I'm going to start my birth story with our conception. My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 6 months and I just had a gut feeling that something was wrong. I talked to my OB and he started putting me through lots of testing, a couple that were pretty invasive and painful. After he had done every test possible on me and everything coming back fine he referred us to in his words the best fertility Dr. That fertility Dr tested my husband and found out he has low sperm count, they don't swim, and they're misshapen-sometimes called triple defect. This was the first traumatizing thing to me. Why didn't the Dr test my husband first? His test is ejaculating in a cup..why did I have to have all these painful tests first??? I should have asked myself these questions then but when you're in the moment all you care about is finding answers so you can get pregnant.
Next step is moving forward with fertility treatments. The Dr wanted to do a trial transfer which should be an easy procedure of just threading a catheter to the uterus. For some reason this was so, so painful. I had went to the appointment alone b/c I thought it was going to be simple. I was crying on the table, uncontrollable crying from the pain. After 30 mins the Dr finally stopped and said we would have to try again later. I was so angry, upset, confused..
A few days later I was chatting with a neighbor and mentioned that my hubby and I were going to do in vitro. She said please talk to my wife, she's a Dr of Chinese Medicine and specializes in acupuncture in conjunction with fertility treatments. I had lived next to her for 2 years and never realized she did this! We met with her and she begged us to get a second opinion from another fertility Dr. We did and we knew that our previous Dr was a clown. Our new Dr was amazing and we were so happy to have finally found him. My neighbor also suggested a different OB as well. I met who she suggested and LOVE her. I felt like we finally had the perfect "team" to have a baby!
We did in vitro with ICSI. The physical process is not that hard, I'm a nurse so needles don't scare me. The emotional aspect is the hard part. My fertility Dr is not a fan of implanting multiple embryos. He told me "you're healthy and young, we are going to get at least 10 viable embryos, we will implant one, and freeze the rest for future children if you wish". At my egg retrieval they got 16 eggs, 14 were mature enough to fertilize. The transfer was 6 days later and by that time only 2 of the embryos had developed. This is strange b/c usually at least 75% develop. Something went wrong but there wasn't really any way to tell what happened. Because of this my Dr felt it was best to implant both, he also said they wouldn't freeze just one egg. During the embryo transfer the Dr said there was something really strange, I had what she called a "blind passage" it's like a tunnel to no where. She felt like it would lead to my uterus but didn't. She was able to find the right passage to my uterus and implant the embryos. After telling her about my extremely painful trial transfer with the other Dr she said there's a good chance he created that passage trying to get to my uterus not using ultrasound guidance and that's what was so painful. More anger but moving onto happy things. When we found out we were pregnant I can't explain the amount of joy. When we heard two heartbeats at 5 1/2 weeks pregnant we were so happy, excited, scared...
I went into labor just shy of 30 weeks and was in the hospital until I delivered the girls via c section at 30 weeks 5 days. I can get over the disappointing c section part b/c I know that's what was best for my girls. The traumatizing part was leaving them in the NICU for 6 1/2 weeks. Thank God for pumping because that's what I focused on, making milk for my girls. They did really well in the NICU with minimal intervention which I am so thankful for. I just cry thinking about them being alone in a little isolette. Babies are meant to held, cuddled. I did skin to skin with them every day and was there all the time but in the beginning could only hold then for an hour a day. I feel so much guilt thinking about the lack of Mommy time they had in the beginning. It was also really hard to bond with them while they were still in the hospital. It almost felt like I didn’t have babies because they weren’t at home with us.
Now they're 6 months old and most ppl I know call them "spoiled". They're well loved. I nurse and rock them to sleep. Hold them while they nap, literally all naps, they've maybe been put in a seat to sleep a handful of times. And at night they still sleep on my chest. I feel like we are making up for lost time and I know I'll never regret doing any of these things.
I've never actually taken the time to write this story out and it does feel good. I hope with time the guilt/trauma of this lessens. For now, I'll keep "spoiling" my babies 😊
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