It’s BFBN day! Today we have Natasha from Let’s Be Brave guest posting on her fertility journey.
I am guest posting over at Twinning Babywise. My post is called “Babywise “Couch Time”: Making Your Marriage A Priority”. Couch time is an action principle that is mentioned in the Babywise books on how to keep your marriage strong. Click here to view the post! Enjoy Natasha’s story below!
An IVF Story.
by Natasha Combs
Gary and I started trying to have biological kids about a year after I graduated law school. We started out like any other couple, not forcing anything, sure that it would just happen when it happened. Well, over a year later I started having some doubts about that. Long story short, I had a blood test come back that indicated I may have low ovarian reserve. I’m not even 30 yet, so that came as a big shock. I immediately set up an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist, and he suggested we try IUI. We did two IUI’s – both failed.
Not only did the IUI’s fail, but they failed during one of the most trying times of our lives. To add a little twist to the story, we started fostering kiddos about 6 months before all this infertility business started. So we had three kids – a 3 year old and twin babies – and we were trying to juggle them, plus the madness of foster care, along with infertility. Hard doesn’t even begin to describe how it felt… but for lack of a better word, it was HARD.
It just felt cruelly ironic that we had opened our hearts and homes to strangers’ children, but were unable to make our own. Add the fact that a crazy number of my closest friends got pregnant right when we started infertility treatments, and I was not in a good place. I was so sad – just heartbroken over our foster care journey and heartbroken over infertility.
After our two failed IUI’s we opted to go with IVF because it was likely that even if a third IUI worked we would end up doing IVF in the future so we figured we might as well do it now. It took us four cycles of IVF (one failed, two cancelled, fourth one worked). We got four perfect embryos out of it, and we were so excited to be done with that part of the journey.
We transferred one of those little embabies at the beginning of August and it stuck! I’m currently 8 weeks pregnant with that little babe. I have no words to describe how grateful I am to have gotten to this point. We are well aware that many people who walk the road of infertility never get to this place – never lay eyes on a positive pregnancy test, never hold a biological baby in their womb or in their arms. We are abundantly grateful for every single day we get with this baby.
For those of you currently walking the road of infertility, know that you are not alone. You can read more about our infertility journey here or you can take a look around my blog, Let’s Be Brave. Please feel free to contact me if you have any infertility questions or just want some infertility mama solidarity! I’d be so thrilled to connect with you.
Natasha has four foster kiddos (ages 6, 4.5, 4, and 1.5) and 1 IVF baby due April 2017. She is hopelessly extroverted, a chronic oversharer, and blogs at Let’s Be Brave.