in an ectopic pregnancy. That was such a hard time and was one of my biggest fears, because in an ectopic pregnancy it is where the baby implants outside of your uterus. My fear was to make a choice to kill my child or to save myself. In this situation we would both die if I didn’t make this decision. Let me just say, I asked the Dr 2 times to double check and make sure that my uterus was empty. They gave me 2 chemo shots of Methotrexate in my back and the experience was painful and I ended up in the ER.
Flash forward to 2018 when my current husband Joseph and I talked and told ourselves that we would actively try in 2019 and if we weren’t pregnant by the end of the year, than I will go to a Dr and see what the next steps would be. January 2020 comes around and a Drs appointment was made. A little background of my cycle history is that I am normal. My periods come every month, pretty much on time. I can tell when I ovulate and I have been tested for PCOS multiple times and always comes back negative.
When I met my Dr., he wanted to go in and do an HSG test to see if my tubes were clear. I had done this test years ago and they were clear then, but I have had a couple of surgeries since then and I am older so he wanted to double check. While I was in the hospital, laying there, he couldn’t get in my cervix and he clamped me 5 times and I was in so much pain. He decided later to check and try again at his Drs office and struggled with getting into my cervix then as well.
I got referred to a specialist in Ft Worth the next month. While I was there, they did the HSG test and got in just fine and my tubes were clear. They also checked Joseph and he was perfectly fine as well. A couple of weeks later, I get a phone call to start getting ready for IUI. An IUI is Intrauterine insemination where they put the woman on a fertility medicine like Clomid usually at a high dose (mine was 250mg) and then wait to see how many eggs come from it. They go in a check to see how mature each follicle is and when they are mature, you give yourself a HCG shot and wait 24-48 hours for you to ovulate. Within those hours is when you get the IUI done and it is where they clean the sperm and get the healthiest swimmers and insert it through a tube in my uterus.
My first IUI was in March of 2020 in Ft Worth, Texas. At this point the Covid virus was in Washington, but hadn’t made it to Texas that we knew of. The first IUI was a fail. I couldn’t go back because they stopped doing IUIs at that point because of the fear of the virus. We waited until September to try again. How my cycle falls, I actually did 2 in the same month. My last one I did at the end of September and went on a vacation for my birthday to Massachusetts in hoping that a stress free time would work for us.
It didn’t!
[1st IUI}
{2nd IUI}
{3rd IUI}
The ideal number of times for trying for IUI is 3 and if they don’t take, then they want to move on to IVF. A part of me felt broken, I didn’t understand! I knew my body more than anyone I know and I knew I could, but why was this so difficult? Why was it so easy the very first time around? I wondered if it was Gods plan for my life to not have any children. My husband on the other hand knew it was Gods plan and was so confident that it would happen in His timing.
After the 3rd one, we wernt ready to spend $10,000+ on IVF and Joseph was coming up on his last semester in college. We decided we were just going to wait till at least he was done with college and at one point I even told my Dr, “I know if I lose weight, I will get pregnant!” He told me that it would help, but he was worried about my cervix that sits up high. He always thought that it made the sperm harder to get up there.
Flash forward to February, I start doing a 14 day squat challenge and also eating 1500 calories a day. If God was going to give me a baby, I wanted to be the most healthiest I could be till He blessed us with a baby.
On February 21st I was getting ready to go to work and I walked out the door and felt nauseous. I thought it was from the food from the night before and so I didn’t think anything of it. I ended up getting out of my vehicle and throwing up in our bushes. Another fact about me is that my cycles are every 25 days and when I looked at my calculations I was 4 days late. I thought about this all on Monday and decided when I woke up Tuesday morning that I would check. Well I ended up testing on an expired test and was very impatient to see the line, so I grabbed my one and only digital test that I had and it came back PREGNANT! I remember being overwhelmed and grasping for my breath and crying at the same time, all while trying to be quiet because Joseph was sleeping. It even made my dog bark because I made such a weird noise.
I got ready really fast and went to Walgreens to buy another test before work because I was in disbelief. I tested at work and it was another positive pregnancy test. My coworker and friend Ashley and I talked how I could surprise Joseph because he always wanted to be surprised.
Our plan was to tell Joseph that Ashley wants to take some pictures of us and wanted to practice editing at home. He was down to do it and while we were posing I was going to pull out the test, put in his hands and he would read it. It all went down the way we planned and we were so excited and I was so scared because of all of my losses.
The next day I go and take my HCG test to see where my hormone levels were and they were at 38.6. My nurse called and said it was a very early pregnancy and to come back in 3 days to check if they doubled. On Friday I went and took the test again and while I was going to get the blood work, I remember thinking I felt empty. That evening we got the test results and when I looked online at my numbers they went down to 14.9. I knew it was over with. I knew I was going to miscarry soon. I felt devastated and heartbroken. I didn’t understand why God even allowed me to be pregnant after a decade if it was just going to end. A couple of days later at work, my miscarriage began.
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