I have had something on my heart for a few months. I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, but something inside held me back for some reason. I have shared our whole IVF journey on social media, but there is something different when I have to put it all down into words and make some sort of sense of our miscarriage. Truth is, nothing about it made sense to me. I was so confused. In June, I wrote this post about how our fertility treatments were going, and if all went well I’d soon be pregnant. Well, I did get pregnant! I’ll never forget the day we found out. It was Father’s Day, and it was the first day I ever had a positive pregnancy test! My husband came into the bathroom and I wished him a first Happy Father’s Day as I cried happy tears in his arms.
A few days later, I went into the fertility center to get a blood test to confirm my pregnancy. They called with the exciting news that afternoon. A few days later, they took my blood again to make sure my beta numbers were going up like they were supposed to be. They confirmed they were and all was well. I then quickly scheduled to have our announcement pictures done. Like I’ve said before, I have been sharing our infertility journey since the beginning, so I didn’t think twice about taking our announcement photos and spreading our happiness amongst our family and friends who have supported us from the start. Everyone knew the timeline and such of our treatments.
My husband is a local fire fighter, so we knew we wanted to take our announcement photos there. It was such an amazing and exciting time. Little did we know a little over a week later, our lives would be completely turned upside down. I had to go back in for bloodwork again to make sure my levels were still rising. A phone call later that afternoon confirmed my level did go up, but did not double the way it’s supposed to. For those confused, women have HCG in their system when they become pregnant. Every 2 days the HCG level is supposed to double. So on my first day, my level was 114. Two days later it was 323. Then, 7 days from there it was 1500. It should have been a lot higher than 1500. My doctor said she was not too concerned but I would need to come in for further testing. I knew then that something was really wrong. I just had this pit feeling in my stomach and called my husband and started crying and freaking out. I had to leave work and go home to grasp what could be happening.
Miscarriage. Could that really be what was happening? Honestly, the thought never crossed my mind that I could have a miscarriage. We had waited so long to have a baby, we didn’t think this was even a chance. The next day, I went to the fertility center to have my blood work done again and an ultrasound. At this point, I was about 6 weeks, so it was like 50/50 if we would see a gestational sack or not. No gestational sack found, and my levels were just going up little by little. We had to go in the following day, (the fertility center was literally my second home this year I swear) to do more bloodwork and ultrasound. It was the longest weekend of my life. The doctor did confirm at our appointment that I was miscarrying and would need to have a D&C to remove the contents of the uterus.
Our baby was developing little arm buds, and creating tubes where his organs would develop. It was a baby to us. Now our sweet baby is in Jesus’ arms. Nothing can describe the pain that we felt and are still feeling to this day. I didn’t get out of bed much that weekend, and I called out of work the following week. It was rough y’all. I won’t sugar coat it, it changed me. But I think that more women have miscarriages than you’d think. It is actually common in first pregnancies. Not like that helped me much at the time, but it sort of comforted me knowing I wasn’t the only one that had been through this before. I just wanted to begin trying right away. Of course though, it felt like forever waiting to go through another IVF cycle. Thankfully, by the grace of God, we became pregnant again this past September.
We had to wait a few months before beginning fertility treatments again, but it was so worth the wait. I won’t get into much detail here yet, because I’m going to share a first trimester blog post soon. I am currently 16 weeks and counting though my friends! Praise God. I share our whole story with you all to show that we all have our struggles and set backs. Getting pregnant is not easy for everyone, and sometimes women even have multiple miscarriages. If you’re a momma of an angel baby in heaven, I just want you to know you’re not alone. Especially with the holidays near, I know there are many people childless at Christmas that want nothing more than to finally be parents. My hope for you all is that 2018 is your year. God has a plan for us all, and that’s definitely one thing that’s kept me going.
“Your miracle may be taking a long time, but God did not bring you this far to leave you.”
xoxo,
