The Ins and Outs of Our Infertility Story

As I sit down to write this post, I'm not even sure where to begin (it has taken me several days just to complete).  I'm not sure which part of infertility you want to know about…the emotional side, the "having no filter about your body and how it functions" side, the religious side, or the cold hard factual side?  So I guess I will start with the factual side by taking you through our journey of infertility.

In August of 2012, we got married and decided right away that we wanted to try and start a family.  Most people like to ride out their first few years of marriage by traveling and getting to experience life as a couple.  We felt like we had already done the latter seeing as we've been together since 2005.  To us, our initial thought was that getting pregnant would be easy.  Looking back, we were pretty innocent.  We knew nothing of the infertility world.  We tried for two years, became frustrated, and decided to seek help.  We scheduled an appointment with an OB, which ended in tears.  She sent us through some basic tests to help pinpoint if and what the issue was.  I had a couple of blood draws to check my hormone levels.  I also had something called an HSG done.  This was a procedure where a catheter was inserted and colored dye was squirted in to see whether or not my fallopian tubes were open (not a very comfortable procedure, but actually quite neat to see the dye enter the tubes on the screen).  Good news was, both of my tubes were open (no blockages found!).  Hooray!  The next box to check off was going through a trans-vaginal ultrasound to see if there were any cysts on my ovaries.  No issues were found there either.  Eric had to do a semen analysis, which checked his sperm for motility, count, and morphology (the shape).  Unfortunately, there was our culprit.  We had poor morphology.  As much as we wanted answers, it was devastating to confirm that we actually had an issue.  Our OB referred us to a fertility clinic, but it took 8 months of processing all of our information before we decided to call and set up an appointment.  May I also add in that it was at this point in the process that we discovered that the majority of insurance companies cover zero infertility tests and treatments.  Everything is out of pocket, which clearly played a part in our wait to schedule our appointment at the fertility clinic as well.

In May of 2015, we met with a doctor at the fertility clinic (who is still our doctor today) and discussed our results.  Dr. B. discussed the two options we could try--an IUI (intrauterine insemination), or IVF (in-vitro fertilization).  We decided to try doing an IUI in May since it was the cheaper option.  An IUI involved a blood draw and me being on Femara pills on cycle days 3-7 (if I remember correctly).  An ultrasound was had to check how many follicles we had growing and how mature they were (for those of you who don't know what a follicle is…normally there is one egg inside of each follicle).  When the follicles were mature enough, I took a trigger shot (hCg shot) to the stomach to release the eggs.  A couple of days later was insemination day.  Eric's sample was put through a catheter that was put into me to get the good sperm closer to my eggs.  That first round was unsuccessful.  We were then told to take a month off while Eric took some new vitamins that the doctor recommended.  I was disappointed to have to wait, but understood the reasoning behind it.  We tried another round of IUI in July, which was also unsuccessful.  The doctor had originally recommended that we do three rounds of IUI, but we weren't feeling it.  Which then led to us diving into the world of IVF.

