Our Infertility and IVF Journey

Our In-Vitro Fertilization Journey

In September 2011, following a strong spiritual impression, I went off of birth control. I was 20 years old and eager to start a family and enter the journey of motherhood. My parents had children very young and I loved the idea of following in their footsteps.

(Picture of me from September 2011)

I naively thought that when a couple decided to get pregnant, it would just happen! After a year of trying to conceive naturally, I visited an OBGYN because I had read online that you should visit the doctor if you didn't get pregnant in one year. The doctor told us to relax and that it would happen naturally. He said I was young and healthy and that sometimes things just take time.

I did not like his answer because I felt that was exactly what we had already been doing for the last year. I began to do a lot of research and study my cycles and my body. My beautiful sister-in-law gave me books and filled me with fertility information. She was a true light to me during this time, she herself had undergone years of infertility.

I returned to the doctor after trying for many more months. This time I felt much more prepared for the appointment. I brought in calendars with which I had been tracking my cycles, temperatures and secretions. I also came in with questions about possible diagnoses, including PCOS or endometriosis, which can commonly cause infertility. He barely paid mind to my calendars and he did not think either of these could be my problem. However, he agreed to run some blood work and an ultrasound on me, and a sperm count on my husband. All the results came back normal and did not give us any answers.

The next several years of infertility are a little bit of a blur. These years were a mess of saving up money for each test or treatment, grief over each disappointment, and sometimes months of "taking a break" from trying.

We tried a series of medicated cycles which all failed. We tried multiple medicated intra-uterine inseminations (IUI's), which also all failed. We ran more tests including a hysterosalpingogram (HSG), which came back seemingly normal. We had no answers. I prayed just to get a diagnosis so that we would know how to treat it. I cried to Heavenly Father over why this trial was given to me. I watched helplessly as many friends and family members had children, some who had multiple children during this time.

There were many times when people innocently asked when we were going to start a family. There were times that after opening up about trying to conceive, people gave well meaning, but extremely hurtful replies. "Just relax and it will happen". "It will happen when it is supposed to happen". "I was done having children by your age". "Heavenly Father will send his blessings when He see's fit". "Just enjoy not having kids yet, your life will never be the same once you have them". "All I had to do was look at my husband and I got pregnant".

I learned to really hate Mothers Day as well as the dreaded primary children program each year in Sacrament meeting. I also hated the month of September, I joked in my head that the song "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day was my song. I also felt my heart break whenever I heard the comments: "I'm so glad God trusted me to be a mother", or, "I'm so glad my child picked me to be their mom". I also truly loathed hearing anybody talk down about being pregnant or complain about parenthood.

I realize now that my sensitivities are my own and it is only me who can choose how I feel or respond.

Over time, even with the sometimes wounding replies, I began to open up more and more about my infertility. For me, it was very healing to share the journey and I met many others who were also on an infertility journey. I had many tender mercies amongst the despair as each month passed and my period would start, signaling that I was again not pregnant.

I had multiple jobs at the time to help fund fertility treatments and pay for general cost of living. One job I began working was in the Labor and Delivery unit at the local hospital as a scrub technician. I LOVED this job. My co-workers were amazing and I truly found joy in watching new babies be born. Don't get me wrong, it was hard due to my personal stuff, but I lived vicariously through the people I watched become new parents.

I actually landed the L&D job due to a fluke thing with my job in the Emergency Department. My hours were being cut short in the ED and I just needed to recoup these hours elsewhere in the hospital. Little did I know that a huge answer to my prayers lay in the L&D unit.

While working there, I met a nurse who shared a little about her infertility journey. She had endometriosis and as she described her symptoms, I felt that they were very similar to things I experienced in my body. Sorry to be graphic, but these symptoms included extremely heavy periods, strong menstrual cramps, painful bowels during the menstrual cycle, sometimes painful intercourse, and infertility.

This co-worker had undergone a pelvic laparoscopy with a different doctor in town during which he was able to clean out much of her endometriosis and then she went on to have a successful pregnancy. I decided immediately to switch doctors.

