I wanted to start off writing this because so many of my loyal customers have followed my fertility journey through social media and me communicating my losses, and/ or viewing art pieces that archived that journey. I don’t want to feel like everyone that views my social media pages has to go on the journey with me but I always have caring customers that ask for an update and I felt like this my best option. I wanted to take it back to the beginning though and give a little more detail to each loss as to not only help me remember for future appointments ahead but give you an idea of where I’m coming from.
Shawn and I have been together as of now going on 10 years, married 3 years. In August 2022, my hubby, and I began trying when we went on our honeymoon to Alaska, we wanted to wait a little while after getting married in April of 2021 because my business was growing and we wanted to feel more settle in . I being a passionate person threw myself into the deep end already trying to track ovulation and everything. We quickly became pregnant after the 2nd month of trying. We were so very excited, Shawn even going as far as making purchases like a stroller for the baby already. As we went into our first 8 week appointment at the end of October, I was anxiously excited, which quickly turned to just anxious. Upon our first ultrasound things weren’t immediately looking right. We were expected to be at 8 weeks but the baby was measuring at 5 and half weeks. The doctor said that there is some concern but its just something to keep an eye on. During the session, we did a papsmear as well. Well, of course, as any woman would know you sometimes have bleeding. Well my bleeding never quite stopped. I called the nurse hotline 2 days later and she said it was likely nothing but would bring me into the do an ultrasound. I thought potentially I was overreacting and just wanted the security of them telling me everything was ok. I also didn’t want to overwhelm Shawn so I went into the appointment alone. As the ultrasound tech was doing the scan she said it was now measuring at 6 weeks and showed me the heartbeat, I felt 100% better, like “its growing, there’s a heartbeat, there is nothing wrong”. I came back to the room and talked with the doctor and she had a different thought. She said it didn’t look good, that the heartbeat was slowing down and that it was likely I was going to miscarry. I was devastated. It was hard to remain optimitic the rest of the day. I try to consider myself a strong person and that I can set my emotions aside and I tried to go blow glass at the museum but quickly found I couldn’t because I started bleeding harder. I went home, crying and in pain. Shawn had already left for work and we were both bickering a bit because of my emotions and not being able to keep a sound mind when asking questions that were pertentent to why this was happening with the doctor. I eventually passed a lemon-size clot which was a warning sign when communicating to the doctor so I had Shawn come home to take me to the ER. We didn’t end up going because my pain had subsided a ton afterwards. We never quite figured out what happened and why it happened.
When having a loss you do tons of research and I kept reading your likely to have a successful pregnancy up to 3 months after a loss, so again I jumped back into the saddle and we kept working at it. Shawn and I became pregnant again in February 2023, I was so much more fearful this time. We did discover through early bloodwork that my progesterone was low, so I was given medication to take up through the first trimester. We couldn’t get in for our 8 week appointment and went in at 9 weeks around April 21. I was like this has to be good, we made it past where we did last time….We went into our 9 week appointment and the baby was looking bigger than the first one ever did and was more defined. So again we were cautiosly optimistic, although again they said it was measuring small at 7 weeks, they also said the sac was a little small, but wasn’t a major concern. Like clockwork, the next night after blowing glass and closing down the studio, I went to the restroom and saw some blood again, I instantly went to freakout mode. The blood had subsided some by morning and again I felt like the girl who was crying wolf. When I called the nurses assistant they brought me in, this time with Shawn in tow. As we went back to get the ultrasound, the ultrasound tech was like, “do you want to know the findings when I see them or do you want to wait to the doctor”. I said I wanted to know because the last time the ultrasound tech had given me hope having said they saw the heartbeat and with it measuring bigger. She told us she couldn’t find a heartbeat. I instantly broke down ( as I just did now reliving this moment), I just kept chanting I can’t do this, I can’t do this. I knew from my research my chances of another miscarriage just went up considerably and that there was close to a 33% chance it would happen again. Shawn held and cradled me. We began to walk to the exam room to connect again with the doctor. She was so sympathetic and even went as far as to walk us out the back door so we didn’t have to walk through a sea of people. She had given us a few options. Have a natural miscarriage again, be given medicine to induce it or schedule a D&C. I was scared to have a D&C because I heard you could have scarring from it. So I opted for the medication. That night I was in some of the worst pain I had ever been in, I’m not sure if it was contractions, but my pain was migrating from my uterus, to my chest to my back and I couldn’t sleep, I was nearly kealed over in pain. I woke Shawn up around 2 and told him we needed to go to the hospital. We went to Obici and took us 2-3 hours to finally get me back in a room. When I got in the room, I believed I passed the mass like last time but was still in pain. They gave me morphine and I slept for few hours til about 6-7. Shawn took me home and we began the recovery. The doctor said she would be making a referral to a higher level of fertility care. Again we kept trying. We did have a new plan before I could get into the referring doctor that we would try to take progesterone earlier to help with the lining of my uterus. So essentially track ovulation and then 1 week after ovulation I would take progesterone all the way up till the pregnancy test and if I wasn’t pregnant to discontinue, this will come back in a second.
