The consuming path of trying to conceive and self advocating

When you have 2 healthy children, you are supposed to count your blessings. When you try for a third and have 4 miscarriages, you aren’t allowed to show your grief, or frustration, because, well, we have 2 blessings. Who wrote those rules anyway? Who made it a competition? My grief is bigger, more important than your grief. My strife and struggles outweigh yours.

And so that is how it has been. Lost your pregnancy at 6 weeks? Well buck up and smile girl because Rebecca down the street lost her baby at 32 weeks, born still. Measured against that and you fall short. Wipe those tears, don’t be ridiculous. You were barely pregnant.

How hard is hard enough to try for a third baby when you have 2 already? What is socially acceptable to display your strife or say you tried, swallow it down and act like your body just didn’t completely betray you 4 times, then 5, and lastly 6 times.

You're old anyways, your eggs are bad. That old adage “biological clock is ticking” well, that clock died.

It did with me. 36 years old with 2 beautiful daughters, both healthy, thriving and beautiful precious souls, inside and out. That should have been enough. Was I greedy? Why did I want what some women will never have, despite trying everything, going into thousands in debt. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try.

2019, a third baby was not even on my mind. My youngest wasn’t quite 3 yet. We had said we wanted 2, that was it. Siblings, best friends forever. And we were. Done that is, as much as either of us believed, we were done and our family was complete. Whole. Roll credits.

However, one afternoon at my brand new job, I was standing in the bathroom, realizing my period was late by 4 days. I didn’t pay much attention anymore since we weren’t trying, I had no clue when I had ovulated and was focused on a new job. The thought of actually being pregnant, unplanned, was terrifying. I had no idea if this would be a bad thing for my husband. We never discussed the possibility of an “oops'' and what we would do in the event. Holding the pregnancy test, I ran the water to drown out the package crinkling while I opened it. I held it in my stream and count “1...2...3..” at 10 I shake it and lay it on some toilet paper on the counter next to me. 3 minutes for an accurate reading but I didn’t need it. As my urine filled the test window, the dye running across there wasn’t a need for 3 minutes. That line was there instantly. I laughed, manic almost. Picking up the test I held it under the light, which is ridiculous when I think about it now. It was so blazing positive, I could have seen that line across the room without my glasses on. 2 lines. Pregnant. I was indeed. Up the duff. Knocked up. Eating for two.

Fuck. Why did I do this at work? I shoved the test in my purse. I opened my purse and looked at it multiple times for the rest of the day. Guess how much work I got done that afternoon? Yeah. Exactly. I go through this day feeling overwhelmed, excited, and sick to my stomach. When I got home that evening, I told my husband, expecting dread, disappointment. Feeling stuck. Instead, I got surprised but happy. I got “You’re joking right?” But then bear hugs and reassurance. I got love and suddenly we are both excited. Happy. That was all I needed. I was in it, we both were. We were having a third baby. That third baby could be a boy, or another girl. They would fit in here. This baby was meant to be, obviously.

When I got my blood work, I excitedly emailed my midwife. I am thinking about how we’ll need a new vehicle. The spare room will need to be gutted and made into a nursery. All our baby stuff out of storage washed, and ready to go. I started adding to my list of names I still have stored in my phone. And then it happens. Getting my girls ready for daycare and a debilitating pain sears though my stomach and I’m immediately covered in a cold sweat. “What’s wrong Mommy?” my then 4 year old asked. I’m nauseous and slowly getting up I said “Mommy’s ok. Just gonna use the washroom quick before we go” I practically ran. I sat down on the toilet and immediately expected blood. But there’s none. The pain subsided slightly. I focused on getting the girls to school. On the drive there I think I may need to pull over to throw up. I don’t though. I managed to get home, call in sick to work, and crawl into my bed. To save the torture of the next few weeks for you to a sentence here. I was admitted to the hospital a week later with an out of uterine pregnancy.

We got set up. We had gotten excited. Planned. To have the rug completely ripped out from under us. We can try again, my husband said. If that’s what I want, we can do it. I hadn’t thought about a third, but now here I had been teased, only to have it cruelly taken away. Ok, I agree. So I started getting serious about trying to get pregnant. My loss was just a month passed but I’m tracking my ovulation and temping each morning. I’m waiting for my period to start and taking ovulation tests just to set a baseline. Funny, I think. The day before my period is due, I get a blazing positive ovulation test. I'm on cycle day 26. I googled it, of course, and there could be a few reasons, and hey funny thing, did you know ovulation tests can show positive if you are pregnant? Well, guess what? Again, unintentionally pregnant, not even a month from my ectopic. Ok, if we weren’t meant for a third baby, this is just cruel then. How many signs could there be? I'm anxious though. Scared I’ll start cramping, that it’ll be another ectopic. I think I will drive my midwife absolutely bat shit crazy asking for betas, and chomping at the bit for an ultrasound. My betas are doubling, quite nicely. Everything is good this time. We plan. New car. Nursery. Names.

