My Infertility and loss Story
While many people make new year’s resolutions, I like to choose a word or phrase to focus on each year. This year my phrase is, Joy in the Journey, and I hope that I can share a little bit of the joy I’ve found in my journey today.
Looking back, there were signs of infertility dating back to puberty. I had my first cycle at 12 and did not have another for a year. In fact, I never had monthly cycles. They were sporadic at best. Every summer camp, every sleepover, every purse I ever owned was stocked with products just in case I was somewhere and the inevitable happened. At some point in high school, my doctor put me on birth control to force having a monthly cycle. In a way, this was a relief. I knew when it was going to happen – no surprises. What I did not know was that continuing to be on birth control for over ten years causes problems in and of itself.
Fast forward to 2009 when I married my prince charming (haha) and I knew I need to stop taking the birth control and begin to regulate my cycles. My cycles continued on monthly just like they always had and I thought, Great! My body regulated everything. After 6 months, I knew something wasn’t right. My cycles weren’t coming regularly anymore. They were heavy and painful when they did come and lasted for weeks not days. So, off to the OB/GYN I went. Bloodwork was drawn and I was told it was all normal to just keep trying.
So, we kept trying. I discovered a book called, “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” and read it from cover to cover. The books talks about charting your basal temperature every morning to help predict ovulation. I began doing that and it appeared that I ovulated based on those temperatures BUT again, my cycles were coming less and less frequent. I was going months between each cycle. Then my temperatures began to flatline and never showed a clear shift to indicate ovulation.
I went back to my doctor who basically told me that charting temperatures was worthless and proved nothing. Just keep trying! I knew then, he was not the doctor for me. I went through three more doctors in the next year but never received answers nor was any testing ever done. We did visit a reproductive endocrinologist who immediately said IUI would not work for us and we needed to do IVF if we wanted children. I was a little taken back by his bedside manner. He never explained to us why he thought IUI would be unsuccessful for us.
In fact, no one ever told us why we could not get pregnant and none of them ever did testing outside of routine blood work. At this point, I was beginning to feel hopeless. How could we ever have children if we couldn’t ever find out what the problem was? It did not make sense to me at all.
During this time I had begun grad school. Through my classes, I met a friend who lived here in Wylie and we began talking about our struggles with infertility. She told me of a friend who had gone through something similar and had a doctor who listened to her. She gave me his name and I made an appointment very soon after that conversation.
In my first meeting with him, he spent almost an entire hour talking with me. We went over everything from my medical history. We discussed all sorts of options and he even looked at my charting (and he didn’t think I was crazy for doing it). He told me that day he suspected he knew what was going on but wanted to run some tests first which we did. His suspicions were correct. My blood levels showed I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), also known as the string of pearls. This meant my body was trying to ovulate and would gear up but my hormones wouldn’t let the egg get out of my ovary. Over time this caused my ovaries to get a hard layer on the outside also preventing the eggs from getting out which is what causes the cysts on my ovaries.
This explained a lot of the pain I was having. It explained my charts and it explained many other symptoms I had been having. My doctor suggested we do a laparoscopic surgery called Ovarian Drilling. Yes, it was as bad as it sounds. In January of 2012, I had the surgery. Before surgery, my doctor prayed with me and held my hand until the anesthesia took over. My doctor removed 9 cysts from one ovary and 17 from the other. He also discovered I had stage II endometriosis as well. He removed that during surgery too.
I recovered well and in March of 2012 just one full cycle after surgery, we got pregnant!! Our joy was short lived. My doctor did bloodwork to measure the amount of hormones in my system which should double every 48 hours. My very first level was a 4. My second a week later was an 11. By this time, I had already begun spotting. We met with my doctor and made the decision to go ahead and miscarry on my own since the process had already started. I was to call him if I had any pain.
I had days of heavy bleeding and I thought, okay this is finally over. I can move on now. But then a few days later, I would bleed again. This went on for weeks. I know you are thinking why didn’t you call your doctor? I was going through a very stressful situation at work and all of my energy and focus was on that and grad school at the time. Finally, in May I had had enough and called my doctor who immediately scheduled me for a D&C. It was originally scheduled on my birthday but I called back and asked if it could be any other day and my sweet doctor scheduled it on a day he doesn’t normally do surgeries.
During this surgery, it was discovered the baby had implanted in my cervix. This was why I would have days of heavy bleeding and days of no bleeding. Cervical pregnancies are extremely rare and are associated with a high morbidity rate. God definitely had His hand on my life during this time.
