Icing and Animal Crackers

The Dreaded Question

Our fur babies. Photo by Tamara Michelle Photography

I’m going to pause our story to talk about the dreaded question. It’s a question that seems so innocent, but it’s like a punch to the gut every time I hear it: “Do you guys have any kids?” It’s a normal question to ask someone, right? Almost everyone has kids, right? And anyone that doesn’t have them is probably planning to, right? WRONG! And then the follow-up question is even more uncomfortable: “Do you want kids?” or “Are you planning to have kids?”

That question is not only very personal, but I’ve found that many people ask but only want the answer if it’s “Yes, we do have/want children!” I always wonder when people ask that question if they are prepared for the real answer.

“We do want children, but we’ve miscarried 13 times and haven’t been able to carry to term”

“We had a baby, but it died during childbirth”

“I’m pregnant right now but I’m not ready to share”

“We’ve just found out we aren’t able to have children”

“I’m in the middle of an IVF cycle right now and I’m feeling sore and bloated and stressed and terrified”

“We don’t want children”

“We’ve been trying for eight and a half years, have done multiple fertility treatments, and are scared we will never have a child” (This one is us, by the way)

Seven years ago, here is how we would answer: “We’d like to!” or “We’re working on it!” while cringing inside knowing that we had just gone through four unsuccessful IUIs, a miscarriage, and a year and a half of trying to conceive. Now, seven years later? Do people really want to know the true answer behind the innocent question “Do you want children?” My typical response these days is “We have two fur babies!” Jaxson and Pieces are part of our family, and for now, they are our kids!

In my experience, if people have children, they will tell you about them. You don’t have to ask. People are proud of their kids, as they should be! I promise, it will come up in conversation. If you are meeting someone for the first time and looking for a conversation starter, please, try not to use that question.

IVF Round #1

In the spring of 2015, we began our first IVF cycle. When I reflect back on that time I’m flooded with lots of emotion. There was a lot going on in our lives. My grandma became ill was and was admitted to St. Paul’s Hospital. My mom’s cancer had spread from her colon and was now in her lungs. The procedure to remove the cancer from the lungs was invasive and complicated. She was referred to a specialist in Vancouver who would perform the surgery. These two things were happening in tandem with our IVF, so needless to say, it was an emotional, stressful time.

I was working full time, managing my injections, going for bloodwork every other day, and having daily ultrasounds. I didn’t respond well to the medication and was only able to produce two mature follicles. They were able to extract an egg from each follicle, and each egg grew to an eight cell, day three embryo. Fresh embryo transfers are preferable, as the freeze/thaw cycle can cause it stress. The recommendation was made that I transfer both embryos as that would give us the best chance of a successful pregnancy.

During one of our last family suppers with my grandma, I showed her the picture of our little embryos. She thought I was showing her a picture of a pair of earrings. I remember explaining to her that we were going through IVF and that these were going to be our babies.

I was so hopeful. I truly believed that IVF would be the answer to our prayers. A few days before my scheduled bloodwork, I woke up with cramps. Then came the blood. It was Easter break. On Easter Sunday I had gone to church and prayed for those little embryos to grow. It’s hard to describe the devastation of your first failed IVF cycle. I called my mom and dad to tell what had happened. My dad was going to visit my other grandma, who lives in Tisdale. They suggested I go with him so I wouldn’t have to be home alone. I could not stop the tears from flowing out of my eyes; I just watched out the car window and cried.The hurt and loss was just seeping out of me. I couldn’t understand how we could go through so much and end up with nothing.

A few weeks later, I flew to Vancouver to be with my dad and sister during my mom’s surgery. Mom was strong (she always was) but the surgery was invasive and the recovery was long. Mary and I flew home a few days after the surgery and left dad with mom to continue the recovery process. When we returned to Saskatoon, grandma was in a coma. She died a few days later. That next weekend was Mother’s Day. Grandma was gone; mom was in a hospital bed in Vancouver, and I had an empty womb. Going forward, Mother’s Day never got easier.

IVF Explained

We had one positive test with IUI. I remember thinking, this is it. It’s going to work next time. Two more rounds of IUI and nothing. At this point we were about two years trying to conceive. It felt like an eternity.

This is the medication I took for our first cycle of IVF. The wine in the background was not prescribed by the doctor… but maybe it should have been!