Last summer was a pretty difficult summer for me, not only was I dealing with my loss and the mental strength but I learned that 3 people within my close circle had gotten pregnant. I was devastated and it felt like everything I looked at on social media was pushing pregnancy announcements or gender reveals and I was so lost. I was also dealing with a ton at the museum and trying to be prepared for the Neptune festival, I was a hotmess. I started seeing a therapist in July but it didn’t feel like I really got a handle on things for sometime. It was during July that I still hadn’t heard back from the referred medical center that I began to investigate. It had taken over 4 months to get into the next location after my miscarriage. I just wanted anwsers and I wanted them now., I was desperate. It took nearly a month after finally connecting to get into EVMS, I was not impressed, I hated the doctor we saw. He dismissed all of the things my obgyn had discussed with me about the progesterone and having a plan , he said I could take it if it made me feel better but it was not scientifically proven to help. We went through genetic testing, bloodwork and an ultrasound. All having some drama or another. but all came back clean, and I was refered to Shady Groves Fertility at the Jones institute.
We had our first appointment back in October of last year. We started with a women named Doctor Archer. We liked her she was very involved and communicative and she also had glass in her office so it kinda felt like a sign. She discovered what no other doctor discovered having had 5-6 ultrasounds that I had PCOS ( Poly-cystic ovarian syndrome). Sometimes you can see PCOS in bloodwork, but no one ever found it until she counted the eggs and I had an abundant of cysts. So she suggested starting on pregnitude which would help level out my cycles which weren’t ever extreme until after the miscarriages AND she suggested we start progesterone not just at one week after ovulation but 2 DAYS! Which made me hate that male doctor even more. We still weren’t able to get pregnant and we did a few more tests like an endometrial biopsy in November. We discovered that I had an infection in my uterus and didn’t know how long it had been there. But it was called chronic Endometritis , which means it would also come back. We took a high dose pill to kill it off. A month after seeing her, I got an email saying she would be retiring. I was so frustrated, like why would you put me with a doctor that would be leaving! So again we started this journey over again. We met Dr. Banks in January. She has been alright but still has left alot to be desired. Dr. Banks wanted to do further testing and do another edometrial biopsy in January and follow that up with a flush of my fallopian tubes to make sure there was no kinks. Both extremely painful. Shawn also went through testing and passed with flying colors. We finally got all cleared in February that we were to begin IUI in March,
IUI if you don’t know its where they give medicaitons like Letrozole or clomid to stimulate egg production and then as you near ovulation, you track through ultrasounds and bloodwork where your at , does your lining look good, how big are the eggs. When they give you the greenlight, they tell you take a trigger shot that night to force ovulation. Shawn always works at night so I had my friend Jen give me the first shot. 2 days later we brought in Shawn’s goods and they refined out the specimen and inseminated me with a concentrated amount, ( I’m sorry for the details, there was no other way to say it.) We started the progesterone and waited. I being a control freak and just wanted to be in the know started to test early. We got an early positive, and the thing about pregnancy tests especially the ones with the lines, is the line will get darker as you go because your HCG is rising. Ultimately we still had to do bloodwork to confirm. Again I was more that hopeful, It had been over a year since I saw a positive on a test. I was like I already know the anwser as I was going to get my bloodwork done. I got a call around 11 and it was Dr. Banks she said the HCG was an 8 and was extremely low and that it looks like it was a chemical pregnancy that the egg fertilized but didn’t attach well to the lining. We followed up with another blood draw the next morning and it was confirmed. I was heartbroken . But we persisted and went right into the next one.