After this surgery, we had to wait for several months for my body to heal as there were internal stitches and an increased rate for cervical incompetence. Once we were given the all clear to begin trying again, we got pregnant right away. To say we were shocked was an understatement. Again, my hormone levels were checked but this time, they were perfect and they were rising perfectly!
I once thought that when I finally got pregnant, everything would be great. The truth was while my pregnancy was overall uneventful for the most part, the turmoil inside was not something I had been prepared for. As a infertility patient, you become programmed in a way for failure. You expect the worst and prepare yourself for that as a way of self preservation. Infertility didn’t go away just because I was able to conceive. The psychological effects continued to linger on. I set goals for myself and once we got to 24 weeks, I felt a tiny bit of relief knowing that at least if I had my baby then, he would have a chance of survival.
After we hit that 24 week mark, I began swelling but my doctor was not concerned as everything else was fine. Baby was fine, blood pressure was fine, no protein in my urine. Everything was fine……until June 12, 2013. As I got ready for the day in between answering my work emails, my water broke. I wasn’t sure if that was what was happening or not but my mom suggested I call my doctor who of course wanted to see me. My mom drove me to the doctor as I called my colleagues to let them know I would be off line for a little bit. I was only 32 weeks so, I figured it was just something silly and I was worried over nothing.
My doctor immediately saw me and sent me straight to triage at the hospital. He wanted more tests run there but it was likely my water. We made the 30 second drive through the parking lot and ended up valeting the car because we had no idea where to park or where to go. The valet man actually wheeled me all the way up to L&D ☺ It’s kind of funny to look back on that now.
I was admitted and it was confirmed my water had broken. Our goal was to keep Wyatt in for 2 more weeks to make it to 34 weeks. I was not allowed out of bed for any reason, I could not roll from side to side without a nurse – NOTHING. I was given my first set of shots for Wyatt’s lungs. A high level sonogram was done which showed I had NO amniotic fluid left. None. An IV was started to increase the fluid in my veins, giving Wyatt more nutrients and hopefully he would make more urine to create amniotic fluid. Family all finally left for the night later that evening. The nurse helped me roll to my right side and I watched the monitor all night listening to Wyatt’s heart beat begging God to keep him safe. I don’t remember sleeping at all and finally at 1 a.m. I asked my nurse to help me roll to my other side. It was time for the second shot for Wyatt’s lungs so, she gave me that first and then helped me roll over. The second I rolled over, I had a huge contraction. I had been having small contractions all night but had not felt them until now. My doctor was called and he gave the nurses instructions to try to stop labor. The medication they gave me didn’t stop the contractions at all. At this point, we were out of options and Wyatt was on his way. We called family around 4 a.m. so they could begin making their way to the hospital. I’m pretty sure they took up the entire waiting room! A few hours later I finally asked for an epidural since I couldn’t walk or do anything other than lay on my back and who wants to labor that way. I was already dilated to a 7. The epidural did end up slowing my labor a bit.
During this time, nurses and doctors were in and out. A team from the NICU came to talk to us and walked us through what to expect. A lot of it depended on if Wyatt came out breathing or not. We were prepared that he may not breathe on his own immediately but if he was not, they were there to resuscitate him. They would assess him in our room and then take him directly up to the NICU.
Wyatt was born at 12:15 p.m. on June 13, 2013 and not only came out breathing but came out screaming. He not only never had to be resuscitated, but he was never intubated either nor did he have to have surfactant given for his lungs. He was born at 32 weeks and 2 days. We expected we would be in the NICU until at least my due date with him. We weren’t. We stayed for FIFTEEN days! Wyatt was never critical and once he was stabilized in the NICU, he only needed to gain weight and learn how to suck, swallow, breathe at the same time. Again, God was evident in every detail of his birth.
As we learned our new normal with a preemie baby, Wyatt had some setbacks with his growth but eventually caught up. If you’ve ever met him, you would never know he was born 2 months early.
When Wyatt was a year old, we decided to start trying for a second child. We were thrilled to learn that just after a few months, we were expecting. No tests, no medications, no nothing. We had just closed on our first home and it was a very exciting time. My doctor checked my hormone levels as usual. The first one was great. The second was not. They were not rising like they should have been. We were sent for a sonogram the following week to make sure it was not an ectopic pregnancy and thankfully it was not. We saw nothing on the sonogram at all. Again, we chose to let my body do the rest. Waiting for a miscarriage to happen is pretty awful. Every time you go to the bathroom, you wonder if this is going to be it. At this point I was struggling with a lot of anger. I wasn’t even sad, I was just angry. Why would God let me go through this again? Why would he choose to let me experience loss after loss. I was trying to reconcile why God would give me such a desire for children but not let me have them. I was not in a good place. I think I became numb in a way. I didn’t want to talk about it and I didn’t. I moved on while trying to find answers.
