This seems like such a simple question and to most people it is. It’s so casual and can be so impersonal in a random conversation with an old friend you bump into while grocery shopping; one of those socially acceptable questions we’ve all asked someone at some point or been asked ourselves. One of those questions that if asked to the right (or wrong depending on how you look at it) person, can make an entire conversation suddenly very awkward depending on how that person chooses to respond.
But this isn’t always a simple, easy going, “let’s catch up” kind of question. Let me tell you what being on the infertile side of this question is like . . .
If anyone had told me when I was 16 or 18 that I wouldn’t have my first baby until I was almost 33 I’d have laughed in their face. I was hoping to be done having babies years before even then but life had other plans for me. My husband and I got married in April of 2011, just two months shy of my 31st birthday. Shortly after we found out I was pregnant. We did those typical, cliche things couples do when they first find out. We told a few people, we immediately started looking at popular baby names, cribs, car seats, strollers, etc… We started planning our lives as parents. I was already several weeks in as this was a surprise. I called my OB and set up my first prenatal appointment. I don’t quite remember the exact details of how things went but I remember one day, getting out of bed to shower for work I started bleeding. It was a bright red, cherry tomato shade. I didn’t know what was happening but I knew it probably wasn’t good. My OB had me come in for an early ultrasound. This is where she discovered I had something called a Subchorionic Hemorrhage. A blood clot had formed between the fetus and the placenta and the rest of the pregnancy would depend on that clot and its size. I miscarried a week or so later. The blood clot grew and eventually the tiny little heart beat we had grown custom to seeing every few days had stopped. We weren’t prepared to be parents so soon but it devastated us. My D&C was performed and I was told to give my body six weeks for healing.
Fast forward to 2012. It took longer than we expected but sometime in May we discovered I was pregnant again. We did the same things but on a smaller scale this time. We got excited and told a few people but we didn’t quite bust out the Big Book of Baby Names. This pregnancy didn’t make it as long as the first one before the bleeding and blood clots began. We had several early OB ultrasounds courtesy of pregnancy #1’s outcome and again, we were able to see the tiny little “thump thump” fade away to nothing. My second D&C was June 6th, three days before my 32nd birthday (Thank GOODNESS for Tim and Kenny at Cowboy’s Stadium, they were a lifesaver). I couldn’t believe what was happening. You see, my brother and his wife already had three healthy, beautiful little girls at this point and my sister had one. Miscarriage wasn’t something that happened in my family. The genes on my dad’s side just seem to need to look at someone just right and BAM! This was uncharted territory for me and I had no idea what was going on. My OB asked if I wanted a tissue sample analyzed from the second D&C to see if they could find the cause. As it turns out, this pregnancy was a Full Trisomy 16. Knowing this made me feel slightly better in that it wasn’t something my body caused for some odd reason. It’s a chromosomal disorder and is “incompatible with life.”
At this point, my OB told me I was a candidate to see a Reproductive Endocrinologist and gave me a referral. Three months after my second miscarriage we had an appointment to see Dr. LaTasha Craig at OU Physicians in Oklahoma City. Just typing her name has me in tears right now. About a week before our first appointment we discovered I was pregnant for the third time in a short year and a half. There was no excitement. No phone calls to parents or aunts and uncles. Definitely no Big Book of Baby Names. In fact, it was now being used to prop up a wobbly table in our guest room. We kept our appointment because we wanted to know what she had to say about it all. I was a nervous wreck. She was happy we were pregnant, said she would be happy to see me for weekly visits from weeks 6-10, and prescribed me some Progesterone after a blood work up. I remember thinking during the first ultrasound, “I don’t even want to see it. Just tell me what the heart rate is.” At this point, I had learned what was “too low.” Little baby had a perfect HR and was growing right on schedule. We still didn’t make any phone calls or dust off the Baby Names book. Around the eighth week we started getting excited. Everything was still perfect! I remember the day we announced D on Facebook. We were headed back to work from our final appointment with Dr. Craig. She had given us the “OK” to take our wonderful news public. I didn’t know people were doing fancy photo announcements with all sorts of props and hoopla so we just uploaded our photo and gave the due date. It was the best day ever!
