Our Infertility

As we were first married we set out our timeline for our family. We planned to stay in our apartment about 2 years, move into a house, start a family. I would be done with school by then and Spencer would have his associates and would be going to the University of Utah for Pre-Law. My how things change. After living in the apartment all of about 3 months I was done with apartment life and we started house hunting. On our limited income I am surprised that we even qualified for a loan, but we did and we found the perfect starter home, great central location. We closed on the house on Spencer's 22nd birthday and moved in three days later.

We were still planning to wait the two years to start our family but that September we got a huge surprise when I found out I was pregnant. Because it was my first pregnancy the doctors office said that they usually would see you for the first visit around 10 weeks. Everything was fine, we had gotten over the initial shock and were actually starting to get excited.

I went in for my appointment and found out that I wasn't 10 weeks like we thought, but more like 15 weeks but the doctor couldn't find a heartbeat. She said nothing to worry about, I had a retroverted uterus (tilted back) so she said sometimes it was just hard to find so she sent me for an ultrasound. I had never had an ultrasound before (obviously) so I didn't think anything of it when the ultrasound technician didn't say anything and after she was done said "I'll be back in a few minutes with your doctor." The doctor came in and explained that there was no heartbeat and she thought it would be best if we went ahead and did a D&C. So I went in the next morning completely numb and that was it, I was no longer pregnant. I had the greatest anesthesiologist who said "I have an epidural here with your name on it, I expect to see you here sometime next year to use it." It was the hope that I needed on a completely hopeless day.

We decided that we didn't want to wait another year to try again and after 6 months of trying on our own went back to my doctor. I had known for a few years that it might be difficult for me to get pregnant, When I was 19 I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Overy Syndrome), but my doctor said that it would be no problem, when the time came if we needed help she was more than happy to help. Because I was only ovulating a few times a year she decided to use hormone drugs to try to create a more normal cycle. So I started taking Provera and Clomid, after 4 months with no success we moved to injectable drugs, still nothing and we had exhausted our savings and had to stop. I guess we were just trying things the wrong way as soon as we stopped trying, I was pregnant again. My doctor was great and had us come in weekly for ultrasounds to check growth. The first ultrasound was at 4 weeks, really nothing to see a sac and fetal pole. 5 weeks we could see a little bean, 6 weeks a heartbeat! The chances of miscarrying after seeing a heartbeat drop to only about 10%. Unfortunately I was in that 10% again. The next week there was no heartbeat and only a few days growth where there should have been a week.

I felt like the world came crashing down, but no one was stopping. Life had to go on, but I didn't want it to. My doctor offered to refer me to a specialist to see if we could find a reason for the miscarriages, they had done genetic testing and both pregnancies had come back normal. We went to see a high risk specialist who wanted to do additional testing to try to figure out why this was happening. First he did blood work. Who knew you could give so much blood! They tested for infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, thyroid problems, alloimune disorders. They needed to test Spencer as well. Everything came back fine.

The last test he wanted to run was to inject a dye into my uterus and do what is called a hystosonogram to check to make sure there weren't any abnormalities or blocked tubes. As soon as the dye entered my uterus the doctor turned the screen to show it to me he said "look at this" and pointed to a few things. I really didn't understand what I was looking at. After we were done he took me into an other room to show me my x-rays next to a normal uterus x-ray. I finally had a diagnosis, T-shaped Uterus. There had been recent research showing that there were women with t-shaped uterus' carrying to term but we had another problem we would need to know as soon as I had ovulated to start medicines to try to maintain the pregnancy. For most patients this meant they would test 3 days after ovulation to see if you had ovulated then start the prescriptions until you test; if negative stop and try another month. For me this meant that we would need to start fertility treatments again because I didn't have a consistent cycle. This doctor didn't do fertility treatments so he referred me to another doctor (a Reproductive Endocrinologist) and as soon as I was pregnant I would return to his care.

So we started on the roller coaster called fertility treatments again. After almost another year the Reproductive Endocrinologist said that we had exhausted all options except Invetro Fertilization.

I was emotionally and mentally exhausted. I couldn't keep doing this to myself, but more than anything I wanted to be a mother. We didn't have the money to proceed with Invetro, and I was so discouraged by everything. We needed to make some decisions on what we were going to do. We prayed a lot, cried a lot, and finally I got up the courage to call LDS Family Services to find out what we would need to do to begin the adoption process.