Upon visiting Dr. Gatherum, I shared the long story of my infertility tests and treatments. I then shared the story about my co-worker and our shared symptoms. I asked if he thought I could also have endometriosis. Dr. Gatherum was unsure if this could be the case saying that often endometriosis that was severe enough to cause such infertility would be accompanied by higher amounts of pain. Also my HSG and ultrasounds thus far didn't show anything of concern. He stated he could take me in for surgery, as surgery is the only true way to diagnose endometriosis, but there was a chance that it would be negative and I will have wasted a lot of money and put my health at risk for an unnecessary surgery.

On September 21, 2015, after 4 years of trying to conceive, I underwent an elective exploratory pelvic laparoscopy.

I remember waking up to Dr. Gatherum explaining how shocked he was at what he found. I indeed had endometriosis. I was diagnosed with Stage IV Endometriosis, the most severe kind.

Endometriosis is a condition when the cells that normally line the inside of your uterus somehow escape and begin growing in your pelvic cavity. Each month, your uterine lining builds up in preparation for a potential pregnancy and when you are not pregnant, the lining sheds in the form of a menstrual period. When the endometrial cells are outside of the uterus, they continue to do this monthly function in your pelvic cavity. Over time, the building up of the lining and the shedding of the blood causes damage to the pelvic cavity. The blood has no where to escape and instead pools inside your body each month. Scarring and lesions form - which is a major cause of infertility. Mild to moderate endometriosis is quite common in women. Severe endometriosis is less common.

 (Actual images of my surgery)

Unfortunately, due to the extensive nature of my endometriosis, the doctor was unable to clear all of the lesions. He told me the endometriosis was growing on my bowels, up my ureters, and lesions held my fallopian tubes in the wrong places. They also had to take out part of one ovary. 

After the surgery, I went on Lupron Depot for 6 months to suppress the growth of the endo and to try to further reduce what was already inside of me. This chemotherapy medication has many harsh side effects some of which include: acne, depression, hot flashes and other symptoms relating to menopause. It was a long 6 months which included healing from surgery, completing the Lupron, going through a divorce, starting nursing school, and dating my new husband! And of course, all of that was followed by waiting for my regular hormones to come back after. 

(You can read more about that whole time period in my other blog post about divorce and marriage.)

The only things that stop the growth of endo is birth control, pregnancy, or menopause. This is because hormones drive the growth and spread of it. When I had finished Lupron and my cycle had returned, I immediately had an IUD placed and combined that with a birth control pill. 

I had a major fear that even though I had done the surgery and the Lupron, and everything possible to restrict the endo, I would still have trouble getting pregnant. Infertility is such an emotional roller coaster. It is hard not to lose faith in yourself or blame your body for not doing what it should be designed to do. I was so afraid to travel down the road of trying to get pregnant with my new husband, Trevor. I did not want him to know the pain, despair, suffering, and grief accompanied with infertility.

I must pause here to make note of my extreme gratitude that the years I spent struggling with infertility prior to marrying Trevor, led me to a diagnosis. Had I not followed the prompting in 2011 to try and get pregnant, it may have been many years yet to lead to that diagnosis. The road from 2011-2016 was not easy, but I learned so much and grew in ways that I could not have grown without going through it. I know that sometimes we can't see clearly why we face the battles we fight. Sometimes it takes years before we can look back and see more clearly the reasons why we had to fight them. I know our Heavenly Father loves us and He has a plan for us. Sometimes He sends us promptings that do not bring about the purpose we thought they were designed for. This is the case for me when I felt prompted to try and conceive starting in 2011.

As I neared the end of nursing school, Heavenly Father began sending me impressions that it was again time to try and get pregnant. I kept brushing off these feelings until one Sunday while in a stake conference meeting at my in-laws ward. The Brother who was speaking asked all the primary aged children to stand and sing "Keep the Commandments".  I looked around and saw the precious children standing and singing and I knew that Heavenly Father had a special soul waiting for me and Trevor. In the car ride home that day, as we listened to Sunday music, the song "Keep the Commandments" came on. That night as I opened my scriptures to read, the first line I looked down at stated "keep the commandments". I knew it was time, and Trevor agreed.

