Three Years in the Making

On Tuesday my husband and I "celebrated" our third wedding anniversary.  I say "celebrated" because we didn't do anything together besides kiss each other good-bye when my husband left for work that morning, talked to each other on the phone during his lunch break, and slept next to each other that night (he was already sleeping by the time I got home from work).  But you know what....this year we have something far greater to be thankful for than getting to go on a vacation like we did the last two years to celebrate our anniversary. We are anxiously and excitedly waiting on the arrival of our son, who has been in the making for the past three years!

Holding Riley after she was stillborn

Although our journey really started before we got married, we didn't mean it to.  But it definitely helped shape our path to becoming parents.  Our first two pregnancies were unplanned.  Nevertheless they both ended in devastating loss-a funeral for our daughter Riley and a miscarriage. A few months before we got married I was diagnosed with Homocystinuria, a rare genetic disorder where I cannot metabolize protein and a disorder that can cause stillbirth and/or miscarriage due to blood clots. We were told this was a probably cause for our losses and would be required to see a high risk OBGYN and be placed on blood thinners once we became pregnant again.

Our Wedding Night

We actively started trying when we got married...okay, actually like the week before we got married because we didn't want to miss my ovulation.  We were so sure that because I had gotten pregnant so easily and irresponsibly the first two times that it was going to be no big thang to get pregnant again.  I remember so clearly at the end of our wedding night, when we were saying good-bye to all our closest friends and family who helped us close down the reception, saying something like "we're going to go make a baby!" It wasn't as simple as we thought it was going to be after all. 

After trying to conceive for the first five months of our marriage we finally saw those two pink lines again.  This time we weren't scared....we were thrilled because we were finally in a place in our lives where we were ready to become parents.  Our relationship had drastically improved during the three years between our second loss and when we got married.  We were ready to bring a new life into our relationship and truly thought because we were a healthier couple, and because we were treating my genetic disorder just how the doctors recommended, that we would never experience another loss.  But that's not how loss works.  It doesn't chose people because of how unstable their relationship is, how young the parents are, or how financially broke the couple happens to be.  And sometimes what you think caused your previous losses isn't what really caused them, or at least isn't the only thing that caused them.

Pregnancy # 3

We lost our son to Down Syndrome at just 11 weeks into my pregnancy.  It was just as devastating as burring our daughter.  We heard his heart beating on two ultrasounds.  We had just taken maternity pictures and announced our pregnancy to our extended family members.  It was hard for my husband to hear he lost a son, especially when his intuition told him the whole pregnancy that we were having a boy.  It was hard for me to hear that our son had Down Syndrome, especially when I knew I would be a damn good mother to a child with special needs.  It was difficult to decide how we were going to proceed in building our family after learning that the most likely culprit to our recurrent loss (three in a row) was my translocated chromosome-two of my chromosomes sticking together causing our babies to have an extra chromosome when they are created.  Our options were either to try in-vitro with pre-implantation genetic screening where I would undergo an egg retrieval and my eggs would be fertilized in a sterile lab and grown for several days before being biopsied to determine which embryos were affected with chromosome abnormalities and then discarding the ones that were and transferring and freezing the ones that weren't. Or we could try again on our own and hope and pray the forth time around our luck is better. 

We decided we would try the IVF route if we were selected for a grant through Baby Quest Foundation which I had found online one night out of desperation to figure out how in the world we could afford a $25,000 procedure to prevent future heart break.  When we weren't selected as grant recipients we felt our only option was to try one more time on our own.  In a way...I was almost relieved that this was our only option.  I wasn't ready to try such a drastic procedure and choosing a baby based on genetics just wasn't sitting right in my heart. 

Visiting Virginia

We had been trying for two months again by the time our first anniversary came around.  We planned a last minute trip to Virginia to get away from work and stress, and to celebrate that we made it a full year as a married couple despite all the unexpected struggles we faced (not only did we lose our baby, we lived apart during the week for the first 7 months due to a job change for me, I lost my job three weeks after my miscarriage, and we bought a new house after we both found new jobs where we could live together full-time again).  I thought for sure we would be able to get pregnant during our anniversary trip since I was ovulating right in the middle of the vacation....but it wasn't until the following month that we conceived our forth baby. 

