Disclosure – All this information is from our own personal experience and shouldn’t be taken as medical advice. Please always consult with your doctor.

I wanted to use this platform to share my personal journey toward having a baby. I feel it’s important to share because it’s a beautiful thing to start a family and I know that it’s a lot harder than it originally seems.

This is really personal and I am grateful to have readers that are thoughtful and kind and might be reading this to compare their journey to mine, learn more about this process, or just read what my husband and I personally are going through.

I am starting to write this right at the start of our journey. We just had our prep appointment so we know more of how to really begin this process so I feel more informed to share it with you.

Let’s start at the beginning – warning, graphic-ish content below

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The very beginning actually starts at the beginning of my menstruation journey. When I was just starting this journey to womanhood, I experienced something pretty scary.

I was 13 years old and I’ll never forget being out at a restaurant when I had intense pain. I thought it was just period pain, I had no idea what was happening.

So long story short, after 3 days of suffering we went to the pediatrician who sent me to the emergency room and I was experiencing an ovarian torsion.

Because of the circumstances, I had to have surgery because sadly my ovary had died. It’s possible that it could have been fixed and not removed, but it was too late in my case.

So going into this baby journey, I already had a “disadvantage” because I only had 1 ovary. But wait, there’s more!

And I don’t mean for this to just be like a diary, but maybe someone out there has a similar experience and this will bring comfort to relate to my story.

Ready to make a baby

Since beginning this journey, we weren’t getting pregnant after trying the natural way so I checked in with the doctor. It is completely possible to still get pregnant with only one ovary and everything has always been normal for me so I didn’t expect any hiccups.

I was sent for an HSG exam or hysterosalpingogram exam. We wanted to see if my tubes were blocked and upon looking at the exam, I got a bit of a surprise.

Now before I reveal this surprise, let me just preface by when I had my ovary removed, I had to be opened up because they thought it was something else. So they were in my abdominal cavity and wrote in the surgical report that everything looked normal.

So here I am at the HSG exam – which is so painful, by the way. Definitely take the Advil before the exam and bring PADS! They didn’t tell me that, fortunately the office had some for me, but it would have been nice to be prepared.

Back to what I found out – I’m laying on the table and my dr. says, you have a unicornuate uterus, and you’ll probably need IVF. I was like WHAT?! Here I was expecting that I just had a blocked tube and the exam would clear the blockage, but there was no dye coming out and they pushed as hard as they could.

I had no idea what that meant, I thought maybe he was reading it wrong, but still no pregnancy. I went back and forth with the dr. got a second opinion, and I ended up having to make an appointment with a fertility doctor. This was not something I ever wanted to have to do, but there I was.

Turns out, the unicornuate uterus (and in case you were wondering what that is, basically it means that while I was developing in the womb, my mullerian duct didn’t develop the other half of my uterus. So basically, I have half a uterus. It acts like a normal uterus, but it’s smaller and only goes to one side) well mine goes to the right, which yep you guess it, that’s the ovary and tube which was removed.

If I didn’t lose my ovary, would I have been able to get pregnant naturally? Maybe, who knows. However, I believe everything happens for a reason. Maybe I would have suffered more from getting pregnant naturally, because I might not have known about the unicornuate uterus and I wouldn’t have been monitored appropriately. We can never know God’s plan, but I trust completely that His plan is best even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

After meeting with the fertility doctor, it was now understood that my left fallopian tube did not form and there’s nothing connecting my ovary to my uterus. PRAISE GOD that I even have a left ovary. It is such a blessing! Sometimes with a unicornuate uterus, there’s only 1 developed ovary or there’s kidney and bladder problems. I am so blessed to not have those needs.

After my doctor did an ultrasound, he also noticed that my ovary is polycystic and upon some blood work it was found that my insulin levels were a little high. So I was put on metformin to prevent future health concerns and lower my insulin levels.

Hope.

