This story begins when
I was a little girl. I would save my money to buy dolls and more
dolls -dreaming of being a mother some day. When I was a teenager I
would cut out pictures of people from magazines and glue them on
construction paper and make large families. I would draw plans for
houses big enough to hold large families. I dreamed about getting
married and having a large family my whole life. Whenever anyone
asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I always said I wanted to
be a mother—even in 6th grade when that wasn't cute
anymore. When I went to get my patriarchal blessing the biggest
thing I was listening for was if I would have the opportunity to get
married and have children. I didn't really hear anything else during
the blessing—it said I would find a priesthood holder, marry in the
temple, and we'd have children! (Luckily we get copies of our
blessings, because there was MUCH more to it than that.)
When Timothy and I got
married we decided to wait a few months before trying to have a baby
so that I could graduate with my Associate degree first. We ended up
only putting it off for a little over a month. Then, we decided to
let the Lord decide when children would join our family. Little did
we know that meant waiting 7 years before adopting, and 12 years
before our first pregnancy. I studied as much as I could on my own
about fertility, pregnancy, and child birth. I learned a lot, but it
still didn't help that no baby seemed to be coming.
First
years-Endometriosis
Those first
years brought a disappointment with every passing month. The longer
it took, the harder it became
to accept that we still couldn't have children. But, I remember
thinking after about a year-and-a-half, that if I could wait a
year-and-a-half, I could wait that long again. After being married
for about two years we decided to go to the doctor and see if there
was anything wrong. Timothy’s screening (semen analysis)
checked out fine. I was diagnosed with endometriosis through a
laparoscopy surgery. The doctor removed the endometrial tissue that
was in the wrong places, then prescribed me with Clomid and said we
should be pregnant in the next few months, because everything else
looked good. We even used ovulation predictor kits and basal
temperature charting so that our timing was right. After three
months of the Clomid treatment, however, we still had nothing.
Around that time, we moved from Rexburg, Idaho to Greeley, Colorado.
Our new health insurance had a very high deductible and didn't have
fertility or maternity benefits, so we didn't pursue fertility
treatments through the medical field.
We did try doing acupuncture, but to no avail. We never stopped
trying on our own, though.
Adoption attempt
After a while we decided to try to adopt through LDS Family
Services. We had a home study done and waited and waited for a phone
call for a baby. We advertized on adoptionprofiles.com and had a few
birth mothers who talked to us, but none ever decided to place their
baby with us. (I think it was because we weren't in an ideal
situation: Timothy was in the middle of his masters degree, and I was
working full-time from home. Most birth mothers want their baby to
go to a family with a father who has a stable job and stay-at-home
mom.)
Adoption
When we moved from Colorado to Eugene, Oregon, we transferred and
updated our home study with LDS Family Services. Because we had been
working with them for two years and had no luck we decided to look
into adopting through the state foster care system. By February 2008
we had two open home studies in the hopes that we could get a baby or
a young child. In January 2009 we got the news that we'd been
selected to adopt Brigham (age 27 months) and Rebekah (age 16 months)
and possibly their baby brother. We were so excited and felt so
blessed to finally become parents. We got the older two children on
January 26th, 2009. On February 17th, 2009,
Hyrum (age 4 months) joined our family. This helped ease the pain of
infertility. We were so grateful to be parents and have three
beautiful young children to love and care for. But there was still a
deep longing to experience pregnancy, child birth, and have a
biological baby.
Endo
treatments While living in Eugene a friend mentioned that
she had endometriosis and had been unable to get pregnant until she
had been treated with Lupron for six months, which cleared up the
endo, and she got pregnant right away after that. Lupron is a drug
that essentially puts you into menopause. Resting from monthly
cycles helps the body to heal the endometriosis. So, just before we
adopted our children I had my doctor treat me with Lupron. I didn't
have a cycle for about 9 months, which was a blessing because the
first few months we had our children I didn't have to worry about the
painful cramping I had been having every month. We fully expected
that I would get pregnant after the Lupron treatment, we tracked my
cycles again with basal temperatures and made sure our timing was
right. We thought it would be nice to have a baby when Hyrum was
18-24 months old. But, that still didn't work.
Chinese Medicine
After a while I started looking into more traditional Chinese
medicine. Eugene, Oregon is a perfect place to get into natural
medicine techniques because there are so many naturopaths,
acupuncturists, and herbal stores in the area. I tried many herbs on
my own, and then after many months of no success I realized our
insurance covered naturopath doctors at 90%! So I found a doctor and
started treatments. We did a bunch of testing, acupuncture, and
herbal remedies. The doctor helped me solve a lot of my other health
problems, but couldn't come up with a solution to why we weren't
getting pregnant. After about 6 months of this I stopped going
because it seemed we were going no where.