When Trevor and I were ready to try and conceive, I had no idea how good our chances were. We met with Dr. Gatherum, who performed my surgery and he stated that due to my severe endo, he did not want me to be off birth control for more than a couple months at a time. Otherwise, the re-growth may lead me to needing another surgery or to other complications. 

This was scary for us! I did not want to have another surgery, nor did I want the painful cycles from endo to return. We decided with the doctor to try a medicated cycle with timed intercourse.  We used clomid and ovulation predictor kits. While using clomid in the past, ultrasounds always showed several mature follicles and we felt that we had a good chance of success! However, Dr. Gatherum was not technically a fertility specialist and he did not offer further fertility treatment. I knew there was a waiting period to get into a fertility specialist, so I went ahead and called to make an appointment to meet with Dr. Foulk with Utah Fertility Center (UFC) for several months out, just in case we did not get pregnant.

Well, month one came and went with no success.  Month two, we added oral progesterone and were again met with no success. Month three, I prayed that Trevor would not have to go through infertility with me. However, we were still not pregnant. 

We still had several months before meeting with Dr. Foulk. I went back on birth control to be safe and we tried to resume normal life. We had been living at my parents house to save money to buy a home and so we focused most of our attention on house shopping. We felt super strong about a particular neighborhood and approximately a week before our meeting with Dr. Foulk, we put money down on a lot to build a home.

The day finally came to meet with Dr. Foulk. June 28, 2018. I was a ball of nerves! I thought for sure he would suggest another surgery, or further diagnostic testing, and more IUI's. As we sat in his office, he shocked us stating that it would most likely be a waste of time and money to do more IUI's. I had already done 5 IUI's in the past, and if they were going to work, they would have worked by now. He stated we didn't need to do more diagnostics because I had already completed all of them. He felt my fallopian tubes probably did not function normally anymore. He worried about re-growth of my endo and felt time was of the essence. He firmly believed that our next step was IVF (in-vitro fertilization). 

To be honest, I had NEVER considered that I would have to do IVF. I had heard of the procedure, sure, but had never contemplated needing it myself! He explained in detail how it worked and gave us the current pricing information. I cried, stating we could never afford it. He told us, if there is a will, there is a way. 

(Pricing information at the time. I underlined the approximate totals)

The clinic reached out to us with various financing options. My first concern was about the money we had just put down for a house. If we built, we would have months that we would not be able to mess with our finances. We couldn't take out a new loan to pay for IVF and risk messing with our in-process home loan. Or, we could choose to back out of our new build and use our down payment money to pay for IVF. But then where would we live? How would we again save up money for a down payment?

(Message from Trevor that night)

As we prayed that night, we felt peace that we needed to build our home and that everything would work out. On June 29, the day after our meeting with Dr. Foulk, UFC emailed me about the Footsteps for Fertility Foundation. They are an incredible organization that organizes fundraisers providing grants to help fund IVF. Apparently, they were coming to do a 5k race in St. George in September!

(Photo from the email about the 5k in SLC)

I'm positive that everything happens for a reason and that God's timing is unpredictable to us. 

I was anxious about signing up for the 5k. I felt undeserving. I felt nervous about asking for help. After talking it over with Trevor, my mother, and others, we decided to sign up. At first, we only asked family to sign up with us. But eventually, I reached out on social media and asked for anyone willing to donate.

I was amazed at the support. I received an email each time someone signed up on our team. There are people that I hardly knew, or whom I had not seen in many years that signed up. I felt so humbled. I knew that even if we did not win a grant, the money was going towards helping another couple in need. 

The morning of September 22, 2018 was beautiful and sunny. We had my mother, my sister and my brother in law there in person to support us. As I walked up to the event, there were less people than I had expected. Perhaps only 12 couples and their respective teams were there.

