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Where to begin? My husband and I always knew we wanted to have children, even before we were married, but we decided to wait a while because we were fairly young when we got tied the knot . We had careers that we wanted to succeed in, Europe to visit, a house to buy, a Master’s degree to earn, a nest egg to build. We checked all of those things off, and we were ready to add “make a baby” to the list. That was 6 years ago… And, since then, we have tried to get pregnant using both the fun traditional and the not-so-enjoyable medical/artificial means.
Since my mom and sister are both fertile myrtles, and I have a nice set of birthing hips, I thought it’d be no problem for me to get pregnant. Add to that, the fact that I have not one, but two uteruses! Yes, two! So, I thought I’d be doubly fertile. No doctor saw any issues with that either. So, when we knew we were ready, we thought it would be a matter of months. Not so.
Fast forward to visits with an infertility specialist who started me on injectible follistim drugs. Three tries and nothing. I never even made it to the point where I could take a pregnancy test. After those three didn’t work, our RE thought it was time to go straight to the big guns – IVF. Our first cycle was better than clockwork. I belted out 22 eggs, 16 of which made it to embryo stage. All I needed to do was house a few for a while. He put two “beautiful” ones back with the thought they’d both take and we’d have twins nine months later. Nope.
Two more FET cycles, with acupuncture and 6 embryos later, I still wasn’t able to hold a pregnancy. And, no good explanation of why. Yet, through all of the nonsense and tears, the one thing that kept me somewhat sane was trying to find the lighter side of infertility, the humor in unusual places (thanks in large part to my amazing husband). We had two embryos left, and since I wasn’t successful carrying them, we decided to give it one last shot and try using a gestational carrier. Last summer, we were blessed by having a wonderful friend offer to carry our last two hopes, but she didn’t get pregnant.
And, while we were going through the early fertility treatments we put in our application to adopt a baby from Vietnam. That was four years ago. We were matched with the most precious little boy I’ve ever seen in July 2008, but due to governmental issues, he is still not home with us. I went to his orphanage in October to help care for him and the other children and it was the best (meeting him and loving on him) and worst (leaving him) thing I have ever done in my life. At this point, we still have no idea if or when we will get to bring him home. So, we’ve tried just about every way we can think of to bring a child into our lives, and for whatever cosmic reason, it just hasn’t happened yet.
So, in sum, I am a wife, daughter, sister, friend, writer, PR pro, volunteer, runner, equestrian, and many, many more things. I am not a mommy yet, but I do love my life.
MY INFERTILITY STATS:
- 6 years and counting TTC
- 16 embryos and 0 pregnancies
- Unexplained infertility, but I can produce ridiculous sums of eggs and my husband’s sperm count is off the charts. Clearly, the fertility gods have had other plans for me!
I am so pleased to announce that blogger Fertility Foibles will be co-hosting this class with me. (Many thanks to Infertile Naomi for co-hosting during the holiday class!) So, now it's time for you to get to know her story, too.