Decisions
In February of 2011 we found out about the adoption tax credit. It
had become refundable and special needs children qualified for the
maximum amount even if very little adoption expenses were paid. All
three of our children qualified as a special needs adoption. So, our
tax return that year was almost twice our yearly income. We weren't
sure what we were supposed to do with all that money. We felt like
the Lord had placed it in our path for a reason, but why? We prayed
and prayed about what to do with money. Our first inclination was to
pay off all our student loans and be debt free! We thought that
would be what God wanted, too, because the prophets are always
admonishing us to get out of debt. But, He had other things in mind.
As we were praying, we got the distinct impression that we should
use the money for fertility treatments, and pay off only our
unsubsidized loans. Fertility treatments weren't even something we'd
considered using the money for. I wasn't even sure if the new
technologies for fertility treatments were pleasing to the Lord. We
went into it a little skeptical. But, we paid off the unsubsidized
loans and began looking into treatment options.
Clomid cycles
We found a full fertility clinic in Eugene only 5 miles from our
home and scheduled a consultation. The doctor heard our history and
decided to run his own screening tests to see what may be wrong.
Timothy's second semen analysis came back perfect. The doctor did an
ultrasound and found an ovarian cyst. He said it may be related to
the endometriosis and wanted to remove it right away, because those
kinds of cysts can burst and become dangerous. So, we scheduled a
second laparoscopy. The surgery went well, the cyst was removed, but
it was found to benign. The doctor found only one endo spot and
removed it. He flushed dye through my fallopian tubes to make sure
they were open—they were. He checked the health of all my
reproductive organs—everything looked perfect. We had to wait a
month to let my body recover from the surgery. Then we started in on
the fertility treatments. The first treatment was three cycles of
Clomid with IUI (intrauterine insemination.) That's where they take
Timothy's semen and wash it to keep only the best of the sperm, and
then use a catheter to place the sperm directly into my uterus.
These cycles cost $800 per cycle—not bad for fertility treatments.
But, those three cycles didn't work even though everything was timed
and worked perfectly.
Gonadotropin
cycles The next step was to use a stronger fertility drug.
We used gonadotropins that hyper-stimulate the ovaries. The drugs
alone cost $300-500 per cycle plus the ultrasound monitoring and the
IUI. The total cost of these cycles was about $2000 per cycle. For
the first gonadotropin cycle, we were careful and only made one egg.
That was unsuccessful, so the next cycle we used more drugs. I ended
up with 5 eggs, and I was hoping all of them wouldn't fertilize.
Although I wanted a baby and was willing to take twins, I didn't want
more than two babies at once. But, the doctor said I only had a 10%
chance of triplets with the five eggs, so we went ahead and did the
IUI. The doctor was sure it would work, but it didn't.
More decisions
Up until now I had been avoiding IVF because I didn't like the idea
of doctor's “playing God” and fertilizing eggs in a lab and
selecting which ones to put back into the mother. But we prayed
about it as this was the next step on the fertility ladder. The cost
for IVF cycles at our clinic were about $11,000-$12,000, depending on
how much medication was needed. When praying about it, we really
felt like this is what we needed to do, and everything would work out
the way it needed to. So, we decided to go ahead and do IVF (In
Vetro Fertilization.)
First IVF cycle
The following is a journal entry from March 20, 2012 about our first
IVF cycle. (in italics)
Before we could do
IVF we had to get blood work done, have a hysteroscopy, and do a
trial transfer. Drugs for that started in February. First, we did
about 2 weeks of birth control pills, then added lupron injections to
the birth control. Then, I stopped the birth control and had a very
light menstrual period. Then, they did a suppression check: blood
test and ultrasound. Everything looked good—the cyst
was gone and my hormones were suppressed, so we could
proceed with the IVF treatment! We were excited, because we weren't
sure if we'd be able to do it because of the cyst. So that next day,
March 4th, I started the stimulation
injections. I had to do one injection each morning and two
injections each evening. That was difficult, but went fine. I had a
number of ultrasounds and blood tests over the next 10 days. Then, I
was ready to do the trigger shot. I had about 18 follicles that Dr
Austin could see on the ultrasound. So, he figured he'd be able to
get about 15 mature eggs to fertilize. So, on Tuesday the 13th
I did the hCG trigger shot to make the
follicles mature and prepare to be released. Then on Thursday, March
15th, I went in to have the egg retrieval
done. They had to put me under general anesthesia. During the
process, they were able to retrieve 22 eggs. They put 11 of them
with Timothy's sperm to fertilize on their own and they sent 11 to
ICSI (Intracytoplasmic sperm injection). Basically, to
have the sperm injected into the eggs. The ones that we meant to
fertilize conventionally didn't end up fertilizing at all, and of the
other 11 eggs, 3 were immature and couldn't have ICSI done. Of
the other 8, only 6 progressed after fertilization. By day 2, 3
were progressing okay and 3 weren't developing quite as
fast as they should have. So, on Sunday, March 18th,
the 3 better embryos were transferred to my uterus. Before the
embryo transfer, I had an acupuncture session to increase blood flow
to the uterus and afterwards I had another one. I had been doing
acupuncture all through this process. Timothy had to start giving me
progesterone injections the night before the transfer, and I also had
to do progesterone vaginal suppositories three times a day. Then, I
had to rest for 2 days. To make matters worse, I had gotten stick on
Wednesday, the day before the egg retrieval, and I had an allergic
reaction to the pain medication, Lortab. (I've decided
I'm allergic to codeine like my mom.) I got so sick I began to
wonder if I might die—my heart beat got very low and
I was tingly all over and VERY lightheaded. I finally sent Timothy
to the store to get me a caffeinated drink to help speed up my heart.
