And baby makes three?

Cole and I were married while I was attending my first year of graduate school, so having children was not my top priority at the time. In 2013, we began “trying” without trying. That is to say, we weren’t doing anything to prevent a pregnancy. After about a year, we had been unsuccessful and realized we needed and wanted to be more diligent about our efforts and we began using various apps and techniques to help us in this process.

Fast forward to the summer of 2016 and we were still unsuccessful in our endeavor for a baby. We began to seek consult from a local clinic, the Idaho Center for Reproductive Medicine. Our first consultation was scheduled months in advance, as they are one of (if not the only one) clinics in the Boise area. During our first meeting with Dr. Slater, we both felt like deers in the headlights, as I’m sure many couples have as they sit across from Dr. Slater in her office with her drawing pictures of fallopian tubes and writing percentages upside down like a pro. To say the least, the first meeting was very overwhelming, but we started the process from there.

We were subjected to various testing to determine the cause of our inability to have a child after over a year of trying. My testing came back normal, as did Cole’s, and we were quickly labeled as having “unexplained infertility”. This category of fertility issues is a catchall for people who have no reasons why they shouldn’t have gotten pregnant, but they haven’t. It’s quite a cruel joke – there’s nothing wrong with us, but we can’t do something we are biologically made to do, but since there’s nothing wrong with us, there’s no specific treatment.

Dr. Slater suggested that we start with Intrauterine Insemination, or IUI. This process involved pumping my body full of hormones to prime me for ovulation and then using a catheter to get the sperm as close as possible to the egg at the time of ovulation. Its basically timed intercourse at the doctor’s office. Super sexy.

So October, November, and December of 2016 were spent in various doctors appointments and attempting slight variations in medical protocols to see what my body responded to the best. By December, Dr. Slater felt as though we had the best medical protocol for my body and that I should respond perfectly and have no problems. Unfortunately, she was wrong and our third attempt failed.

We decided we needed to take a break. Emotionally, physically, and financially, we were drained. We decided to go back to timed intercourse on our own, with the assistance of Clomid, a fertility drug that I had responded particularly well to with the IUIs.

In late January/early February, we found out we were pregnant through this method. We were ecstatic, as anybody who has tried for any amount of time could imagine. We told our families and a select few friends. At our 8 week ultrasound, we were nervous and anticipating seeing our baby for the first time.

I will never forget what the tech said to us when she first informed us that she couldn’t find a heart beat. She stated “Well, maybe we could try again in a few weeks and it could be different.” I wanted to jump off the table and strangle this woman. It was one of the most insensitive thing anybody has ever said to me. Not just insensitive, but it instilled this false sense of hope that maybe what we were experiencing wasn’t real and that it could just be a fluke.

Once the tech left the room, we were met by our OBGYN who was one of the most supportive individuals we had ever met in this process. She didn’t sugar coat things, but she also gave us the facts. This wasn’t our fault. Mother nature knew that our pregnancy wasn’t viable and that was the process by which she took care of it. Did it make it easier to hear any of this? No. But her willingness to talk to us about what we were experiencing and also her caring bedside manner was helpful.

The doctor gave me the option of naturally miscarrying or having surgery to remove the baby, and I decided that the surgery was the best option for me. I couldn’t imagine having the baby inside of me and trying to grieve through the physical pain of a miscarriage. The surgery was scheduled for two days later.

Shortly after the surgery, we had a re-group meeting with Dr. Slater where she suggested that we consider In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) as our next option, which is what we will get into more next time.