Seems like a lot of things were not really super in my favor, and yet I am filled with TONS of hope. I am thrilled with the doctor I’m working with, he is filled with hope and says to stay positive. I believe everything happens for a reason and that God hears the desires of our heart. I also have been learning that God fulfills those desires when our desires line up with His will.

It was a really hard September for me, it was also a pandemic, but I was wrestling with all the information, I had really bad baby fever, it was hard for me. My first instinct was to go to God and I’m so proud of myself for doing that. I have never felt more peace and hope and understanding and joy than during this time of my life. It went from being one of the lowest lows to one of the most fulfilling times.

I just can’t even with how good our God is, I truly believe it’s perspective, purposefully bringing him into our lives, repentance, reading His Word, and listening. I listened to worship music daily, listened to new podcasts, and other opportunities that came up. I fully believe that God put these things in my path to guide me during that time and I’m so grateful for that. This is why sometimes suffering is a blessing because I am so grateful for the growth in my journey that I experienced during that time.

I think everything in life is a learning lesson and sometimes we have to figure out what God is having us learn through different seasons. For one, I think this is a time of learning to wait. This has been something I think God has been teaching me my whole life, you can read more about this in my blog post “Why do we need to let go and let God“.

I also think I needed that hard time, and I’m sure there will be many more hard times, because it drew me closer to God and honestly that’s the ultimate prize. I hope that I can continue to draw close to him and work on ignoring life distractions even when times are good! It’s true that God gets our attention the most during hard times.

Also something kind of cool I want to share – while I was watching a streamed event, worshipping and praying, I swear to you that I have been given a promise that I will be pregnant and have a healthy baby and I’m holding on to that promise. I just really pray that my heart’s desire matches up with His will because all I’ve ever wanted is to be a mother. I know no matter what, Lucas and I will be parents but we might have to be open to what that will look like.

Back to the Journey

Before the prep appointment, I had to attend an IVF class where the instructor broke down every single piece of the process, and it’s a lot so it was great to go to that class. Especially because it was most specific to the clinic I’m attending.

At that class, I was able to set up my actual IVF cycle, which because of the pandemic and the because the clinic I was attending was kind of small, it was quite a few months from my initial appointment – October to my scheduled IVF cycle – April. It’s okay though, again – learning to wait. It’s all God’s timing and with the way this pandemic “seems” to be turning around, you never know, but it seems to be getting more under control so hopefully there will be less risk in April.

Lucas and I had our prep appointment this week. Praise God for how it went! We were really nervous about it.

At the prep appointment, the doctor is testing to see if the ovary is easy to get to, if there are follicles visible, and he also tests to see if the catheter, which will be used for the embryo transfer later, will go into the uterus without complication. Fortunately, because I was blessed with a great doctor, he actually did the ultrasound for me back in October to test if the ovary was easy to get to and if there were follicles and that’s how he knew it was polycystic. Also fortunately, my ovary is easy to get to, lots of follicles – which again another blessing in disguise, he said it might be to my benefit to have a polycystic ovary because of lots of follicles – and even with my uterus being rare, the catheter went in with no complications.

At the prep appointment, we also found out about Lucas’ numbers and they were all normal Praise God!

Phew so onto what’s next..

Next Steps

Next up, at my next menstrual cycle, I need to start taking birth control to calm the ovaries and lower my natural hormones. I’m set for my baseline ultrasound in April to see how I’m doing and to start my hormone shots if it all looks good.

So for now, I’m just enjoying my life, spending time with my husband and taking care of my house, drawing to God, and trying to live a healthy life best I can with as little stress as possible.

As I continue on this journey, I will fill you in along the way 🙂

Blood Tests

One of the next steps I had to complete was a pretty expansive blood panel. They tested for A LOT! The phlebotomist even missed a vial and had to poke me again, haha oops! It was okay though, because now I have more information about my current health and so does my doctor.

I was also fortunate to have a genetic markers test so that we could have some insight on whether my husband and I have the same genetic markers that could lead to our child possibly having something.

