The Background of My Fertility Journey

My journey to build our “Hive!”  Let’s start at the beginning.  I waited patiently for God to bring a man into my life.  I didn’t date a lot and I really was patient and completely trusted in God’s timing for marriage.  Friends got married, my sister who is 4.5 years younger got married and I was not anxious.  Each year that I got older, I trusted in God’s timing and had hope and confidence that He would drop an amazing man into my world…someday.  In June of 2011 (Me-26 years old and David-27 years old), David came into my life.  We have attended the same church, with our families, for many years but our paths never crossed.  According to David, he would stare across the church and long to get to know me..isn’t this what every girl wants to hear?!  With a little help from my mom (very Jane Austen) and social media, I began noticing him and we started talking here and there.  One Sunday in June, we decided to set a time to meet for coffee at a local Starbucks one day the next week.  The rest is history and we have been together ever since!  David is the perfect man for me and exactly what I needed…God is GOOD!  He exemplifies every quality found in 1 Corinthians 13 and blesses my life every day.  (Side note: I am one of 4 girls and my mom, who is the most incredible woman and mom, taught each of us to replace the word “Love” with our boyfriend’s name…David is Patient, David is Kind…and use that as one way to examine their heart and qualities for marriage).  We spent a little over a year dating and got engaged in late June 2012.  David planned one amazingly detailed and beautiful proposal, which I will have to share at a later date.  We planned our wedding for the next year and got married on July 27, 2013 in Washington, DC with our family and friends!  It was the PERFECT day and my parents gave us a day we will cherish forever. 


Skip ahead a year. 

It has always been a strong desire of mine to have a family and as many children as the Lord would bless me with (but a minimum of 4)!!  I adore children and think they make life much happier.  I went on birth control a few months before our wedding and we both agreed that we should wait a year after being married to begin trying to conceive.  We wanted to enjoy married life, get settled into living with each other and being newlyweds!  The date was approaching our first wedding anniversary and we decided I would stop taking birth control.  For those of you that know me well, you know that I am a private person AND an idealist!  I had grand visions of becoming pregnant quickly and surprising our families with news that we were having a baby, without anyone even knowing we were trying!  I didn’t tell my mom, sisters, or anyone that we were trying because I wanted it to be a happy surprise.  Well, after the first year of trying without success, I shared with my mom and family that David and I had been trying unsuccessfully to start a family.  I felt they needed to know, so they could pray and also know how to handle my emotions and me.  At that time, I sought more assistance from my OBGYN.  I had tried tracking my cycle, Ovulation tests, basal temperature thermometers, not eating gluten, and the list goes on…no success.  My OBGYN requested specific tests and started me on medicine to increase egg production and hopefully adjust my body and hormones to create a pregnancy.  At different times, I was on Clomid, Progesterone, and various other meds.  Being someone that rarely took medicine, this was a big change and it definitely took a toll on my body and emotions…poor David!!  But…no luck and no baby.  We started with fertility specialists after TTC for 1.5 years on our own and with guidance from our OBGYN.   The specialists began the process by taking blood and doing preliminary tests for me and my husband that came back normal.  My doctor began with the least aggressive method first since both of us were showing no issues of getting pregnant, expect my issues with ovulating.  We started the “Timed Intercourse” plan and began with injections to stimulate follicles (FSH).  When we neared “go time,” my Doctor called and we had to cancel this cycle due to my estrogen being too high and I had too many follicles, which could lead to a high-risk pregnancy of multiples, possibly quintuplets, had I conceived.  We then moved to IVF Round #1 and went through the weeks of birth control, daily injections and meds to stimulate the ovaries before our first egg retrieval.  We had our first egg retrieval and had great results, however, the numbers dropped drastically during fertilization.  We also had to cancel our fresh transfer because my progesterone levels were too high to have a successful transfer.  Therefore, we moved onto IVF Round #2 and did a second egg retrieval with ICSI and had much better results.  We did a fresh transfer of a Day 5 embryo, which stuck and I became pregnant and froze the rest of our fertilized embryos.  I made it to 7 weeks pregnant, got to hear the heartbeat several times and then we lost our sweet baby, which was devastating.  I had a D & C and recovered over the next few weeks while waiting for my next cycle to begin.  Once my cycle started, we began prepping for our first Frozen Embryo Transfer.  We transferred one top grade hatching Day 5 embryo and we became pregnant!  I gave birth to my perfect son on April 14, 2017!  My heart and arms are full! 




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