I signed in and collected the t-shirts for our team. There was a t shirt for anyone who signed up to be present at the event. I realized we had one extra t-shirt and it was marked for Lizzie. I barely knew Lizzie, she had styled my hair only once. I looked around and sure enough, there she was! She showed up, in person, to support us. I will never forget her act of kindness and service that day! 

When the 5k started, I walked with Lizzie and looked around with tears in my eyes and I saw each team and the support they were giving to a couple in need. Trevor decided to actually run the race and he got first place! Once everyone finished the 5k, we gathered under a pavilion for the raffle. 

I remember the moments as they prepared to take out the first drawing, the name of the couple who would be winning a grant to pay in full the cost to the clinic for IVF. In these moments I prayed in my heart to have peace for whoever won. I looked around at each couple with their arms around each other, hope in their eyes. I knew that for every single one of us, our dream was the same, to become parents. I prayed for all of them. I wanted everyone to win. 

They called out my name. 

There were many tears shed and joyous hugs! I couldn't help but notice the other couples as they probably felt similar to me; happiness for me and disappointment for themselves. I still think about them and pray they have had success in their journeys. 

The grant was for $8,300. This was the cost to the clinic for IVF (as you can see from the pricing picture I listed above). Amazingly, this would cover about half of the total for a single round of IVF. We were stunned at winning such an impressive gift! 

We still had to fund the medications, anesthesia, blood work, and cryopreservation. We were blessed with some donations from family members as well as some money we had been saving in my health savings account. It was crazy how things worked out!

As we thanked Dr. Foulk that day, he asked us when we wanted to move forward. Trevor and I were not sure when, and we were probably still in shock that we were going to be able to move forward at all! Dr. Foulk told us the next cycle he was doing in St. George was the very next month! (His clinic is based in northern Utah and he only does full cycles in St. George 3 times each year). He highly encouraged us to join the October cycle group. 

In a whirlwind, we went from thinking it would take us several years to save the money for IVF, to starting our cycle in a little over one weeks time! We were so excited and scared at the same time. 

 My cycle calendar

 Current chocolate cysts (endometrial cysts) on my ovaries prior to starting treatment. They wanted to watch them to make sure they didn't cause problems.

Being fairly young and otherwise healthy, we did a pretty typical stimulation cycle of IVF. My body responded exceedingly well, resulting in over 50 mature follicles at retrieval. The major concern from so many follicles is the risk for Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS). This is a condition when the ovaries become over stimulated and begin to swell. The ovaries then dump fluid into the pelvic cavity and in severe cases, a paracentesis is needed. 

Unfortunately, I developed symptoms of OHSS. It was EXTREMELY painful. My abdomen swelled up and I immediately gained 10 pounds in water weight. The pictures below show a progression over two days time. (Note the beautiful bruising from the many IVF injections). 

I contacted my nurse coordinator and they put me on a special diet. High protein, high salt, little to no carbs, and little to no sugar. I ate scrambled eggs loaded with salt, and ramen noodles (minus the noodles), and forced myself to drink G2 gatorade for several days. I had to contact the nurse every day to decide if we had to cancel the fresh transfer of embryos or not. 

Fortunately, I was able to reverse the condition with diet and rest. Dr. Foulk agreed to move forward with a fresh 5-day transfer.

For those unfamiliar with IVF, let me pause here to give some basic explanation. During an IVF stimulation, there are meds given (mostly via a needle, but some orally and/or vaginally) to stimulate growth of female eggs in the ovaries. They try to safely stimulate as many as possible to grow to maturity so that they can collect them. Collection is done under general anesthesia. The more eggs they retrieve, the higher chances you have of getting eggs to fertilize and create embryo's (fertilized eggs) with. 

Once the eggs are collected they combine them in a petri dish with sperm and allow them to fertilize. Then they monitor them each day until they become blastocysts, around day 5. During these 5 days, many of the eggs will either not fertilize or stop growing. I believe it is common to lose more than 60% of embryos before the blastocyst stage. This is why it is good to be able to retrieve as many eggs as possible. In our case, they retrieved 52 (if I remember exactly right) eggs. By day 5, we had 13 blastocysts left. 