D was just so perfect that we decided to shoot for Irish Twins as soon as we could. Like most people in our situations, we assumed our infertility days were over. That having one healthy baby meant the rest would be the same. Our bad luck had ended. Thanksgiving that same year we found out I was pregnant . . . again. D was born in May of 2013 so as you can see, it doesn’t usually take me long to get pregnant once we decide to try. We immediately found her a “Big Sister” shirt, took a pic from niece #3’s room at my mom’s house and sent a text to the entire family. I don’t even remember how long after the problems started. This one happened quickly though. There was no D&C needed. I believe this may have been the worst one for me emotionally because I had the notion that D had suddenly cured me from all the problems we were having. It was like being punched in the stomach by Mike Tyson. I felt so broken. My husband has been very supportive and loving and helpful throughout all of this but there’s something about it being *your* body doing all of it that makes it so much worse. Back to Dr. Craig I went.
I went in for a Sonohysterography. This is where she discovered I had a large cyst on my right ovary and a rather large septum dipping down into the middle of my uterus. Picture a heart, now think of the middle of the heart, between the two humps. This was the septum. It was dead tissue and anything implanting along it wouldn’t receive any blood flow and therefore wouldn’t continue to thrive. Problem solved right? In April of 2014 I went in for surgery to have the cyst removed and to cut away the septum until there was normal blood flow from that tissue. Another six week waiting period and the green light was given.
In August of last year we found out I was pregnant for the fifth time. This one was weird from the get-go. I’m an impatient person. Most early result pregnancy tests allow testing up to six days before a missed period. This is me. I’ll test six days before, four days before, and the day of just for good measure. And in July, they all said no. So when Aug. rolled around I started using my Clearblue Fertility Monitor again. So far, it had worked like a charm accuracy wise. When it said, “GO,” we did. I had an extra early result test laying around so I took it just a few days after thinking, “No way, it’s definitely too soon,” and that “You’re PREGNANT” line came up before the beta line. I was dumbfounded. Getting that positive of a positive that soon seemed very odd. I went in for the standard blood test and my HCG level was over 9000. The nurse didn’t seem concerned and scheduled me for my first ultrasound. I called back a few minutes later and let them know I had just ovulated and didn’t 9000 seem a little high for being two weeks pregnant. The ultrasound over the weekend showed that there was a gestational sac measuring at the six week point but nothing inside it. So for the week between ultrasounds I got to pretend I was pregnant even though the bleeding had started again. The next US still showed no signs of life.
My next appointment was a consultation to decide where to go from here. I’m so thankful hubby decided to go because I couldn’t say a word without balling. Uncontrollable, silent sobbing. Everybody I knew was pregnant and staying pregnant. People who had kids right around the same time we had D. We decided I would try an ovulation drug called Clomid for three cycles and if nothing, we would dive into the world of actual fertility help, IUI’s, IVF’s, etc… I remember Dr. Craig telling me she was worried about me and that, “I believe we can get another baby in that uterus. You need to hear me say this,” (insert more tears now). And she was right. I had all but given up. After the third cycle of Clomid I asked for something different. The emotional side effects were too much. I never smiled, rarely laughed, and either cried or wanted to kill someone all day every day. I didn’t like myself. She switched me over to Letrozole and we made plans for an IUI. I also had another Sonohysterography. She discovered another cyst but on my left ovary this time and that the septum, while smaller, was still of significant size, and there was also a polyp. We decided if this one cycle of Letrozole/IUI didn’t work, I would go back in for another procedure to remove more of the septum. The cyst was going to hang out because at some point between this and my fourth miscarriage, there was blood work done indicating I have a low egg count for someone of my age. I basically have the reproductive system of a woman in her early/mid 40’s.