We tried for several more months and were not able to conceive on our own. I was started on clomid to help me ovulate. The first month I was on it, my cycle was 17 days late. You can imagine the emotions I had during that time. I just knew it had worked! Sadly, it didn’t and neither did the following four cycles.
During a search on facebook for infertility groups, I found a group discussing NaPro (Natural Procreative Technology). So, I started researching what that was exactly and learned this was something that could quite possibly give me the answers I had been looking for. If you want to know more about NaPro, I am happy to have a conversation with you about it but it would take me hours to get through this story if I stopped to explain it. To sum it up, it was a method of tracking different body signs and a doctor trained to read them could help diagnose underlying conditions. So, I started on that journey in July of 2015. We were approaching the one year mark of our second miscarriage and I was feeling pretty hopeless that we would ever have another child. My first NaPro doctor identified some hormone issues and we worked to rectify those but weren’t making much progress. I then switched to another NaPro doctor in the spring because he was also an Ob/Gyn and not just a general practice doctor. He immediately knew it was not anything new we were dealing with but the same thing – PCOS. He scheduled me for a diagnostic laparoscopy a few weeks later where he was able to see that along with PCOS, my endometriosis was back. My uterus also ended up perforating during this surgery and that was repaired.
We scheduled a second surgery the following month to do an Ovarian Wedge Resection. This is where a wedge of each ovary was cut out and then they were stitched back together. This was a new procedure that had really high success rates with curing PCOS. My Uterus again, perforated during surgery. Because of that, my doctor could not see to remove the endometrioses but tried to get some out by remembering what he saw in the first surgery. This surgery by far, was the hardest treatment I had ever done. I had six incisions. I was admitted to the hospital overnight because the surgery had lasted 6 instead of 3 hours and my pain was not manageable upon waking up. My recovery was about 6 weeks to feel about 80% myself and 8 weeks to get back to 100%. We had to wait for several months for healing to take place before we were able to start trying again. We were cleared at the end of September and James left for Israel in October during the most important time, haha!
On December 26 last year I got a positive test! I was shocked! I had all the signs my cycle was on it’s way but it was days late. I had negative tests all the week prior and was actually okay with it not happening that month due to insurance reasons.
We started the usual tests and my anxiety was through the roof waiting on those results. They were perfect. We went for our first sonogram and heard the heartbeat. The night before I barely slept, I finally got in the bathtub and listened to some praise and worship to try to help calm my fears. I was so afraid we would find no baby on that sonogram. One week after that sonogram, I started bleeding. I completely lost it. Again, I started questioning WHY ME? It was 15 minutes before we had to leave for church. I was trying to hold it together the best that I could but I don’t think I was doing it very well. Thankfully, it all stopped. My doctor asked me to keep him informed but told me we were doing everything we could. I am now 18 weeks and everything has been great so far. We continue to pray for a healthy FULL term baby.
Now, where was the joy in the journey? What I left out was that last year, someone in this very room told me about an infertility/loss Bible Study through Watermark church. It was going to start soon but I didn’t know how I felt about going and James works late on Tuesdays and so I would have to figure out what to do with Wyatt. I’ll never forget what she said to me. “Ashley, I will watch him for you. PLEASE, let me do that for you”. There was Joy in the journey.
During that Bible Study, I met some incredible women. Many who were facing things much worse than I was. The Bible study was called Shiloh which comes from Samuel 1:9-11 when Hannah went up to Shiloh and laid her heart out to God about the pain of her infertility. Shiloh is a place of rest. What a thought! During the 7 years of doctors and tests and surgeries, I had never found that place of rest but last year during that Bible Study, I found rest. Joy in the journey.
Joy was God putting the right people in my life and guiding me to the right doctors each time. Joy was my doctor praying for me before my first surgery and again when I had my D&C. Joy was in the prayer he said in my hospital room as we faced giving birth 2 months early. Joy was in the prayers my current doctor prayed before both of those surgeries. Joy was in finding God in the depths of my sorrow and pain. Joy was in the prayer the most unexpected person said over me last December, the very month I conceived. There was and is joy in the journey.
God defines success not in terms of what we accomplish; rather, He defines it in terms of the transformation we allow Him to make in our lives.
Whether you are going through infertility, have gone through infertility, loss, anger, sadness, loneliness, or hopelessness, I hope that you too find Joy in the journey.
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