Keep in mind, this is a very basic explanation and there are many other factors which can go into IVF. Here is a picture of our blastocyst embryos.

There are two types of embryo transfers. The first is a fresh transfer. This means that they never freeze the embryo before transfer, which means they transfer in the same cycle as they retrieve the eggs. The second is a frozen transfer which means they freeze the original embryo and then de-frost it for implanting during a later cycle. Embryos can remain safely frozen for many years.

We opted to move forward with a fresh transfer of 2 embryos. I figured that after all the years of waiting, I was completely willing to get pregnant with twins! 

When our embryos were 5 days old. Two of the very best and most promising ones were chosen by the embryologist and were placed into my uterus under ultrasound guidance. Yes, this is similar to turkey basting. The rest of the embryos were then cryopreserved (frozen). After the transfer, Dr. Foulk had me lie on the table for 10 minutes before getting up. I am still astounded that within 10 minutes they know the embryos won't just fall back out of the uterus! Then they tell you to take it easy for several days before returning to normal activity levels.

Different fertility clinics have slightly different protocols they follow. UFC has you wait 10 days after transfer to get an HCG blood test, the test which tells you if you are pregnant. Those 10 days felt like 10 years to me! I over thought every little thing I felt in my body. Any twinge or cramp could be implantation or could be the start of my period. I could not handle the wait and my impatience led me to begin peeing on sticks around day 5. 

To my excitement, the stick showed 2 lines!! I was pregnant!! I could not believe it! I had never seen 2 lines in all the years! I joyously told Trevor and spent that day dreaming of our new reality! 

Day 6, I peed on another stick, there were still 2 lines! I wasn't crazy! I was over the moon!

Day 7, while at work, I began to cramp and bleed. I left work early. The bleeding didn't stop. The positive lines on the sticks began to lighten. 

Day 10, I had my blood test and the result was 5. Anything less than 5 is considered negative. I had the tiniest piece of hope that at least one of the embryos was holding on. They asked me to repeat the blood test in several days. The next blood test was negative. 

The clinic classified it as a chemical pregnancy which is a miscarriage before the 5th week of gestation. We were devastated. 

Dr. Foulk was so empathetic and encouraged us to try a frozen transfer. He said sometimes frozen transfers are more successful because the body is not concurrently healing from retrieval. We booked ours for the beginning of January.

We had to start medications over Christmas. Luckily, frozen transfers require a lot less medications which means a lot less needles! Even being a nurse, I hated sticking the needles into my own body. I would sit there with the syringe in hand and do a count down. Often times, I would need to repeat the countdown multiple times before gathering the courage to plunge it into my own skin! Luckily, Trevor is AMAZING and gave all my shots whenever he possibly could. He also was my designated phlebotomist, completing all of my blood draws for me. This made my life much easier, saving me time and money for not having to make so many trips to the laboratory. 

I was so nervous in the days leading up to our frozen transfer. The miscarriage was still so fresh in our hearts and the fear of the pain of another failure weighed heavily on us. I think sometimes we just have to continue forward in faith. Even though, I did not know what the outcome would be, I did know that we were doing the right thing. 

We drove to American Fork for the transfer and afterwards we ate at one of my favorite restaurants (Buffalo Wild Wings) to celebrate. I ate an entire pineapple (including the core) and drank lots of pomegranate juice. (That is just some of the items, high in antioxidants, that are said to help with implantation).

This time, we chose to implant a single embryo. I thought 2 may be too hard on my body since the miscarriage.

I still chose to pee on sticks after the frozen transfer. Trevor was weary of me doing so, worrying about it causing more stress. This time, none of the sticks were positive. Our blood test on day 10 concurred we were indeed not pregnant. 