IVF is it's own animal we've come to find out.  It took us almost another year to begin this process.  We had to mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially prepare ourselves for this next step.  In April (2016) we met with Dr. B. again to talk about IVF and what our chances would be of having a successful pregnancy.  He recommended that we do IVF with ICSI.  For those of you who are infertility amateurs like we once were, a normal IVF is done by putting a good sperm and a mature egg in a petri dish and letting them do their thing.  IVF with ICSI is where the good sperm are actually inserted into the mature eggs using a very thin glass needle, thus creating the embryos through science.  I bet you think science is cool now if you didn't before!  Dr. B. felt confident that IVF with ICSI would work for us. We had two options that were given to us by the financial lady that we also met with while we were there.  Option #1 was to go through one fresh cycle of IVF and pay said amount, or Option #2 was that we could pay another said amount and do six rounds of IVF (three fresh cycles and three frozen cycles).  Who knew that IVF could be such a gamble?  We were then sent home to sort through the overwhelming information that we were given.  Did we want to be gamblers and go with option #1 (praying that it worked the first time) or did we want to play it safe and go with option #2 (it would be worth it if we had to do more than one cycle before having a successful pregnancy that led to a live birth)?  Decisions, decisions.  After a lot of thought and prayer, we went with option #2.  It made us feel more at ease and would be cost effective if we had to go through this more than once to get pregnant.  We got started almost immediately.  In May we went to our IVF education class given by one of our IVF nurses.  She went through a stack of paperwork with us on the procedures and the medications.  She also taught us how to give the injections.  I will say one thing--in the IVF world, you get over your fear of needles pretty quickly.  Also while we were there, both of us had some bloodwork done to check for HIV and to check my thyroid.  After our IVF education class, we waited for my cycle to start in May. Oh how excited we were to begin a new adventure!  We stepped into the IVF train, strapped ourselves in for the 46 day journey, and prayed hard.  On cycle day 1 we started an antibiotic that cleaned out our systems from any toxins and bacteria to prevent an infection from occurring. Boy did it clean us out.  Talk about a stomach ache.  Cycle days 3-16 consisted of me taking a birth control pill.  Sounds very odd, I know…Why am I taking a birth control pill which prevents pregnancy when I'm trying to get pregnant?  Well let me tell you why.  The birth control pill assured that I wouldn't ovulate on my own, which is important.  Dr. B wanted to be in control of when I ovulated.  Everything has to be timed perfectly.  We had an ultrasound on cycle day 13 to check and see if the birth control did what it was supposed to do.  At our appointment, we got the go ahead to officially start our injections!  On cycle day 20, we started our first injection of Follistim.  Our awesome neighbor, who is a nurse, came over each night to give me my shot(s) at a certain time.  For five days straight, I continued to take this injection to my stomach.  Then we had another ultrasound with Dr. B to see how many follicles the Follistim injections created.  We had 14 good looking follicles so far and my lining looked great.  Yay for another high point to this process!  I also had bloodwork done to check my hormone levels.  The nurse called later to say that they were on the higher end, which wasn't good.  Too high of levels could cause my body to overstimulate.  My medication had to be adjusted.  The next three days consisted of two injections to the stomach at one time.  This time I was taking Follistim and Ganirelix.  We had another ultrasound on cycle day 27 to see how many follicles we had and to see how mature they were looking.  This time, we had 19 good looking follicles and still my lining was looking "beautiful."  My medicine was once again adjusted.  For one more day I took both injections.  The next night, I took my hCg shot to release all of the eggs from my follicles.  Two days later was my egg retrieval.  I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything past 11:00 the night before.  I was to not wear any perfume, wash with a bar of soap, and wear no makeup.  This was all because the eggs had to be retrieved in a very sterile environment.  I was extremely nervous and scared for this part of the process.  I was mostly scared about having an IV put in my hand.  On the drive down to Cincinnati, I took the Valium that I was prescribed, which definitely had me feeling good by the time we got there.  Once there, my IV was started, and I was sedated to some extent.  I was rolled into a sterile room where the retrieval took place while Eric was off doing his thing.  I didn't feel much during the retrieval except the two times the doctor went into each of my vaginal walls.  A very long needle is used in the retrieval process. The doctor can see on the ultrasound screen where the follicles are that need to be sucked out.  The long needle was put through my vaginal wall on each side where my ovaries are located.  He then moved the needle ever so slightly to poke into each follicle and suck out all of the fluid, including the eggs. Once the retrieval was over, I was wheeled back to recovery for an hour to rest/wake up.  Eric met me back there and was sure to capture pictures of me still looking and feeling pretty loopy.  Thanks honey. The good news was that they retrieved 21 eggs!! We weren't expecting that many, but we surely praised God for giving us these wonderful results.  Once I'd been in recovery for an hour, I had a little snack before we were sent home to heal for the next 5 days with meds.  I will tell you what--I do not envy anyone who has gone through more than one egg retrieval.  Air high fives to you because the healing process was not fun.  Before the egg retrieval, there was a lot of pressure being put on my bladder and my intestines because my ovaries were stretched and so big.  After the egg retrieval was much worse.  For the first day and a half, I couldn't stand up straight.  I walked like a little old grandma to the bathroom and back.  The couch and my heating pad were my best friends.  Oh and pillows. Lots of pillows.  They helped support my lower back which was killing me by the end of the week.  I had moments where I felt nauseous.  I discovered what it feels like to pee and be in pain at the same time.  Not fun.  I had to make sure that I ate lots of protein to help my body to not hyper stimulate because there is a condition that some women get after a large egg retrieval called OHSS.  It stands for Over hyper stimulation syndrome.  I have read stories where some women get this and end up in the hospital.  It also puts a kink in your IVF plans.  If I would've ended up with this syndrome, we wouldn't have been able to transfer the embryo that we did.  We would've had to freeze all of our embryos and wait until after my next cycle to do a frozen embryo transfer. Backing up a little bit, we were called the day after the retrieval and were told that 16 of my eggs were fertilized.  Two of those embryos didn't make it right away, which left us with 14 embryos growing.  By transfer day (5 days later), we had one gorgeous looking embryo that was already in the hatching stage, two beautiful looking embryos in the blastocyst stage, and several that were still making their way into blastocysts.  On June 18th, we transferred in the one gorgeous looking embryo that was in the hatching stage. Then began our two week wait.  We were excited, overjoyed, anxious, and cautiously optimistic as we waited for June 30th, which was testing day.  I should also add in that I was directed to continue doing my vaginal progesterone capsules to help sustain a possible pregnancy (let me tell you how fun those are to put in…if you could only see my face right about now you'd know exactly how fun they are).  We started those right after egg retrieval day to put the natural progesterone back into my body since it was sucked out with the fluid inside each of my follicles.  On a less visual note, two days after our transfer, we were told that we had a total of 4 embryos that made it to freeze--two Day 5 blastocysts and two Day 6 blastocysts.  Woohoo!  This was awesome news!  This meant that if the first round didn't work that we could go straight into a frozen embryo transfer using some of our frozen embryos instead of having to go through a fresh cycle again.  During the two week wait, I had cramping, a little bit of nausea, a runny nose, and some twinges here and there.  As someone who has experienced infertility for the last 4 years, my mind immediately tries to figure out what every feeling means or if it means anything at all.  On Sunday, June 26th, I started spotting.  I thought it was a little weird to be spotting this far past our transfer, but knew that some people have what is called implantation bleeding.  I tried not to freak out, but as the day went on, my spotting changed color and began to get heavier.  By Monday morning, I was lightly bleeding.  By Monday afternoon, my bleeding was even heavier.  I was in tears.  I called the fertility clinic and spoke with one of the nurses about my bleeding.  She told me to take a home pregnancy test first and that they'd move up my blood pregnancy test to Tuesday instead of Thursday.  Typically they don't like you to take a home test just because of all of the hormones that are left in your body from the injectables, procedures, etc., but at this point, it was far enough out that a positive would've showed up on a home test if I were pregnant.  I took the home test and it came back negative, as usual.  I know nothing, but negatives.  This is the raw emotion that someone dealing with infertility goes through each month.  You get your hopes up just to have them knocked down time and time again.  It's hard.  It sucks.  But what I have found is that when I've been knocked down time and time again, God has met me there.

