Josh and I got married in August of 2012. We were young, and Josh was still in school, so we wanted to wait a few years before starting a family. We started trying in 2014, but it wasn’t going as we expected. It took us awhile, and after about 8 months I finally got pregnant and I was so excited. I started planning, thinking of baby names, etc. We went in for the first ultrasound, and there was no baby?! I had a blighted ovum. It’s the craziest thing – your hormones and and body think you’re pregnant, but you aren’t. I was heart broken. Another 8 months went by, and I got pregnant again! Everyone says miscarrying on your first is so common, so I should be good with this one! Nope. I literally miscarried on my brother’s wedding day. While everyone had happy tears streaming, I was crying tears of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.
Josh made a career change soon after that miscarriage, which led us to a new city and a fresh start. It was within that move that we decided that we needed to see the professionals and get some testing done. All of the tests came back perfectly fine, so we couldn’t understand what was wrong. We ended up going to a fertility center and we started the IUI process. We did the first round of IUI and it was unsuccessful. My doctor was baffled because on paper everything looked perfect and I should have gotten pregnant. So we tried a second time. I went in multiple times to do ultrasounds to make sure my eggs were the right size and found out they weren’t growing. So they gave a tiny bit more hormones, and the next ultrasound my uterus was filled with eggs! My doctor told us that we could either terminate this cycle or we could let all those eggs grow and then extract them and start the IVF process, which we did. We were so excited!
We did the first round and I made it to 10 weeks pregnant, my longest pregnancy! We went in for our first ultrasound with our regular doctor (not our IVF doctor) and again, no heartbeat. The next round my doctor thought the uterus may not be getting sufficient blood flow round. So that time around, I tried taking baby aspirin (to thin my blood) and an immunosuppressant (to make sure my immune system wasn’t attacking the fetus). Unfortunately, that round also ended in miscarriage. The next meeting with our doctor, he told us he wanted to transfer two embryos and throw the kitchen sink at me and add another medication, Lovenox, to hopefully help at least one embryo survive. We did the third round of IVF in April 2017 with two embryos, and Jack and Madelyn were born in December of 2017.
We never thought we’d figure out what was causing the miscarriages, but after moving to Eastern Europe, and getting some very detailed blood work, we found out that I have a genetic mutation where my blood clots when I’m pregnant. The last round of IVF worked due to the baby aspirin and Lovenox. We’re actually going to start another round of IVF this summer in hopes of getting another little one – hopefully just one this time 😉 I hope and pray it will be an easier process for us, and that we really did find the magic tricks to keep me pregnant, but it’s still very nerve racking and humbling. The whole infertility situation/circumstance put me in my most vulnerable place. There’s few things you can do, and being a type A personality I really had to trust that whatever happened was, and is, is what’s meant to be.
Instagram: @alijoshpunderson
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