My Fertility Journey: Growing Our Two-Mom Family
The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult your doctor for the most appropriate treatment.
Our journey began in January of 2020. We had just gotten married in the fall and were ready to start growing our two-mom family.
Everything looked perfect at our first appointment with our reproductive endocrinologist (RE), so we targeted April 2020 to start trying to conceive. This gave us time to get our finances sorted and to run a few additional tests. We all know what happened next!
Our fertility clinic shut down from April through July because of COVID-19, which set us back several months. My 35th birthday was coming up, so the feeling of lost time due to the pandemic was heavy.
Our first intrauterine insemination (IUI) in August 2020 failed. Then the second one failed. Then the third, fourth, and so on. We had 7 total tries with IUI (tweaking medications a bit each time) because there was no explainable reason why it wasn’t working.
After the 7th failure, we made the decision to move to in vitro fertilization (IVF) due to unexplained infertility. We were feeling both defeated and excited all at once—we hadn’t wanted to do IVF, but we were antsy to get pregnant.
We were feeling both defeated and excited all at once—
we hadn’t wanted to do IVF, but we were antsy to get
pregnant.
IVF was hard, but we got 6 viable embryos and were very hopeful for our first transfer. When it failed, we were beyond devastated. Embryo loss is a very real loss. We moved forward with our second transfer in October 2021, and while I was sure it wouldn’t work, we found out on Halloween that we were finally pregnant with our perfect baby girl.
We welcomed baby Mila in July of this year, and she is worth every bit of hardship we endured. Our biggest piece of advice to anyone on a similar path to the one that we walked is to keep going, as long as it feels right. Know what your limits are and check in with yourself and your mental health often along the way.
Infertility has a way of eating away at you from the inside out, and prioritizing yourself at every turn is vital.