That helped and I was able to pull out of it, but it took me two
weeks. Well, after all that and an 11-day wait, I went in to take a
blood pregnancy test. I was the most nervous about this part. Well,
Sharon, the nurse coordinator, called around 10:00am on Thursday the
29th and told me that the pregnancy test was
negative. I was so disappointed. I was so sure this was going to
work. I felt like if the Lord had led us to do these
fertility treatments and provided the means to do so, then why
wouldn't it work? But it didn't. Heavenly Father had something else
in mind when he led us down this path. I must say that although the
loss is great and I am grieving, I am grateful for the road we have
traveled. We have learned a lot in many different ways. I have come
to trust the Lord more fully and I have a greater understanding of
the Atonement of my Savior. I know that I can put my
burdens on Him and that He can strengthen me to withstand anything.
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed
be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21
A
few weeks after the devastating news, we went to meet with the
doctor. He said that there had possibly been a problem in the lab
because both another couple's and our sperm had done something
unusual, so they thought it was a problem with the supplies used.
When the eggs and sperm were put together, the sperm from both
couples (us and another) did the same thing. They started out
looking great, but only an hour later most of the sperm were
lethargic and by 4 hours after putting the sperm with the eggs all
the sperm were lethargic or dead. (Sperm normally last 48-72 hours.)
Because this strange occurrence—one that the doctor had never seen
before—happened in the same IVF cycle, to 2 out of about 12
couples, he thought there may have been a problem with the
uterine-like dish they used. They had ordered it from a different
company than they had in the past. Because of this problem the
doctor offered to us and the other couple a free IVF cycle. We had
to pay for the medication, but there would be no doctor bills. Since
we were planning on moving to Utah in June, we decided to hurry and
get in on the May IVF cycle.
IVF
try #2- In May 2012 we did the second cycle. This one ended
up costing us about $2000 for medication, but we were so grateful for
the free medical treatments. This cycle went similarly to the last
one, only they sent all of the 20 eggs retrieved to ICSI. About
twelve of them fertilized well and began to grow. By 5 days later
there were only 6 that were still growing and healthy, but they were
doing very well. They transferred two of the embryos and froze 4 of
them. Then we had the 11-day wait until the pregnancy test. It
didn't work again. I was upset, but I didn't feel quite as
devastated, because I knew I still had two more chances with 4 frozen
embryos. About this time we were moving to Utah and I didn't have
time to worry about not getting pregnant, because I was so busy with
packing and getting ready for the move.
Frozen
Embryo Transfer #1 In November 2012 we decided
to try a frozen embryo transfer. I had a doctor here in Utah monitor
everything via ultrasound and fax the results to my doctor in Oregon.
Then, the day before the transfer I flew out to Eugene. I had two
good quality embryos transferred. I really thought it would work,
because I wasn't as stressed about the fertility treatment and my
life in general was less stressful than in Oregon. But, we were
again disappointed. At this point I had had 7 embryos transferred,
and none of them worked. My doctor said that the chances of us ever
having a baby with my eggs and Timothy's sperm were slim to none, but
we did have one more chance with 2 embryos still frozen. Our doctor
recommended using donor sperm if the last frozen transfer didn't
work. I told him that was not an option for us. If we were going to
have a baby it was going to be my eggs and Timothy's sperm only.
Allergy
treatments Meanwhile I learned about an allergy treatment
that my chiropractor does. I was very interested because I have so
many food- and air-borne allergies. I started doing the allergy
treatments and told the chiropractor our fertility story. He tested
me, I was allergic to Timothy, testosterone, semen, and embryos. So
he treated me for those each in turn. He thinks the reason seven
embryos haven't implanted is because my body was rejecting them as a
foreign substance (allergen). These treatments are called NAET, for
anyone interested. They really work too—I can eat all sorts of
foods that I had to avoid for years.
Frozen
Embryo Transfer #2 Then, in July we took a family trip out
to Eugene, Oregon to visit friends and have the last 2 embryos
transferred. This time the doctor added a few extra medications
hoping they would help. On top of the daily progesterone injections,
and the twice weekly estrogen injections I had to do a twice daily
anti-coagulant injection and an oral allergy medication. This time
it worked, which is nothing short of a miracle! We became pregnant
with twins, but one of them died when I was about 6 weeks along. We
were sad to loose one of our twins, but we are so grateful that one
is growing and developing normally! As you can see from the
ultrasound pictures, it is growing perfectly. We are so grateful
that the Lord has seen fit to bless us with this little one. It
truly is a miracle!