We left my dad’s 60th birthday party in Dallas on a Sat. night because I had an US Sunday morning to check how many follicles the Letrozole had produced. Dr. Qaas found two that would definitely mature and two that might. I was told to take my HCG trigger shot on Tues. January 20th at 10:30 PM. I remember being terrified, I’d never given myself a shot of anything, ever. It was a cake walk though. Turns out, those needles are so sharp that there’s not really even pressure needed and by time I realized what was going on, it was over. Thursday the 22nd, at 10:30 AM I went in for my IUI. It was quick, easy, and painless. I was told to give it a full two weeks before testing. I just looked at her. She knew. She told me a lot of people like to test daily and wait for the HCG trigger shot (which would have me testing positive for a possible six more days) to fade away and then continue to test to see if a new positive line started showing up. That Sunday my super cheap pregnancy tests off Amazon showed up and I started testing daily. The line never went away. That following Friday, which was a full eight days after my IUI I called and told Connie (she’s also the one who performed my IUI, technically, she’s the one who got me pregnant, haha) the positive lines hadn’t gone away yet. She told me if they were still positive Monday to call back and we’d get the ball rolling on blood tests and appointment scheduling. Monday brought terrific news! Still VERY positive lines. When the nurse called after my blood test she said, “Well, you’re definitely pregnant…” and we set up a second blood test just to confirm the HCG was going up. It had more than doubled. So then the, “maybe it’s TWINS” questions started popping up. My six-week ultrasound brought the best news my little family of three has had since May 20, 2013. D and I were dressed like twins, she sat in the chair with her Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the iPad and her Cheerios, and the US started. I immediately said, “Is that TWO??” (and the crying has begun again) Dr. Craig, “That’s TWO!” I followed it with, “Do they have heartbeats??” And she said, “That’s what we are going to find out.” They both had a heartbeat in the upper 80’s. She saw the look of concern on my face and told me, “At this stage, that’s great! When you come back next week is when we look for them to be over 100.” She told me that you don’t typically expect to be able to see the heartbeat until around 6 weeks and 4 days, and since this was 6 weeks on the dot, that was excellent news! She then gave me percentages of a miscarriage for someone with my history and we left. I couldn’t wait to share the news with my AppleCheeks FB group. They’ve been such a great support system for this entire ordeal. Husband too but he got the great news in person. We still hadn’t told our families. Getting the hopes of grandparents up only to be shattered was getting embarrassing to be honest. The following week brought heart rates in the 130’s and two perfectly growing babies. And last week, heart rates in the 170’s and still, two perfectly growing babies! This past appointment was just before the 9 week mark. Dr. Craig gave us her stamp of approval and the OK to move back to my usual OB. We left in tears. D was walking down the hallway holding her “Hi Big Sister” US photo and giving out hugs to all the nurses like they were candy. Everyone was there to congratulate us and I promised I’d bring the babies back up for a visit after they join our family. It’s going to be hard not seeing these little babies weekly but that’s a good thing!
So in conclusion to my story . . . Asking someone you don’t really know, “So when’s the next one coming,” “Isn’t it about time for another,” “When’s <Insert first child’s name here> going to be a Big Sister/Brother,” “Are you guys trying yet,” or telling someone, “Just stop trying. Then it’ll happen,” or “You should try having four,” can seem like just another question or statement to you, but to someone with a history like mine (or similar in any infertile way) it can send them home in tears grabbing for the nearest bottle of anything with an alcohol content. It reminds them of all their problems and their lost babies. Just because there isn’t one on the way doesn’t mean they aren’t and haven’t been trying and people in my shoes definitely can’t stop trying. Pregnancy isn’t something that comes easy for all.
EDIT: I would like to add that Dr. Craig has been a life saver for me. While I can’t exactly say I’m happy with why, I am very glad she was the Doctor we got to see throughout both pregnancies and in between. She was always so nice, upbeat, and respectful while keeping it real. She kept me informed on stats and percentages and helped us make educated decisions based on facts. I could tell she was genuinely concerned about me and I got the impression she was about as happy and excited as I was when we saw and heard both of those perfect little heartbeats. Her staff was amazing also. I’m actually going to miss seeing them. I would recommend them to anyone who needed the help. (I also saw the other two RE’s at the clinic once or twice and they too were great!)
CheesyRainbowMommy 