They can’t fit me in for an ultrasound until 8 weeks this time. They are busy, It’s not urgent, etc..etc.. but I’m ok. I feel as confident as I can. We plan. We name. We car shop.

Insert rug being pulled out again.

8 weeks at my ultrasound. I haven’t seen or heard the baby. Actually, I’ve had zero symptoms. No morning sickness, which is unlike any of my other healthy pregnancies...That has me worried but everyone assures me the numbers are good. My pee sticks getting darker. Everything is great.

The technician doesn’t show me the screen. Odd, I think, when I am always shown the baby. That makes me nervous. Then the questions “How far along are you again?” “Have you had any bleeding?” More silence. I ask if everything is alright. The technician won’t look at me but is typing something and finally says “Sorry I just have to grab the doctor, you can get dressed”

As soon as she shuts the door and I am alone, everything starts to blur. Tears overflowed down my face. I quickly get dressed and wait for the inevitable. The doctor comes in, a female, and the Ultrasound tech is beside her. She could not have given it away anymore, horrible poker face.

The doctor finally says “I’m so sorry, you have what is called a Blighted Ovum” She pauses “It’s when the embryo fails to develop and is reabsorbed, leaving an empty gestational sac. Typically at 8 weeks, we would see a heartbeat and fetal pole. I’m so sorry”

I had walked into the ultrasound, excited to see the baby finally. To hear a heartbeat. To look at the images and try to imagine a boy or girl. Now I am leaving heartbroken, crying. I walk through the hospital, past reception, and into the parking lot, fully letting the tears stream down my face. People stare, I don’t care.

The kicker here is we were getting married next month. I had gone from being pregnant for the wedding and not drinking to everythings game again. Looking back now, I’m glad I had something to dive into and focus on. Planning the wedding while I miscarried again was a bittersweet distraction. They had told me I might need a D&C since my body still hadn’t rejected the pregnancy but it’s as if once my brain knew there was no baby, my body followed suit.

After the wedding, we don’t try strictly. We relax. But in reality, My husband relaxed. I researched until I was blue in the face, about fertility, miscarriages, the causes, and what I could do personally to better my chances.

All this led me down a path of fertility and a new hopeful career as a Fertility Doula. I pay for blood work that shows my eggs are diminishing, which happens to every woman as they age, some earlier than others. Hello Perimenopause. I ask all the women in my family when they hit menopause. Astoundingly, our side of the females goes into menopause rather early, one relative going through at age 29, which is unheard of. So I have genetics against me. Great. I’m 35 at this point. An Obstetrician suggests if I want to get pregnant, with my egg levels the way they were, my only hope was IVF. I wouldn’t conceive naturally, not anymore. IVF was definitely not even an option, the cost alone made zero sense when we had 2 children already. Having a third was a pipe dream, one we had gone into with the mindset of “if it happens, it happens” Only, I can’t be that relaxed about things. Especially when it felt personal. Like my body was broken.

I start supplements, everything that has been studied to increase my egg health. I switch to decaf coffee and limited my wine. We got pregnant again. We lose it again. And again.

By the time I am 36, I’ve had 6 miscarriages altogether. TTC (Trying To Conceive) is all-consuming. You are constantly in a loop of waiting. Waiting for your period to finish, waiting to ovulate, waiting to test, rinse and repeat. You read into every symptom, and after so many miscarriages, anxiety is a teetering threshold of insanity when you do get that BFP (Big Fat Positive). It takes a toll on you mentally. I had 2 lovely healthy kids, and my mind was elsewhere.

In July 2020, after failing to get pregnant again since our last chemical in April, I stopped everything. I stopped tracking, stopped peeing on sticks. Those handfuls of supplements 3 sometimes 4 times a day, I stop cold turkey. My Sister in Law visits, she is 8 months pregnant with their first girl. As much as it pains me, I want to see all of our stuff go to use. For my future niece. They take our crib, bounce chair, newborn clothes, mobile, baby monitor. You get it. We cleaned house of everything that we would need because, well it simply wasn’t in the cards for us apparently and I couldn’t go through more losses and the stress of TTC anymore.