Choosing to take pregnancy tests early is a highly debated topic within the IVF community. For some, it brings peace of mind and prepares them for the blood beta result. For others, it may cause more harm. There are also uncommon cases of the urine tests being negative but the blood test still being positive or vice versa. It is different for everyone! For me, I think taking the tests helped me prepare mentally. However, the negative beta was still very hard to accept. 

Dr. Foulk called us to discuss the next steps. He was deeply saddened and confused that we were unsuccessful. He suggested we try an Endometrial Receptivity Array (ERA) next. An ERA is a genetic test of the endometrial lining to determine when the best day to transfer an embryo is. 

The endometrial lining of a woman's uterus has tiny receptors that open to catch an embryo for implantation. There is a specific window of opportunity for an embryo to attach properly while the receptors are open. The majority of women are receptive around 144 hours after the initial supplementation of progesterone. 

Basically, when doing a frozen transfer of an embryo. We use medications to trick the body into thinking it is pregnant so that it is prepared to accept an embryo. Part of doing this, is using progesterone and estrogen supplementation (intra-muscular injections), to prep the lining of the uterus. Typically progesterone is started 6 days (or 144 hours) before transfer of the embryo.

For the ERA, it requires a "mock cycle" of IVF. So we did all the same medications, injections, and blood work as needed for an FET. Then, on the day we would have implanted an embryo, we instead had a biopsy taken of the lining of my uterus. And yes, this was a very painful procedure! 

The hardest part of the ERA was paying for all the medications, blood work, and ultrasounds, taking the time to inject meds into my body each day, and then not having the potential joy of a pregnancy at the end of the cycle. I knew the ERA was the right step for us, but the mock cycle was difficult on my emotions. 

We did the ERA in February of 2019.  When the results came back, it showed my receptivity window was at 120 hours, not 144! We were implanting 24 hours late!

This was actually wonderful news to us because it provided an answer to why we may have been unsuccessful with our first two transfers! Even with the good news, we still were exhausted emotionally and financially. We were healing from the miscarriage and my body had a lot of recovery to do from the months of hormones. We were not sure when we would be ready for another FET.

(This email came at the perfect time, amidst everything. Thank you Taylor.)

We ultimately decided to enjoy the summer without the stress of trying to conceive. Realizing we both dealt with the grief of miscarriage and infertility differently, that summer allowed us a lot of healing. It also gave us time to save money again as well. 

As fall approached, we began discussing our next FET. Dr. Foulk's next St. George cycle was in October. For some reason though, I felt that we needed to do the transfer in September. Trevor agreed and preparations commenced.

(First ultrasound of the cycle)

This FET was different. I felt calm and prepared. Each part fell into place perfectly and many miracles seemed to occur. One such miracle was how we afforded the medications.

There were a couple changes Dr. Foulk made in regards to the meds for this second FET. We decided to up the dose of my progesterone injections to 2mL's because my levels were borderline during the last transfer. We also added Neupogen (which is an intrauterine injection which makes your lining more "sticky"). Dr. Foulk also tried a new protocol on me of taking Valium for 3 days post transfer. A friend had suggested using Valium for 3 days based off her positive experience. My nurse coordinator told me that every cycle which they had used Valium for that year had been successful thus far! And lastly, we were going to implant 24 hours earlier as suggested by my ERA result. 

During my first round of IVF, we had submitted the medications through my insurance and every single one of them was denied. Therefore, we sent the scripts to a pharmacy in Oregon called New Era which provided speedy delivery since we were on a short time frame. Since the meds were denied the first time, I had the scripts sent directly to New Era for the first FET and ERA cycles. 

This time, I had them sent to New Era again and was disappointed at how expensive the medications were going to be! (Due to the added Neupogen and doubling the progesterone injections). I thought I might as well try sending them through my insurance again and see if I got lucky. The scripts were sent to Walmart and I was surprised to find that some of the meds were going to be covered! 

I excitedly wrote this email to my nurse coordinator:

That weekend we were with our neighbors playing games and I was elatedly telling them about my insurance helping cover many of the medications. One of our neighbors happens to be a pharmacy technician. He asked me if I had ever heard of the 340B program. 

