My IVF Journey

Eight years ago I set out on a journey to have another baby. You see when I was married to my first husband (an abusive man) I had my tubes tied. I was twenty-eight at the time and had three children. I felt I was done having kids. Besides, I didn’t want to bring any more children into the abusive relationship. My two had already seen enough. The third child was a definite surprise, but a blessing in the end. She was one of the biggest reasons I left my ex.

Anyway, I married a wonderful man and he didn’t have any children of his own. I wanted to give him the one thing he felt he was missing – a child. We looked into many options. We considered reversing my tubal ligation, but ended up doing IVF.

Now for anyone who has never done IVF it’s not an easy process. There are a lot of medications – mainly shots. I’m not one for watching when they give me or my children a shot, so imagine when I had to do my own. Surprisingly I did good.

The doctor and I decided we would only do a 2 egg transfer because I’d never had issues getting pregnant so we didn’t want to increase the changes of multiples. The first round – I got pregnant and then miscarried at 9 weeks. The second time we did a frozen egg transfer and nothing.

On the third try – another fresh cycle I got pregnant. You couldn’t imagine my job when I had the ultrasound at 16 weeks and they told me we were having a boy. I had two girls and a boy and longed for another son. It was the eve of thanksgiving when we had the ultrasound. We were headed for NY to visit my family for the holiday. Halfway into our trip the doctor called and informed me that they saw something a little alarming on the ultrasound with the bowel structure. They did say it could be nothing but wanted to repeat the test after the holiday.

The next test showed the same thing. They said they’d ultrasound my once a month until the baby arrived to keep an eye on things.

On December 30^th I went for my next ultrasound and life went into a downward spiral. After the test they told me the baby was in distress and would need to be delivered. They sent me to Women and Infants Hospital. More tests were done and at 10:29pm I gave birth to a 14oz baby boy.

The doctors warned me he wouldn’t cry and chances were high he wouldn’t survive delivery. In my heart of hearts I knew he would. I’m not sure why, but my motherly instincts told me he would – and he did.

That was the only the beginning.

More to come tomorrow...