So at this point, I’m waiting to see if my husband has the same genetic markers as I do and if he does we would have to likely biopsy the embryos to test them for it. Hopefully we’ll know if he’s positive in the next several weeks.

It’s all still new to me, always lots to learn!

It Begins!

Following the blood tests and genetic testing, we learned that everything is normal and we have no matching genetic markers, which is great news!

Today, we had our baseline ultrasound. This marks the beginning of the cycle. Thank you Lord, we were given the green light to start the medicines by the end of the week.

We learned A LOT about injections and what our medicines are and regimen and everything. I’ll include our specifics in a separate post.

It’s all very exciting, and scary, and I’m feeling oddly guilty. I believe in God’s blessings even if it’s a different time then now and it looks different than I think, but I still feel guilty for wanting this and hoping so much it will happen to me when I know it doesn’t always happen for everyone.

So the shots begin in a few days, I get blood work twice next week to monitor my estrogen and I have a final ultrasound at the end of next week.

The Shots

So they took me off the birth control, which means my period started after that. This is honestly something I haven’t heard anyone talk about – The first day of my shots was also the day I was having some pretty bad cramps to deal with. This means I don’t really know how my body was feeling with the medicine because I mostly had period symptoms.

It was highly nerve-wracking leading up to the first shot, now it feels a lot more real. This is really happening.

We purchased some cheap plastic drawers to keep all the medicine together and make the mixing of the medicine a lot smoother.

We had 2 medicines, saline solution, syringes, needles, alcohol swabs, and Q-caps.

This felt like the slowest week as we approached the first day of shots. In addition, the anxiety was building up as it got closer and closer. Finally, the day arrived!

We mixed our medicines as we had been instructed and Lucas and I helped each other to get the first shot done.

I’ve gotta be honest, I have a lot of feelings. My anxiety is certainly not in check, I am terrified because it’s an exciting journey but all this could be for nothing. We pray for that blessing, but even asking for something so precious and life changing is filled with emotions.

So now we hope that the medicine grows the follicles and that we’ll have lots of good eggs to collect at the egg retrieval.

Egg Retrieval

After about 10 days of shots, blood tests, and ultrasounds, we made it to the egg retrieval procedure. At our final ultrasound, the doctor said we had about 17 eggs.

Because my estrogen was looking good and my single ovary was producing about as many eggs as it could, they scheduled the procedure. The day of the procedure, I went to the surgery center early in the morning.

I met with the nurse and anesthesiologist and before I knew it I was headed into the OR and when I woke back up, it was over.

Now this was something I wasn’t fully prepped for, I was very sore when I woke up. I was told I would be more bloated, but I didn’t know how sore I would be post surgery. For a few days, I was very sore and bloated. I took ibuprofen as soon as I was allowed and after about 3 days I finally felt better.

They ended up retrieving 18 eggs and we found out from the embryologist the next day that 11 eggs were fertilized!

So now we’re at another waiting point, but in a few days we’ll find out how many of our eggs became embryos.

Embryos

So we found out after 5 days of waiting, that we have 6 embryos! In addition, they are all pretty good quality. It’s hard to know if this will be the case when you start this process and praise God we made some AA and AB quality embryos. So now we prepare for the embryo transfer.

When my menstrual cycle started, I had to go back on birth control to calm the body down and give my ovaries a break. Then I got scheduled for an embryo transfer and started the preparations for my body to get ready for the transfer.

Preparing for Embryo Transfer

1 month before the scheduled embryo transfer, I started the Lupron shots and shortly thereafter stopped the birth control. The Lupron was the same medicine they had me take for the trigger shot.

After about 9 days, I had an ultrasound to check the lining of my uterus to make sure everything was as it should. They also tested me by putting some water in my uterus, but truthfully I don’t really know why.

Following that appointment, I got a schedule. Truthfully, people had told me that this stage wasn’t as bad as the egg retrieval stage. However, I’m not sure I agree haha! So far, I’ve had to administer shots in the stomach for much longer than I had to for egg retrieval and there are more changes throughout the month medicinally.

