The
Best Worst Days of My Life....
I don't know what to do with the
emotions that I'm feeling right now. I’m writing this raw, I’m not editing it…I
just going to share exactly what I felt.
I'm very sad and I'm angry. I'm angry that God would allow this to
happen to us...I'm angry that I allowed myself to feel hopeful and I'm angry at
my body!
Very few know what I'm talking about
right now because we kept it in a close circle. Josh & I began our first in
vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle on November 9th, somehow we figured out how to
pay for one cycle. I was excited to push my body to the limits if it finally
meant that we were going to become parents. So in November we began the process
of stimulating my ovaries to produce multiple eggs. I endured the daily shots
to my tummy, the daily drive to Charlottesville for my 5 minute monitoring
appointments to make sure that everything was going as it should be and I
responded textbook perfect.
Next we went through the egg
retrieval where they were able to retrieve 15 eggs, 13 fertilized with ICSI, 7
began developing and 5 survived to our 5 day transfer. We decided to better our
chances that we would transfer two of our embryos back in, we were ready for multiples;
we were ready for everything that came with parenting.
So on November 24th, I was
officially pregnant until proven otherwise and we were the happiest we'd been in a long time.
Then came the hardest part of the
entire process, the two week wait and the shots of progesterone with the one
and a half inch needle that Josh had to give me every morning in my lower back...he
was a trooper and a great caretaker. I
was very worried that he wouldn’t be able to administer the shot to me, as I’ve
seen this 6’5 strong man pass out from seeing me in pain.
We went through this process, I
over-examined everything that my body was doing and about a week after transfer
I felt pregnant....it's a feeling I
can't really describe but I knew I was pregnant. So I took a test and my
prayers from all these years were finally answered. WE were pregnant.
I was so scared to celebrate; I held this little
secret to myself and didn't tell Josh, I needed more clarity before I could do
that. That was on a Friday. The very next day I went shopping for a few hours
and came home to find out that I was bleeding, I called Josh who was out
hunting with his friends in a panic and he rushed home to take care of me. We
called the doctor and he said that there was nothing that they could do, so
while I was hysterically crying, this is when I told Josh we were pregnant. Not
the way I wished it could have happened, but then none of this is like it
should have happened. The bleeding
stopped, I was put on bed rest and all was fine.
We went in for our first official
blood test on the following Monday where we received the happiest news of our
lives. Our beta (pregnancy hormone) was 196 and wonderful for the first number,
I was shocked; I thought for sure that we had lost the pregnancy on Saturday!! We were officially pregnant!!! Second beta was a few days later where I had
the unfortunate timing to get a phlebotomist who started my blood draw off by
saying "Is this baby WANTED?"
amongst other things such as "you
should just adopt one of the unwanted kids in the system"....way to
ace it Culpeper Hospital, I don't think I've ever been so angry at someone in
my life. Anyhow, this day is when I received the results from the doctor
himself. The way a beta works is they want doubling numbers or at least a 66%
increase from the prior number. My second beta was only 331, over the 66% increase
but enough to cause concern. I began to freak out. It's a good thing my
co-workers love me because they experienced this right beside me. I scowered the internet to educate myself on
what all of this meant and asked friends who had gone through the process and
they all thought that this was nothing to be concerned with, yet. I emailed my
IVF nurse and she said the same thing, so hope began to build again.
Then came the worst day of my entire
life....
I woke up on Friday and something
felt different, I can’t describe it, I told Josh that I felt different, he
hugged me and we went on with our morning routine. I went to the hospital and had my blood drawn
just like what had become my normal routine, then went to work and waited and
waited and waited some more.
My blood results prior to this test
had been returned before 11:00 every time so I knew something was up. I called my doctor at 1:00 to see if they had
received the results from our local hospital because that had been an issue a
time prior and they told me they’d call me back, so I waited even longer. I went to lunch (as I was at work) and prayed
that they’d call me while I wasn’t sitting in my office, no such luck. As soon as I returned to my office around
3:00 the call came that my number had dropped, I felt my throat close up and I
began to shake, I needed to get out of the office as soon as possible before I
completely broke down. Unfortunately,
this is the one day I lock my keys in my car and I lose it! I call Josh from my office and scream that we
lost the baby and I can’t get out of my office because my keys are locked in my
car and that he needed to come now. I
found out later that he didn’t understand a single word that I said but knew
that he needed to get to me NOW. My
coworker friend (who had no idea we were going through any of this) rushed me
to her car and brought me to my Mom’s house where I couldn’t get inside because
I had no keys, so there I sat on my Mom’s steps to her house near hysteria just
crying, shaking and in disbelief. I screamed at God for allowing this to happen….I
would have rather never been pregnant than to feel like this. Josh was over an hour away and somehow got
ahold of my Mom and had her come be with me.
Mom found me on her stairs, put me on her couch, wrapped me in a quilt
and I felt like I was 5 years old again.
I was the saddest I’d ever been in my entire life. Josh showed up and we cried and cried
together and that was pretty much our entire weekend. Sadness.
Heartbreak. Anger.
We returned to our doctor’s office
yesterday, to reopen the wound, for another blood test and it was confirmed
that we would miscarry this child and to stop all shots. I feel like I never had a chance to celebrate
this child and I’m mad about that. I loved
this child from the moment I laid eyes on it and now it was taken from us and
waits for us to meet again in Heaven.
I’m numb, Josh is numb and as of
right now we don’t know what we’re going to do to move forward. We have three frozen embryos that we can do
another IVF with, but I’m not emotionally ready to move onto that right now…nor
are we ready to financially take that on again.
I’ve been praying for guidance on what to do….Are we supposed to live
childless? Are we supposed to try frozen
embryo transfer (FET) IVF? I wish for
once in my life something would come easy for us and we wouldn’t have to fight
for it…it doesn’t seem right….or fair…and I hate it.
No words will help us feel
better. Just please keep us in prayer or
thought or however you lift people up. I
feel broken right now BUT I promise you this will not beat us! We are resilient and if there is anything
that I’ve learned while going through infertility it is that my marriage is
STRONG and the love that we share gets stronger every single day that we live
together. We WILL beat you infertility!!
Find out how you can help our dreams come true:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Johnston-Baby-Dream/144808319007426