 

Pregnancy # 4

8 weeks later we discovered our forth loss, a blighted ovum.  Genetic testing confirmed a girl with Down Syndrome.  It was, at that point, a no brainer that no matter what our next step had to be IVF with pre-implantation genetic testing.  We couldn't continue to get pregnant only to lose our babies.  That wouldn't be fair to us or the babies we were creating.  So we applied once more to Baby Quest Foundation and by the grace of God were chosen as 1 or 4 couples for that grant cycle. 

First IVF Embryo Transfer

And so our journey into the IVF world began.  We were super hopeful that by testing our embryos before they were transferred and implanted into my uterus we could prevent another miscarriage and could prevent an abnormal embryo from growing into a baby with a heart beat.  After a countless number of shots, between the Lupron, the Bravelle/Menopur combo, the Progesterone, and the blood thinners.....we ended up with a failed cycle.  What started out as looking like we could retrieve about 25 + eggs from my ovaries ended up being 12 eggs due to an unmedicated, painful egg retrieval.  In the end we had 4 embryos biopsied for pre-implantation genetic testing.....three came back with abnormal results (2 were randomly abnormal and not related to my translocation at all) and one came back with an inconclusive result.  We were once again faced with taking a leap of faith or not risking another potential loss by choosing not to go through with transferring an embryo that we didn't know was affected or not by abnormal genetics.  We took the risk and ended up with a negative pregnancy test at the end of our cycle. 

Visiting New York

It wasn't long after finding out that our cycle had failed that me and my sister started talking about egg donation.  It was certainly a relief to my husband and I that there was another option available to us if we all agreed it was the right thing for all of us to do.  Months went into the preparation of our egg donor cycle.  And at times we didn't know if we were going to be able to continue on the path we had started with my sister.  But eventually everything fell into place.  We wanted to make sure we were giving ourselves the best possible chance of becoming and maintaining pregnancy. So we sought out specialized testing with a reproductive immunologist in New York and took a trip to meet him and discuss our results over our second anniversary week.  Through his testing we discovered more areas that we needed to treat to insure we wouldn't face another miscarriage even with a healthy/normal baby.  Between the cost of the egg donor cycle and the testing/treatment with the New York specialist, we were looking at another $25,000+ cycle. We received such great community support that we were able to raise a third of the money we needed to fund this second IVF cycle.  We were able to rearrange our finances and figure out how to come up with the remaining money needed.  My sister took the injections like a champ.  We were amazed with how well the egg retrieval went-23 eggs collected from my baby sis' ovaries! Day by day we received good reports on our growing embryos. And by day 6 we had two beautiful looking embryos ready to be transferred into my uterus and three more ready to be placed in the freezer for future use. 

Egg Donor Retrieval Day

Second Embryo Transfer Day

Today I am now 38 weeks pregnant with our son.  I have injected myself with hundreds upon hundreds of needles to be able to keep this miracle growing in me.  He truly is our "golden egg" and would not have been made possible without the help of my sister.  Three years ago if anyone would have told me that the only way I would have been able to carry and deliver a baby would be through egg donation I would have told them they are crazy and I would never consider anything like that.  But every step we took over the past three years to create our family has led us to this moment.  It taught us more about our relationship and how to survive through some of the worst situations a couple could face together.  It taught us to be open-minded and to appreciate that families are created in many different forms.  It taught us not to give up on our desire to become parents. 

This pregnancy hasn't been uncomplicated.  I experienced bleeding a couple times in the first few weeks.  At 20 weeks we were told the baby's umbilical cord was not attached in the proper spot on the placenta and could lead to growth problems.  I was seen every three weeks up until 32 weeks and then twice a week after that.  But this has certainly been the best pregnancy I've ever had and has helped me regain confidence in my body.  I've loved every minute of carrying our son within me, feeling him kicking, hearing his heart beating, and watching us both grow together.  He's such an overcomber already....measuring at 40 weeks today and a whopping 8lbs 3 oz with still a week to go before we force him out of me.  We have a scheduled induction at 4:00pm on Friday, August 7th unless little man decides to grace us with his presence before then.  Mommy and Daddy are sure hoping he does, after three years in the making....we can't wait to count fingers and toes and kiss his cute little nose!