If being and becoming a Mom is a test for your anxiety, worrying and overthinking everything then, it’s the best one there is. And it’s a journey not everyone gets to experience. I definitely took it for granted, I mean... growing up we were told you could easily get pregnant and how careful you had to be. So why wouldn’t you be able to get pregnant on your honeymoon, or as soon as you wanted? Why wouldn’t this be something in life that could be perfectly thought out and planned. You grew up, got married, had babies and lived happily ever after, right?
And it seemed like that.. like everything was happening exactly perfect. My second marriage, second chances and I was about to celebrate my 35th Birthday and our First Wedding Anniversary. We just found out we were pregnant after coming home from a vacation. Everything was, of course falling into place perfectly. And then you hear the words “I’m sorry there is no heartbeat”.. and six months later I’m sitting at a Fertility Clinic being told IVF is our only option to have a baby. How could this even be possible? When something you are literally born to do, something your body is made for can’t happen. You feel like a failure in every way possible. To describe what infertility is, it’s really a hole in your heart that hurts. It’s all consuming, straining on your marriage your life and your self worth. It drains your bank account, your energy and your enjoyment for pretty much everything. Going to the grocery store and seeing a Mom with her kids became something I couldn’t even handle. I left an entire grocery cart full of stuff one time to high-tail it back to my car before the tears came streaming out.
I became determined to make it happen ‘naturally’, it happened once, it can happen again. And to say I became a little obsessed is an understatement. But how do you not when it’s the one thing you want more than anything in life. And when all and everyone around you is getting pregnant and having babies, even on their second while you are still waiting for your first, it’s heartbreaking. And then there’s the Facebook pregnancy announcements that are earth shattering. I could cry for days after seeing one. Even a celebrity announcement could set me off. I tried everything there was to make it happen, herbs, acupuncture, eating healthier, even *gasp* giving up iced coffee. We tried to ‘relax’ and we even got a puppy as a distraction. Nothing worked, and now I just found myself cleaning up dog poop instead of the diapers and baby poop that, ironically I longed to do. So back to the fertility clinic I went. We decided to try a few IUI’s first as they are less invasive and much less expensive. Most insurances don’t cover fertility treatments as it’s considered ‘optional’. Which doesn’t seem fair because it’s not something we chose at all. We didn’t chose to have a miscarriage, be diagnosed with male-infertility factor and try for months and years. It wasn’t a choice and at the same time I recognize how blessed we were to be able to move forward.
So after a few months of IUI’s with medicated cycles. We still kept getting negative test after negative test. We took breaks and went back to try again. And it seemed like IVF was our only option. I finally came to terms with it and it was feeling like a really good decision and much less scary. There is just so much that’s at stake and goes into it, financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually. To be in a strong mindset when we went into it was my goal. So I manifested away... meditated, kept up with my healthy lifestyle and waited for my $4,000 box of medication to arrive. And onward I went, mixing powders and meds, playing with needles, and waiting for the alarms on my phone to remind be to take my meds exactly on time. Giving myself shots in the stomach and the butt, which my husband tried to do once and that was the end of that. It seemed like so much work, Doctor appointments and blood work once sometimes twice per week with an hour drive each way. All the injections, all the medicine, all the waiting... waiting for phone calls with news.
And after one full cycle, our egg retrieval harvested 8 eggs, 6 were mature, 4 of which fertilized via ICSI, 2 made it enough days to be frozen and genetically tested and after all of that ONE little embryo was left and deemed viable for transfer. And that one little embryo became our Baby Girl, Noel. After a high risk pregnancy with a 22 day hospital stay, all the waiting, a C- section and avoiding the NICU by the skin of our teeth, we got to bring home our little miracle rainbow baby on New Year’s Eve 2019.
So to all the Mama’s out there and the Mama’s in the making, I love you, I see you. xo - April
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