Nothing of note really happened in the 2nd IUI with the exception of meeting the nurse practitioner Natalie that has been doing nearly all my procedures since. I love her. She keeps it real, and will stay and anwser all the questions and will give Shawn a hard time. I honestly feel like I couldn’t do it without her now. But the IUI failed on the 2nd round. So round 3.
Round 3 we upped my medication on the letrozole because my body didn’t respond during the 2nd iui like it did the first so we had produced a bigger egg this round. We got through it all with flying colors and again we got a positive pregnancy. This time with HCG rising over 3 different blood draws.
We were expected to come in at 6 weeks for an ultrasound. At 5 weeks and 2 days I saw blood, I instantly went to panic mode. It was the morning of a market at East Beach. I was there early and again. I thought I could compartmentalize and I couldn’t, I was triggered and spiraling. I packed up before the market started called the after-hours hotline and was just given information to watchout for. I kept going through moments of light spotting and nothing. I know spotting can happen in pregnancy so again I’m like my body is crying wolf, but in my case blood as never been a good thing. I don’t know why but I think I finally got into the doctors to do an ultrasound on Tuesday. This was at the end of June by this point. We get scanned and things aren’t neccesarily looking normal yet again. They were like , “you should look further along than this” They decided to wait til Thursday and have me come back in for a follow up to see if things have changed, this time Dr. Banks was in the room. They did the scan and said they were confident that it was a nonviable pregnancy. But they would like to do testing on it to see if there were chromosomal issues. This was never an option before. The answer was of course yes because that’s all we wanted from the first too. So we scheduled the procedure, which was called a Karman procedure but technically was a D&C for the next Monday,
The procedure was horrific. I was crying out in pain. I was given valium before and told to take 800mg of ibuprofen. Nothing touched the pain, even with them numbing the cervix. They did 3 swipes with suction and came out and had to do an ultrasound to see if it was gone, when I saw it was still there I cried even harder. Shawn was trying so hard to calm me and make me laugh but nothing helped. He said I probably broke both his hands from me squeezing haha, I have to figure I have a pretty strong grip since I have to grip a pipe all the time while blowing. They had to reinsert everything and did 3 more passes and it was finally done. As I stood up from the procedure I just cried even more saying I couldnt do this again. and then we waited…
I still have an appointment coming up this Friday 8/23 to have an official follow up to go over results and next steps. But the results were sent to us and we have done some research, I’m going to copy and paste this next section to help it make sense because I would probably butcher the explanation. I had a complete molar pregnancy, which is when an egg fertilized atypically. Human cells usually have 23 pairs of chromosomes. In a typical fertilization, one chromosome in each pair comes from the father, the other from the mother.
In a complete molar pregnancy, one or two sperm fertilize an egg. The chromosomes from the mother's egg are missing or don't work. The father's chromosomes are copied. There's none from the mother. After removing a molar pregnancy, molar tissue might remain and continue to grow. This is called persistent gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN). GTN happens more often in complete molar pregnancies than it does in partial molar pregnancies.Rarely, a cancerous form of GTN known as choriocarcinoma develops and spreads to other organs. Choriocarcinoma is usually successfully treated with chemotherapy. A complete molar pregnancy is more likely to have this complication than is a partial molar pregnancy.
I know tons of information to digest but we have an anwser for once. It was recommended in the notes for more genetic testing and prenatal diagnosing so more tests and that we are supposed to wait 6 MONTHS TO A YEAR BEFORE TRYING AGAIN!
Honestly, I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know if we keep with IUI because it was worked or because I had a bag egg that we have to go the IVF route. I hate waiting though. We’ve waited 2 years now to have a baby. It just feels so unfair. It feels like I’m losing at the race of life. and that I’m behind everyone else. I see my thereapist every week. I am better than where I was last year mentally but its still trying. I also have a core group of friends that I didnt have then and really have lifted me up in some bad times. Thank you and love you, Danielle, Amanda, Mary and Tanya.
If you made it this long, you deserve an award, maybe Lolly’s (my favorite ice cream). but I’ll try and make an update Friday when we have answers, and I promise that every post after this shouldn’t be this long again. Thank you and love you all!