This is where the faith part of infertility comes into play.  When we first started our journey, I questioned God and His goodness.  I wanted to know, "Why me God?  Why did you choose me to go through these hard times?  Why are you making me wait?  Why can't it be easy for us like it is for so many others?"  There were moments when I sat on the bathroom floor and screamed at God all of my frustrations.  A lot of people say that those who struggle with infertility go through the five stages of grief.  When we first found out that we in fact had an infertility issue, we were in denial.  We didn't want to believe it.  Part of why it took us so long to call the fertility clinic was that we believed that maybe if we gave it just a bit longer that it would happen naturally.  Then came anger.  We became angry that it just wasn't happening for us.  This is where my screaming fest with God came in.  To many, I tried to hide my anger and frustration.  I didn't want people to see me in that light.  Deep down though, I was angry.  Angry with God that this fertility thing wasn't working out the way we wanted it to.  When we started to realize that things weren't going our way, we started to bargain with God.  If only God would give us a child, I would promise Him that I would go to church more, read His word more, pray more.  I found out quickly, that God doesn't like bargains.  At least not the kind I was speaking of.  In 2015 when we went through two IUIs that both failed, I became 'depressed.'  I use that word lightly.  I was upset that the cheaper option didn't work and that we once again were left with negative pregnancy tests.  During that summer and into the fall, I skipped out on three baby showers for family members and friends.  I felt terrible not going, but my emotions were just too high.  Baby showers for someone who struggles with infertility are hard.  I don't say this for you to have sympathy on me.  I'm not asking for your sympathy, but rather your understanding.  Thankfully those family members and friends completely understood the emotional roller coaster that I was on.  It took a long while for both Eric and I to process everything we'd been through and the emotions that we felt.  As upset as we were that the IUIs didn't work, it became clear to us that we needed God.  I'm sure you've heard the saying, "When life knocks you down on your knees, you're in the perfect position to pray."  This was us.  We had gone through so many tests and had tried one type of treatment and yet we were still knocked down to our knees.  This was the beginning of our acceptance phase.  We began to think of our journey in a completely different light.  We began truly listening to every message at church.  We prayed hard every day for God to keep us faithful and to continue to give us hope even when we felt like our hope was dangling by a string.  We began reading God's word and bought a book of daily devotionals that we discuss each night.  As we look back on our journey so far, we realize that God wasn't trying to hurt us through all of these trials and tribulations.  He's trying to build us into the people He wants us to be.  He has made us stronger than we ever were when we first started this adventure.  He has planted people in our lives along the way that have helped encourage us and who have kept us going at moments when we were feeling low.  He led us to our fertility clinic and our fertility doctor through some friends of ours that went there and had success.  Our minds were so cloudy before as we were going through all of the typical infertility emotions.  We weren't looking at our journey the way God wanted us to.  God picked us for a reason to go through these trials.  He knew that through these trials, our relationship with Him would grow deeper and that our patience would lead us to wait for His timing.  We've learned that God's timing is never too early, never too late, but is right on time.  As we are in the midst of waiting, we continue to pray hard that God will help us to open up our hands and our hearts to accepting that He is in control.  Time and time again, we have tried to play God and plan out our lives.  We have discovered that life doesn't work that way.  We are not in control.  God is in control.  All of our worries, fears, anxieties--we give them to God.  Here recently, I've been praying that God would help me to listen more than I speak.  I've prayed that He would speak to me in a way that I would recognize His voice/direction and in a way that would bring me peace.  After our failed round of IVF, after praying hard every day for God to speak to me, it happened.  For the first time, I heard it.  God spoke to me, again and again the same promise.  Afterward, that peace I'd been looking for came over me.  It felt amazing.  There is a long story behind this that will be revealed at a later time. Going back to those questions that I screamed at God at the very beginning of our journey…some of those questions may never be answered.  We may never understand God's timing and why things have worked out the way they have.  What we do know though is that God is with us, lighting our path every step of the way.  Our time is coming.

