Our Fertility History

I wanted to start this blog to document our trials with fertility issues in hopes that it will help other couples not feel so alone, and also so we can have a place to give our own family and friends updates on this journey.

Andy & I have been together over 18 years now – since July 1995.  I suppose we could technically almost have our own adult now, although if so, we may not still be together! We got married in 2005, a few weeks after our 10 year anniversary. Like many couples, we would casually mention having kids one day, or more often joked it off in denial of becoming adults ourselves. In November 2010 we decided to officially start trying; we were excited, nervous, and overly confident. Here is what has happened since then:

April 2011: we found out we were pregnant and miscarried a couple weeks after we found out. As sad as we were, a miscarriage is a fairly common occurrence, especially for a 35 year old. It was early on, and physically not very hard. Until…

June 2011: My first period after the miscarriage was not until about a month and a half later. The really sucky thing was that we had planned a romantic weekend in Vegas to start to move on and have a little fun before starting to try again. It was extremely heavy, but I called my doctor and she told me that this was normal after a miscarriage. I started feeling kind of weak in Las Vegas at points, but I associated it more with the extra-sensory casinos, shows, and a lot of walking around. The day we got home from Vegas, I could barely walk up the hill by our house (and I started to get the feeling this wasn’t just a Vegas hangover). The next morning I had a breakdown right when I got to work and called my doctor again. She said if I continued to feel light-headed, I had to go to the emergency room. I thought no way will I need to go to the ER. I think most people have this picture in their head of extreme blood loss happening from an injury and quickly; never did I expect I would end up in the hospital from hemorrhaging over the course of a week. I did end up going to the ER, getting checked in immediately and my blood counts were so low I had to be kept overnight and receive two blood transfusions. I had D&C surgery the next day, and then stayed home for the next week.

November 2011: We were able to start trying again after a few months, and I got pregnant again quickly. We were so happy, but worried that it would happen again. I did have some spotting, which is always scary and they started tracking my hcg levels every 48 hours (they are supposed to double in that time period), and the first few were on track but then they started decreasing, which is a sign of an unviable pregnancy. Coupled with an ultrasound, they confirmed that this one did not take either and they gave me a pill at the doctor’s office to hasten the process. I was told to expect pretty extreme cramping and bleeding that evening. I had all the cramping, but really no bleeding. I thought that was odd and called the doctor again, to which they told me maybe I had already miscarried naturally earlier.
Thanksgiving weekend: We had a nice, quiet Thanksgiving dinner with just my mom at the US Grant Hotel, but we were all sad from a second miscarriage. My mom was staying over because it was Thanksgiving, and I remember waking up in the middle of the night with extreme abdominal pain and I asked Andy and my mom to take me to the hospital. Apparently I had not had a miscarriage, but an ectopic pregnancy in my right fallopian tube, which required emergency surgery. This surgery was a C-section type incision procedure, so I had to take a few weeks off work and it was a very painful recovery! However, the doctors and nurses were so amazing, so I changed OB/GYN’s to Dr. B who performed the procedure.

April 2012: We got pregnant again, and made it to an ultrasound then hcg tests. Dr. B determined it was another ectopic, but since they caught it early enough they were able to give me methotrexate shots.

July 2012: I took a hysterosalpingogram (hsg) test to see if I had any obvious blocking in my fallopian tubes that were causing the multiple ectopics. Surprisingly, it came out normal so we thought it would be safe to try again.

November 2012: Miscarriage. We had only known I was pregnant for a couple days, and then I just started bleeding. This one was extremely early at around 6 weeks, and I wasn’t even surprised. Andy & I didn’t even tell anyone at all about this one; I just wanted to forget it even happened.

January 2013: I was so happy with this positive pregnancy test. It was the very next cycle after our November miscarriage, and I just thought there was no way something bad would happen on the fifth time. I was wrong. The day before we were supposed to have our first ultrasound, which would have at least caught it, I was having another ectopic pregnancy. This time I recognized the pain so we went immediately to the ER in the middle of the day. I had another emergency surgery, but this time they were able to do a laparoscopic so the recovery time was only about a week.

We were devastated, and obviously at this point done with trying to get pregnant naturally. Our doctor recommended in vitro fertilization as a next step since it bypasses the fallopian tubes and an embryo is placed right in the uterus. We were so overwhelmed, and I was just tired. My body was exhausted from 3 years of being pregnant and then not being pregnant. We decided to put everything off until after the summer of 2013.

Visit the IVF page to read more about our experience with in vitro fertilization.