Infertility Journey

I never walked through how we got to the IVF process and I think it is important to share since everyone is a little different. Me and my husband have a 2.5 year old, Brendan. He is the brightest thing in our lives and we feel so very blessed to have him. It took us 15 months to conceive which I know is very little in comparison to so many dealing with infertility. I had surgery for moderate endometriosis in December of 2016, started clomid in January and got pregnant the month after the procedure. We felt so very blessed that the surgery and a month of medication was all it took as we had been tracking everything with no success. At the time, I literally felt like I was losing my mind and it was overtaking my every thought. I remember how sad I was to be struggling and how much I prayed for us to conceive. It is so frustrating when your body seems to be failing you. I mean for what seems like forever you do everything you can to not get pregnant, than when you are ready it doesn't work?!? It just seemed so unfair. When I got pregnant it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. It seems like yesterday but really is was over 3 years ago. So many times I hold my son, I look at him in awe and with a grateful heart that he is mine.

When Brendan turned 1 year and a half we decided to start trying again because we had struggled the first time around. We waited 6 months with no success before knowing that we had to check in with our doctor. We did an ultrasound and the endo did not seem to some back so unfortunately we needed to start seeing a fertility doctor. That brings us to late January of this year. We met with our doctor and our first step was to get all of my blood work done along with another ultrasound. The tests results showed that my anti-mullerian hormone numbers were very low. I also had very low Vitamin D levels (to be expected in Wisconsin.) The next step was to have my tubes and uterus looked at with a dye contrast. Everything came back looking normal and both tubes were open. With this information we knew that we would have a low chance of conceiving on our own and that an IUI would also only increase our chances by a few percentage points. We were told that we only had a 3% chance of conceiving on our own. My egg count is also so low that there is a sense of urgency to start the IVF process. In order to start regulating my body, I started birth control in March to start to prepare for the meds I just started taking last Friday.

I will say that IVF has been a much harder process but my heart is more at ease due to having my son and feeling so blessed that I was able to conceive him. I hear so often of people's stories that are unable to conceive. I pray for those individuals every day and truly hope that anyone trying and is struggling with infertility has a child. I just thought it would be good to share a little of my background story that got me to this point today. #sharingwithothers #ivfstruggle #prayingforamiracle #ivfmed