Pregnant with a Singleton!

Although many friends and family know, I've never written about our infertility journey. Without getting into too many details, after trying to conceive on our own for awhile for our first baby, we saw a fertility doctor. After a variety of tests, it was determined that IVF was our best option.

We were both wary of IVF for many of reasons. We wrestled with the idea for many months, and talked with our pastor and close friends about it, before deciding that it was the right decision for us. We started our first IVF cycle on November 1, 2012, and our lives were changed forever.

Although many fertility doctors want to produce as many eggs as possible from an IVF cycle, we had determined that we only wanted about 10 eggs. Based on statistics at the time, this would result in about four healthy embryos since not all eggs are able to be fertilized and not all embryos develop properly. Although at one point our doctor wanted to increase my meds so that there were more eggs, we held strong to our original plan. In the end we had 10 eggs and four became healthy embryos (we had done our research and the math!).

The reason we didn't want more embryos than this was because we were committed to using ALL of our embryos. In our "dream family" we would have three children, and statistically four embryos would result in three babies, but if all four miraculously resulted in children we would be okay with that as well. Both Micah and I are planners, and we thought we had it all worked out.

When we were ready to do our first embryo transfer in mid-November 2012, we decided to transfer two embryos instead of one. Although the national recommendation for a 29-year-old female (my age at the time) was one embryo, my doctor suggested that we transfer two since they weren't considered to be "high grade" embryos and he wanted to increase our chance of success. We were told that there was a chance of twins, and a "less than 5% chance of triplets" if two embryos were transferred, but all we could think about was that we really wanted this first transfer to work and we were hoping for one baby. A few weeks later, though, we found out that both embryos did take and one actually split, so I was pregnant with triplets.

We were in shock for weeks, maybe even the whole pregnancy! We wouldn't change anything if we could go back because we can't imagine our life any other way now, but obviously triplets changed our lives completely.

During my pregnancy and after our triplets were born, our two extra embryos were in the back of our minds (even more on my mind than Micah's since I am the primary caretaker of our kids and I am the one that gets pregnant). Since we had so much success with our first IVF transfer, it was hard not to wonder if both remaining embryos would become babies, or if any would split and we would have multiples again! These thoughts were overwhelming as we cared for our three new babes, and then as they became toddlers and things got challenging in different ways. We didn't want our kids to be too far apart in years, yet it was hard to fathom how I would manage being pregnant while caring for our triplets.

Eventually, though, things started to feel a little bit easier with Alexis, Jack, and Faith. By age 2 they were no longer considered delayed and they were becoming more and more independent every day. The thought of being pregnant and having a baby became (slightly) less daunting, so this past January, when our trio was 2 1/2 years old, I started the IVF meds again so that we could transfer ONE embryo.

When I received a positive on the pregnancy test from that transfer, Micah and I were a little freaked out. That meant that we had the potential of having FIVE children (or more if any embryos split) because we still had one frozen embryo. It was overwhelming to think about, but in the end we knew that God had a plan and we would just take it one day at a time. Unfortunately, at about five weeks gestation it became clear that my HCG level was dropping and it became obvious that this was not a viable pregnancy. I miscarried at six weeks.

We were sad that my second pregnancy resulted in miscarriage, but we still had the remaining embryo to transfer. Although my six week pregnancy was short-lived, it takes about six weeks to prepare a woman's body for a frozen embryo transfer, so the first two months of 2016 were quite stressful as I pumped my body full of hormones and experienced the beginning of a pregnancy. I definitely felt like I needed some time off from IVF meds before we transferred our last embryo, so we decided to wait until late summer so that I could focus on a running goal and enjoy my summer with Alexis, Jack, and Faith.

In late June I started the hormones necessary for an IVF transfer and we transferred our last embryo on August 5, less than one week after I ran / hiked the 26.2 mile Sandia Crest Trail with Micah. I was happy that I had accomplished something on my bucket list, and I was ready to see what happened with our last frozen embryo from November 2012.

Thankfully, the embryo transfer worked and I am currently 13 weeks pregnant with a singleton! It is hard to explain all of the emotions involved in IVF because the process puts a huge strain on the mother both physically, mentally, and emotionally. In addition to the stress of IVF itself, it is crazy to realize how much time I spent thinking about our two frozen embryos and wondering how I would ever manage taking care of Alexis, Jack, and Faith plus another child or two. Although I still wonder what that will look like, I now feel much more at peace with it all and I am excited to experience a singleton pregnancy, birth, and everything else that will (hopefully) feel much simpler with one than it was with three.