Our Infertility Experience

How do you tell the story of how you are broken?  It's a hard story to put on paper but one that I have shared a lot because I know there are so many women out there who experience some sort of fertility issues and struggle with the effects it has on your life, your marriage, and your faith.  Maybe something in our story will resonate with you.  Maybe not.  But hopefully, all who read this will come away with a greater understanding.

Aaron and I were married in June of 2003.  Aaron was 24 and I was 23.  We knew we wanted to be parents but didn't want to get pregnant right away.  Our courtship had been a whirlwind and we felt like we should have a little more time to get to know one another and adjust to married life before we became parents. 

Living in Provo, UT and going to a church where half the congregation were young parents, it was very easy to become "baby-hungry."  After about a year, we decided it was time to throw out the birth control pills.  We wanted to become parents and we didn't want to wait any longer. 

In my mind, we were going to get pregnant right away.  My mom always joked that she could get pregnant just by thinking about it.  I thought I would be the same way.  How wrong I was!  For the first year, it wasn't too big of a deal.  My doctor said that it can sometime take that long for the female reproductive system to "reboot" once going off birth control.  There was nothing to worry about, although each month that came and went filled me with dread.

Emotionally, I started really struggling after about a year of trying with no luck.  What was I doing wrong?  Obviously Heavenly Father didn't love me enough or trust me enough to be a mother.  I struggled with feelings of inadequacy.  I never question my faith in Jesus Christ but I questioned His love for me and His faith in me.  I remember vividly Mother's Day of 2006.  At this point, I had a really hard time going to Church on Mother's Day.  I couldn't handle the tributes to mothers and all the talk of what a joy it was to be a mother.  There was nothing I wanted more in the world and it wasn't happening.  I didn't understand (and even now I still don't always understand it).  After church, we received 2 phone calls: 1 from my brother letting us know that they were pregnant, due in December; the other from Aaron's sister sharing the same news.  I remember falling to the floor in the bathroom and crying for what felt like hours.  Why wasn't this happening for us?  Weren't we doing everything "right?"  I remember feeling an overwhelming love wash over me as my nephew came and gave me a hug.  It would all work out, somehow.

Later in 2006, we moved to Colorado.  I began working at a gynecology office.  One of the physician's there specialized in polycystic ovarian syndrome.  As I spoke with him one day about our struggles, he told me he thought I had PCOS.  We did an ultrasound and I was officially diagnosed. 

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome occurs when your hormone and insulin levels are out of whack.  Your ovaries don't function properly and have multiple cysts around them.   They believe this is cause by hormone imbalance and insulin absorption issues.  Women with PCOS often have an elevated testosterone level and tend to carry weight around the belly area.  Standard treatment for PCOS is placing a patient on Glucophage or Metformin, (diabetic drugs) to regulate the insulin and hormone levels. This will usually get a women's cycle running properly.  For me, it didn't.  Once on that medical regimen, we decide to try the fertility drug, Clomid.  Clomid is a drug that induces ovulation.

We did 5 rounds of Clomid.  While on it, they do ultrasounds to monitor your egg production and to let you know when a good time to have sex is.  My body responded amazingly well to the clomid.  My little cyst covered ovaries were producing a lot of eggs.  But pregnancy never happened.  After the 5th round it was time to take a break. 

About this time, I was experiencing so much pain with my monthly cycle that I would have to miss at least a day of work.  I would spend the day curled up in a ball with the heating pad on my abdomen.  I had always had cramps with my periods, but nothing like this and each round of Clomid made it worse.  The doctor began to suspect I had endometriosis.  Endometriosis is a condition where tissue "grows" on the outside of your uterus and in your uterine cavity that cause excess bleeding and cramping during your period and throughout the entire month. The only way to truly diagnose it is to do a minimally invasive surgery called a laparoscopy.  Endometriosis also causes a toxic environment for fertilization to take place.  I had surgery the summer of 2007.  The doctor had to take out my appendix and spent extensive time cleaning the endometriosis and adhesions out of my belly.  He later told me that he was shocked when he saw how bad it was.

Right after surgery is the best time to get pregnant so we were trying to get pregnant again.  We decided not to try Clomid again since it had exacerbated my endometriosis so badly.  Over the next year, I underwent another surgery and 7 months of Lupron therapy, which essentially puts your body into medical menopause, to try to keep the endometriosis at bay. 

During this time, we decided that having biological children was not in the cards for us.  I did not want to try any addition fertility treatment.  I wanted a for-sure thing.  I didn't want to spend money for in-vitro fertilization when it had only a 50% chance of working.  We met with a counselor from LDS Family Services and became approved adoptive parents in September of 2008. We were so excited and felt that Heavenly Father wanted us to grow our family through adoption.

Around March of 2009, I received a very strong and powerful answer to my prayer and pleading for a child.  In essence, I was told that "After all you can do...you have not done everything yet."  I felt very strongly that we need to try in-vitro fertilization.  So we found Dr. Silverstien.  Everything went like clockwork.  From the day we met with him to the day we found out we were pregnant with Miles was about 3 1/2 months.  In-vitro is not a pleasant experience. for 13 days I was giving myself 4 shots a day to stimulate my ovaries to produce enough eggs for them to retrieve them. 

How in-vitro works is you stimulate your ovaries to produce a lot of eggs.  You go in for ultrasounds and blood draws every couple of days to measure your progress and monitor when the eggs are ready.  Once the eggs are ready, you go in and they put a little catheter in you that has a vacuum attached and they suck out the eggs.  Once they retrieve the eggs, the fertilize them and they wait for them to grow and form into embryos.  We had 13 eggs that fertilized.  As they grew, we had eight that survived the 5 days that we needed them to.  On day 5, we went in and they transfer 2 embryos back into my uterus and we froze the other 4 (two didn't make it past day 5).  I was on bed rest for a couple days then it was back to normal while waiting 10 days for the first pregnancy test.  Those were the longest 10 days of my life!! 