That was August 11th, 2020. I watched as they drove away with our crib. That was it. It was really over. And I had to accept that. We plan a trip over to the mainland and have a great weekend with the kiddos the next weekend. Even in a pandemic, we visit the aquarium, go to fancy and delicious restaurants, swim in the hotel pool, stay up late and hit up Science World. I forget all about my broken body. My body that had betrayed me so. Aging faster before it’s time. Early perimenopause.

10 days past ovulation. Or, in the TTC community, 10dpo. The pivotal testing day. 10 days past ovulation is the average day when you could most likely get a reliable test result on a quality pregnancy test. Meaning, if you had fertilized an egg, it had time to travel down the fallopian tube, to the uterus and implant into the wall of the Uterus. There, the cells divide astronomically fast, developing into a blastocyst. Your body also starts producing the pregnancy hormone HCG. You need a certain base level of HCG in your urine to show up on a test. Cheap tests, typically 25MUI’s, the expensive “6 days before your period” tests, just 6MUI’s.

It’s the end of August and I haven’t been tracking but looking at a calendar I am more or less 10DOP. Could be 8, could be 12. I have no clue.

I also have a pregnancy test just chilling under my sink. The thing about the possibility of being pregnant and having a test within reach is that of addiction. If you poll 100 women who would be able to wait to see if their period shows up, or who would take that test, an astounding 99% would take the test.

I’m the 99%, obviously.

And wouldn’t you know...there’s a line. Not a squint and try to hold it up to the light line. A LINE line. Vivid and red. We are about to have a BBQ with our neighbours. Drinks. I literally have one open and took this test on a whim. I’m immediately elated and want to run and tell my husband but at the same time, if I don’t tell anyone, I don’t have to hear the “I’m sorry”’s or the sad eyes when I have to announce we’ve lost another one.

I shove the test in my pocket, looking at it every few minutes throughout the night. The next day I bought more tests. I test every day and watch the line get darker. I finally tell my Husband and he is just as excited as he ever is. He never gets gloomy or thinks the worst.

If you are familiar with the TTC world, you fully understand how the women who look at their husbands, get pregnant, and keep it, love to tell you “just relax, it’ll happen when it happens’ Yeah, that’s my favourite. Even if, given my history and how it happens, it may absolutely be true.

We follow up with blood work, my anxiety through the roof while I reload my lab results waiting for them to come in. Refresh. Nothing. 6 minutes later, I refresh. Nothing. I do this all day until 5 pm that night it finally shows. My first beta is 522. I feel immediate relief which lasts all of 30 seconds when I go into overthinking, analytical mode. My blighted Ovum had numbers like this. Higher even, I had no idea until 8 weeks. This time though, 6 weeks, like clockwork, I woke up with the worst morning sickness. I feel like death. I am throwing up multiple times a day and I am happy about it. Actually crying happy tears. Anything to feel this pregnancy. This baby growing inside of me.

I feel more reassured with my pregnancy symptoms and at 9 weeks (That’s urgent ultrasound for multiple losses in our overly stressed medical >>>>>) we see the baby and hear the heartbeat.

This pregnancy is not without it’s anxiety and struggles. Maybe my age or maybe some higher power telling me this truly is your last baby, but I am sent to ER with a Pulmonary Embolism at 20 weeks and put on blood thinners for the rest of my pregnancy. I have recurrent gallbladder attacks that leave me decommissioned for full days.

All that to say, we are blessed with our third daughter on April 30th. I’m 37, “advanced maternal age” which is much better than the previous term of geriatric pregnancy.

She is perfect. Healthy. She is our miracle baby. She is the one we tried for and then gave up on. She was always wanted, forever loved. She damn well nearly killed me, literally.

She is our rainbow baby, but she taught me so many things about self-educating your care and health. Your body. To know it’s ok to ask questions and not take what your doctor says and face value. Miscarriages are hard, pregnancy is hard. Labour and delivery are hard. I have been blessed to have had experienced all. But that is not to say my trials and tribulations are better or worse than others.

Ask the questions. Read the book. Do the research. Doctors can be biased, set in their ways and I feel our generation is finally coming out of their shell to self-advocate. If I had listened to that Fertility Doctor, you know, the one that said it’s hopeless with my egg reserve and I should dish out cash for IVF, I would probably not have my precious third, as paying that kind of money for IVF just wasn't in the cards.

Well, jokes on him. I delivered the most preciously, lovely healthy baby 6 months ago. I changed small things, I took a handful of supplements and I studied female fertility. Yes I had many losses, but as I discovered, it’s not quantity but quality. You just gotta catch that right egg.