Thursday, October 11, 2018

Our Story






Let's start from the beginning... Aaron and I have been married for 8.5 years! They have been amazing and wonderful and filled with trips, friends, family, love and lots of years focusing on our careers. About 5 years ago we started to talk more seriously about adding to our family. As the months went by and it just wasn't working out so easily for us we were deeply saddened by each passing month but pressed on thinking "the time would come." When it didn't, we decided to get more serious about two years ago and discussed some options with our doctors. We both saw specialists at Stanford Hospital and started seeking fertility treatments. We didn't want this to be our story. We so desperately wanted to get pregnant naturally, but due to a side effect of Cystic Fibrosis it didn't look like that was in the cards for us. So, Aaron had a procedure done to start our process and about the same time, my doctor discovered that I had a large mass on my right ovary. We were devastated. Many tests were performed which lead to a pretty invasive surgery in March of 2017. We were unsure where this would lead us as I went into a surgery to remove the mass and confirm whether it was cancerous or not. Thankfully they were able to remove it safely, unfortunately the mass had completely burst my right ovary, but we were thankful for a positive prognosis. We decided to continue down the road of IVF. We started seeking out doctors in Clovis and started our process over again, one ovary down, but ready for the fun to start. Fast forward to 2018 we had a million doctors appointments, ultrasounds, shots and pills. But it was finally happening! We were so hopeful that after many years and surgeries we were going to get our miracle. So last month was go time. We did weeks of shots and medications to produce lots of healthy eggs. All of my medications worked well and we headed into our egg retrieval. We were so excited when my doctor was able to collect 12 eggs during the egg retrieval. The doctors worked their magic in the lab and a day later 7 were fertilized, and 4 were healthy. We were so excited! 4 beautiful babies! 3 days later I was prepped and ready and went in for my egg transfer. It was like Christmas morning, but 100 times better! (We didn't tell anyone, we couldn't wait to surprise our families). We decided to transfer 2 embryos per the advice from our doctor. Everything went smoothly! I was feeling great. Aaron and I were elated. We started dreaming about these two sweet babies and all the amazing plans we had for them. We prayed daily that God would help them grow strong and make themselves comfortable for many months to come. We later found out our other two embryos didn't mature enough and didn't make it. So this was it!

This week we had blood work done that unfortunately informed us that we lost our babies... I can't put into words the pain and sadness that we are feeling, but I do know this is not the end of our story. We are not giving up. God is still faithful, he knows the desires of our hearts, and He is still good. Every bit of me wants to crawl under the covers and not come out, but we are so thankful for our tribe that has rallied around us, hugged us, and cried with us. So where does that leave us? We're not quite sure yet but we are praying and believing that we will get to hold our sweet babies someday.