After that ultrasound appointment, I started taking low dose Aspirin and Estrace (estrogen) to build the uterine lining. Throughout the next several weeks, the Estrace gets increased incrementally and then I have another ultrasound appointment to check that all is going as it should.

Since everything is progressing nicely, we continued on to the progesterone shots phase. If you’re at this phase and looking for tips on taking these shots, check out this post. These shots are not super great, I had to take them every morning for 9 weeks and they can definitely be painful at times. The tips I’ve provided are so helpful.

Embryo Transfer

Everything was looking great! We were able to have the embryo transferred. On the day of the transfer, we were told to take it easy so no working that day and enjoy a stress free day. They were able to do the transfer at the office so I didn’t have to go to the hospital and it was a fairly easy visit. They thawed the embryo that morning and luckily, everything was good, so I got a picture of our embryo and they put the embryo in me with a catheter like the one the doctor practiced with previously. I had to sit with my knees up for about 10 minutes and then we were free to go. From there, I was instructed to stay stress free for the next couple of days, and then I had to wait 9 days until we could find out if it was successful.

Pregnancy Test

So on a specific day, we were told to get a blood test. We went fairly early in the morning, and it was great that we went as early as we did because it took a longer time to get a result than I thought it would. Once we finally got the results, we learned that we were indeed pregnant! The nurse also told us that sometimes, the test results take longer to come back when it’s positive because they have to test the blood twice. Nonetheless, we got the result that we were pregnant and had a good level of HCG. Now it was time to focus on the pregnancy.

1st Pregnancy

This was an exciting and scary time. My husband didn’t wait too long before telling people we were pregnant because we decided that we wanted a support system in place for the positives and possible negatives that came our way. Because of this, we told very close friends and family that we were pregnant and presently, we are still glad that we did this. My husband and I lived in mostly bliss for the 1st trimester. There were many appointments during this time, approximately every 2 weeks starting at the 6-week mark. We had to continue taking progesterone shots and saw the fertility doctor until we were about 8 weeks pregnant. Following the 8 week appointment, we graduated from the fertility doctor and had an end date of our shots, yay! After graduating, we met with a high-risk OB and genetic counselor, who was wonderful thankfully, and we had appointments with our OB. This part of the pregnancy was a little crazy because we were trying to find an OB we were comfortable with and had met with a midwife because we just weren’t sure who was going to handle my care.

Unfortunate News

All was seeming as though it was going well in the pregnancy and I was finally buying into the whole being pregnant thing because I’m sure, if you’re like me and have gone or are going through this infertility journey to being a parent, you know that it’s hard to fully believe or buy into the good news because you’re so used to having unclear or bad news. Well unfortunately, at my 12-week “1st trimester” appointment, we found out some bad news. We were expecting this appointment to be an ultrasound to test the possibility of chromosomal abnormalities of our little one, and instead we found out that I had experienced a missed miscarriage. You can read the more in-depth version here. In short, this led to a D and C, which led to a second D and C and a lot of different doctors and check-ups and bleeding.

This was not a fun time for me, but I’m so thankful to have had the support system in place because we felt a lot less alone through this difficult time. In addition, there was a possibility of infection so I was on antibiotics for 2 weeks and I possibly just started my period post miscarriage. All of this leads to uncertainty of what the future will be, but I am trusting in God’s plan for my husband and I and I recognize that I am now “in wait”.

I have to keep my trust and hope in Him, know that all will happen as it should in His time, and continue to pray. I know I’m not alone with a journey like this, and it does not mean only scary things for the future. We are of course sad for the loss that we’ve endured, but wouldn’t trade it because of the joy we experienced leading up to this. I know God is with me, as He is for you, this journey has highs and lows and I’m encouraged by other women’s stories of success and the families they have built. When I know more, and when our journey continues following this waiting period, I will update more on what I experience and learn.