Our Journey to Infertility

My husband and I have struggled with infertility for over 2 years now. We suffered an early miscarriage in April of 2019, and since then have had 3 failed IUI’s and a (presumed) failed embryo transfer following IVF, resulting in an ectopic pregnancy. I’ve had 2 Urgent Care visits, 2 ER visits, 2 surgeries, (1 emergency to remove my right fallopian tube due to a ruptured ectopic pregnancy), taken hundreds of pills and too many shots to even count. We’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on IVF, FET cycles, IUIs, pregnancy tests, ovulation predictor kits, vitamins and other things I can’t even think of at the moment. Yet here we are, still no baby in our arms wondering “Why can’t we be parents?”

I have pictures of positive pregnancy tests. Screenshots from apps showing “Your baby is the size of an orange seed”. Screenshots of ideas for baby announcements. All from that 1 week in April that we knew we were pregnant before our world came crashing down on Easter morning. Pregnancy loss is devastating. Period. It doesn’t matter if you are 5 weeks or 5 months. The minute you get those two pink lines, you envision your life with a little one with no looking back. You call your sister on FaceTime so excited to tell your nephew that he’ll soon have a baby cousin to play with. You start thinking of names and ways to decorate the nursery. You start searching Amazon for the cutest baby clothes and accessories.

All of this until you unexpectedly start spotting when using the bathroom after picking up your car from an oil change. You go to your in-laws, and your husband excitedly tells his family that you’re pregnant, not knowing that you had started spotting hours earlier. You spend the evening with family members who are so thrilled and excited for you, as you sit there, putting on a smile but thinking something terrible is about to happen. 

The next morning you finally tell your husband. After chatting with a doctor on your Kaiser app, you and your husband drive to Urgent Care. On the way you have to stop to buy pads, because your liner isn’t going to hold the amount of blood that you’re passing. It’s Easter, you should be spending the day with family, and instead you’re being pricked and prodded, hoping and praying your baby is okay; only to find out after blood test results that your HcG level is low at 6, not even detectable by a pregnancy test. If it drops below 5, you’re no longer “considered pregnant”. You’ll need to retest in two days to see if it goes up or down.

The next two days are agonizing. You both take off from work. You can’t even recall what you did these two days. If you had to guess, you’d put money on laying on the couch watching The Office, trying to distract your minds from reality. After the blood draw, you wait to hear from the doctor. When the phone rings, it isn’t the news you wanted. HcG is at 4, you’re officially having a miscarriage.