The 340B program is a US federal government program that requires drug manufacturers to provide outpatient drugs to eligible health care organizations and covered entities at a significantly reduced price. 

My neighbor told me that I could possibly get these medications for even cheaper then I had imagined! I thought it was too good to be true! I figured I would never qualify as my income was too high. However, he explained that the only thing I must do to qualify, is be a patient at a practitioners office who is affiliated with the program and that practitioner has to write the script. It is the practitioner office and the pharmacy who qualify. 

I immediately made an appointment with a qualifying practice for a new patient physical which was covered 100% by my insurance. The family practice was so kind to me and agreed to write scripts for the medications I needed. These were then sent to the appropriate local pharmacy who kindly helped me figure out the cheapest option for getting the necessary medications. (As a side note, I previously did not have a primacy care physician except my general OB. I now plan to continue going to this new office because they were so amazing.)

I was shocked when my grand total became $296.44! My original total from New Era was $1,164! I was saving almost $900! Since then, UFC in St. George has referred other patients through the 340B program with equally marvelous outcomes! I only wish I had known about this option when I did the full cycle of IVF, because the medications needed for that were so much more expensive then what is needed for an FET!

The cost had been the only item possibly holding us back from going forward with an FET that September. After the medication price dropped so drastically, it became clear that we could and should do the FET that month. 

Trevor my personal phlebotomist

Second ultrasound

For our first round of IVF, word sort of got around and we had many people asking us how it went. This was very hard on us as we suffered the miscarriage and felt like we had to continue repeating the story over and over again. Thus, for our first FET, we choose not to tell many people and we asked those who knew to not share the news. We debated with this second FET if we should tell anybody about it. Ultimately, we had decided only to inform close family. However, word still slipped through the cracks and we decided the weekend before the transfer to ask for a family fast in our behalf. 

(Post from a private family facebook page)

(Flowers sent to us from loving neighbors)

The transfer day came and we again drove to American Fork. This time, I again ate many pineapples (including the cores) and drank a lot of pomegranate juice. I also had friends purchase me lucky socks and an infertility warrior shirt to wear.

It was a very hard decision between transferring 1 or 2 embryos. Ultimately, to increase our chances, we transferred 2.

This time, to put less stress on my body, we decided to stay the weekend in the Salt Lake area. I do not remember much of the weekend due to the lovely Valium. I do remember that I did not have any cramping or twinges, which I had experienced the first several days after my previous transfers. This was the purpose of the Valium.

(Beautiful photo of me on Valium)

I tried to hold out, but day 5 came and I snuck out of bed around 5 am to take a pregnancy test. It was POSITIVE! I had intended on sharing the news with Trevor in some cute fashion, but instead I ran and jumped in the bed, shoving the pee stick in his face while I cried saying it was positive. 

I continued taking tests every day to ensure the lines stayed. I held my breath feeling like it was just too good to be true. Infertility has this nasty way of making you feel like you're constantly waiting for the bad news, or the other shoe to drop. I am fairly sure we dropped off my HCG blood test around 7 in the morning on day 10. Then I proceeded to login to my health portal every 5 minutes until the result finally came in. 

HCG, Beta Quantitative: 373.

Pregnant.

Our first ultrasound confirmed 2 fetal sacs. Unfortunately, only one had a fetal pole. It seems that both embryos implanted but only one got to stay with us. 

You can see the small second sac in this photo.

I am still in disbelief at the journey I have been on since 2011. I would never have fathomed that it would take me close to 10 years before I would have my own baby in my arms. The road has had many twists and turns, hills and valleys. It has not been easy, it has not been fun. Thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. However, I am forever grateful. 

I am not the same person I was in 2011. But I am as ready as I can be to become a mom! As I write this, I feel my baby girl hiccuping in my large belly. Her official due date is in 2 weeks from today. Trevor and I know it will be the best day of our life thus far. 

We can't wait to meet you Baby Girl.