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Life & Family• December 16, 2019

A Christmas Miracle.

I’m having a hard time believing that I am about to write this and share the news with the world. It doesn’t feel real, although the nausea certainly is very real.

Yes, by some miracle (and lots of modern medicine) I am finally pregnant with a sibling for Henry – a GIRL. I am in my second trimester now and beginning to show a little (it happens so much faster the second time around!) so we decided it was time to say it out loud to the world. But it’s terrifying to do so given my path getting here. I’ve had five excellent ultrasounds, and a vote of confidence from several doctors that this is finally IT, but I am feeling incredibly guarded about celebrating this just yet. I think once I get past my 18-20 week anatomy scan I’ll feel a sense of security. I hope.

As many of you know, I have lost five pregnancies between Henry and this one. For the past three years straight I’ve been pregnant, trying to get pregnant or losing a pregnancy. We were close to accepting that this was our fate, to have just one child. But I felt like I had ONE more fresh cycle in me before I could feel certain I was done. We had only done two cycles before, one that resulted in no viable embryos and one that resulted in Henry plus three frozen embryos (but none genetically tested). We tried transferring all three of those frozen ones, but all three failed, and I got pregnant twice by accident in between the transfers, which also failed. My fertility doctor told me I had had the “top 5% of bad things go wrong with my pregnancies”. Just what you want to hear, right?

So right before my 40th birthday I did one last retrieval. It was NOT fun, I reacted so differently to the meds this time than 4 years ago, but we ended up with 24 eggs. Not bad for an “old lady”. However, only 13 fertilized and of those only three made it to day 5 blastocysts. Because of my age , egg quality issues and multiple miscarriages, we did genetic testing on all three to give us the best chances of not miscarrying again. And of those three, only one was healthy. 1 in 24! Those aren’t great odds. But as my doctor said, it just takes ONE.

This past September we transferred our one healthy embryo. And I was NOT confident at all. I was so pessimistic, in fact. And completely preparing myself that it was not going to work. And even when I took a pregnancy test a week later and saw two blue lines, I wasn’t excited. I’d been here before MANY times and knew that that meant nothing. Certainly not a guarantee that I’d end up with a baby in my arms. But it kept growing. And each ultrasound was perfectly normal.  I also have been so sick, exhausted and just feeling miserable (hence my lack of IG posts the past couple months)- and the last time we had both those things happen, we ended up with our sweet Henry.

Speaking of Henry, he’s been asking for a sibling a lot this past year. It’s killed me to hear him so sweetly say over and over “mommy, you are trying to find a brother for me right?” So being able to tell him this past week that he was going to be a big brother was so exciting- he didn’t quite get it entirely (maybe because it’s a sister instead of a brother) but he’ll come around as my stomach gets bigger I think. He will be the BEST big brother ever, that I know.

I know these kinds of announcements can be really hard for those struggling with infertility, I’ve been on the other side of this for so long. So I hope that if you are feeling sad that yet another person is announcing their pregnancy, that you look at my story as a whole and it gives you hope. That despite all the odds, it finally did work for me (so far).   Infertility and infertility treatments are a BEAST.  My body feels so battered from the years of medical intervention I’ve put it through, plus all the ups and downs of pregnancy hormones, countless surgeries and more needles than I care to count.  I am excited about the possibility of this baby, but I am also excited to reclaim my body as my own and shut the door on fertility treatments and all the mental anguish that accompanies it, for good.  This will be the greatest relief of my life.

Thank you so much for the years of comments, prayers, thoughts and all your incredible support that has made this journey a little bit more bearable. And keep ’em coming, I need all the good thoughts and luck I can get! :)

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