What can you do as family and friends?  Pray.  Your continued thoughts, prayers, and words of encouragement keep us going.  We are beyond grateful to all of you for your listening ears, shoulders to cry on, and for your concern/interest in our journey.  A simple thank you just isn't enough to show you our gratitude.  We love you all and we thank God every day for blessing us with such an amazing support system.

What now you may ask--what is next for us?  We have actually already started round two of IVF.  Because God blessed us with four frozen embryos, we are going through the process of a frozen embryo transfer.  I am on estrogen pills to help keep me from ovulating on my own and to build up my lining.  I will start up my progesterone capsules again six days before transfer.  We had our first ultrasound last Friday (July 8th).  Dr. B. was looking for my lining to be higher than a 7.  It was at a 13!  He was ecstatic and kept commenting on how beautiful it was.  Bloodwork was also done to check my estrogen and progesterone levels.  Both must've been good because we never got a call telling us otherwise.  Thanks be to God for everything looking as it should so far!  God is good!  We have decided this time to transfer two frozen embryos.  Our transfer is scheduled for July 18th.  As we prepare for this transfer, we ask that you pray for us.  We ask for the strength to make it through this transfer, the strength to accept whatever the outcome may be, and the strength to find peace during our two week wait.  We pray for God to fully have His hand in this and to let His plan for us be revealed when the timing is right.



We know that many of you (friends and family) have asked lots of questions and have wanted updates. We hope that this post brings you up to speed on our journey and also helps you to know us on a deeper level.  A lot of people are afraid of asking us questions about infertility, but we are here to tell you to ask away!  There aren't many questions that we haven't been asked.  We feel that one of our purposes here on Earth is to share our story.  We would like to normalize infertility as much as possible.  It's not something to be embarrassed about.  It's not something to hide and keep inside--trust me, we tried at first.  It was better for us to get it out there and once we did, we realized that we have a stronger support system than we ever knew was possible.  We've also realized that by sharing our story, we've helped others who are in the same situation and we've opened the eyes of so many who know nothing of the infertility world.  What would you do if you weren't afraid?  Share your story with others.  Everyone has a story and this is ours.