But it was worth it.  We were pregnant!  When we heard his heartbeat for the first time, it was such a miracle.  I was pregnant.  I was finally going to be a mother.  On February 25, 2010, I gave birth to our beautiful baby boy, Miles Aaron.  What a blessing from heaven.  He is such a wonderful boy and we truly are very blessed to have him in our home.

About 6 months later, we decided we needed to try again.  Part of me was worried about having two children so close together, but we prayed and felt that this was the time to do it.  We thawed out those frozen embryos for another round.  During the thawing process, only 2 survived.  In October, we transferred those 2 embryos into my waiting uterus.  We were so hopeful and prayerful.  Because we felt like it was the thing to do, it would work, right?  Well, it did work.  We were pregnant.  The numbers from the blood tests indicated that we were only pregnant with one, that one embryo didn't take.  That was okay.  We were pregnant.  God is good! 

They schedule you to go in for your first ultrasound to see the heartbeat when you are about 8-9 weeks pregnant.  One morning, the day before this scheduled appointment, I woke up and used the bathroom.  All of a sudden I started gushing blood.  I looked down and in the toilet was our baby.  Just like that...no cramping, no spotting, no warning.  I frantically called my fertility specialist.  We went in later that morning to confirm that there was no longer a baby in my womb.  I had miscarried.  Oh how I cried.  I ranted and raged at God.  How could he do this to us?  We knew we were supposed to have another child and we knew that it was the right time to do this.  Why wasn't he answering our prayers?  He was and he loved us so much.  But this is something we needed to go through.

A miscarriage is a death.  You grieve a miscarriage just as you would the death of a loved one.  Not only do you grieve the death but you also grieve what might have been.  Before, when we were struggling with infertility, I always said "Well, I am so grateful that my problems don't involve miscarriage.  I don't know how I would handle that."  Well, now I do.  In some ways, miscarriage is harder than not conceiving because you had hope that your dream was finally coming true.  Honestly, had we not had our beautiful baby boy I don't know how I would have made it through that trying time.  I was able to come to a place where I was happy and content with where we were and the child we had.

In October of 2011, I had surgery once again.  This time, the endometriosis was so bad, and the cysts on my left ovary were so bad (on measured 5 inches) that they had to take the ovary and the fallopian tube.  But I was okay with that.  It meant I was out of pain.  Again, my hope were up that maybe, just maybe, since they got all that "junk" out of my abdomen, I would conceive naturally.  I think deep down I knew it wasn't going to happen.  But I still hoped and prayed that it would. 

Fast forward to March of 2012.  We were still not pregnant and it still didn't feel like the right time to pursue adoption again.  Once again, the Spirit whispered to us that it was time to try again.  The office that I had worked for merged with a local hospital and their benefits covered IVF at 50%.  You can't beat that coverage.  SO back to Dr. Silverstien's we go.  He was very blunt about our chances now that I only had one ovary.  I knew it would be harder to get enough eggs to fertilize but we were going to do it anyway.  You only need one good egg.  We began our 3rd round of in-vitro.  Once again, I was giving myself 4 shots a day.  Once you start those shots, you go in every couple of days for a blood draw to see where your levels are and if it is working.  After the first blood draw we received a disturbing call.  Without the drugs my estrogen level was at a 20.  After 2 days on the drugs they want to see it in the 80s or 90s.  Mine had only gone up to 27.  It didn't go up as much as they need it to.  But that's okay.  They increased the dosing of all my medication in hopes to kick that lazy ovary into gear.  Dr. Silverstein warned me that it might not work and that statistics have shown that it usually doesn't.  But I was still clinging to hope; clinging to the fact that God had led us on this path once again for a reason.  That reason had to be pregnancy. 

After 2 days at the increased dosages, I received a call from Dr. Silverstein.  I could tell immediately from his voice that it wasn't good news.  My estrogen level had only increased to 29.  At this point it needs to be triple digits.  Unfortunately, it was done.  There was nothing more they could do.  He recommended we stop the drug therapy and meet with him in a week to regroup.   I just didn't get it. Why were we prompted so strongly that we needed to try this again? Why didn't it work? Why would our Heavenly Father put us through this again?

I did the only thing I knew how to at this point..went home to mom and dad.  Miles and I flew out the next day for Utah.  Aaron had already planned a backpacking trip with my brother and he needed that time away to grieve.  If I would have stayed, he would not have gone.  We both need to "run away" to give us time to grieve and to think.  The next week, we met with our doctor.  He went over everything with us.  My remaining ovary just isn't functioning properly.  We could try the drugs again and try intrauterine insemination, which just mean putting the sperm into my uterus when I am ovulating and letting it do it's thing, but the chances of that working were slim to none--less than 10%.  We could try the in-vitro again, but use a different drug protocol so see if that worked.  But again, the odds of that working were only about 10-15%.  He didn't recommend it.  The other thing he recommended was to get an egg donor and go through this all again but with someone else's egg. 
That increased our odds of pregnancy back to the normal odds for in-vitro--50%. 

As he was running through those options with us, I knew in my heart I was done.  The door had closed. I couldn't undergo the mental stress that the journey to get pregnant had put me through.  I was done. 

It was time to focus our energy on adoption.  I honestly feel like that is why Heavenly Father prompted us to try IVF one more time.  I personally needed to be done.  It was over.  No more hoping, no more trying, no what ifs.  While it was a very real and very large struggle for us to come to terms with, I am grateful for it. We know the path to growing our family now is through adoption.  I know that there is a bay out there for us.  There is a birth mother and birth father and birth grandparents who will become a part of our family.