Our fertility doctor now told us that we would be good candidates for IVF. Infertility has been a part of our lives for so long that I sometime forget that not everyone knows what all of the terminology means. Before going into the details of our next fertility treatment, I thought I should explain what exactly IVF (invitro fertilization) is. IVF requires the female to be on a large quantity of injectable hormones for several weeks. When I say large quantity, I mean a couple thousand dollars of medication that is injected multiple times a day into the stomach, either by you or your partner. Anyone that knows me knows that I DO NOT like needles, so this was a mental hurdle to get past. The female takes the injectable hormones for several weeks. She is monitored through transvaginal ultrasounds every few days to measure follicle growth. Follicles are the little sacs that eggs develop in within the ovaries. Typically, an egg is released every month during ovulation and if it is not fertilized, it is shed with menstruation. In an IVF cycle, the goal is to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs at a time. Once follicles have reached a certain size, surgery is performed to aspirate the eggs.

Once the eggs are extracted, they are fertilized with the male’s sperm. This can be done a few ways but, in our case, they selected “the best” sperm and injected them into each egg using a microscopic needle. Then they incubate them in a petri for three days and hope they grow into an 8-cell embryo. If the embryos are healthy and strong on day three, they will continue to incubate them to day five or six. These embryos are now called blastocysts and have grown into multi-cell embryos.

The final step of IVF is to transfer the embryos or blastocysts into the female’s uterus. If the embryos do not look as strong, they will do a day three transfer with the hope that the uterus will give them the best environment to thrive. Blastocysts are typically more successful in IVF because the doctors can see that they are continuing to the multi-cell stage. Once transferred, the goal is for the embryo to implant into the uterine wall and begin to grow. Ten to fourteen days later they send the female for bloodwork to see if HCG (pregnancy hormone) levels have risen.

My next post will detail our first experience with IVF, but I will end this post by saying that IVF is costly, intensive, invasive, consuming, mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting, and does not guarantee a pregnancy.

The Beginning and the End

Quite often, IUI is the first treatment someone with infertility will try. It’s relatively inexpensive (compared to other treatments) and non-invasive. The success rate of a medicated IUI cycle in a female with healthy eggs and two open fallopian tubes is 15% to 25%. Our first IUI was in the spring of 2014. It resulted in a negative test… we were disappointed, but not overly surprised. Our second IUI was in August of 2014… and it was positive.

Dustin and I camping in Banff a few day after our second IUI.

I still remember the morning that I got up and peed on the stick. It was my first day back to work after summer holidays. I got up early and just had a good feeling. When I saw a second pink line and was elated! I remember the dress I wore that day. I took a picture of myself in the mirror because this was a day I was never going to forget. I got to our school division’s fall conference and promptly told a good friend that I was pregnant. We hugged and she told me how happy she was for us. Telling someone that you are pregnant and seeing their excitement is one of the best feelings in the world. A few hours later, I started to bleed a little bit. I called the clinic and they said it was not uncommon for that to happen, but they would send me for bloodwork. They called at the end of the day and it was good news. My HCG level was still around 150 IU/L.

A week later and it was my first day at a new school. I remember standing at the front of the gym for teacher introductions and feeling some cramping. By the end of the day, the pain was unbearable. I came home and curled up in bed. Then I started bleeding a lot. When Dustin got home from work he took me to emergency. I was miscarrying our little babe. I wasn’t far along, only 6 weeks, but I already had a connection with that little being. I laid on a bed in the emergency room as they took blood samples and checked my vitals. I hadn’t told anyone in my family about the pregnancy. I called my mom and dad and explained where I was through sobs and tears. The doctors told us that we would have to come back the next day for an ultrasound to make sure there was not any remaining tissue in my uterus. Terrified, I called my new principal from the hospital to tell him what had happened and that I would not be at work the next day. He was wonderful and told me to take the time I needed.

I returned to work a few days later. It was so difficult to be at a new school with new staff; I felt like I couldn’t share with anyone what had happened. We had a follow up meeting with our doctor. She told us it was a “chemical pregnancy”, meaning I had a very early miscarriage. I don’t like that term. When you’ve tried to have a baby for so long and someone downplays that positive test, it sucks. It doesn’t hurt any less than if you are well into your first trimester. So that was the beginning and the end of our first pregnancy.

And the Infertility Story Begins…

I always knew I wanted to be a mom. From a young age, I loved children. I took the babysitters course in grade 5 and started watching my younger sister when our parents were out. I had several regular babysitting jobs. I loved babies and baby showers and kids’ birthday parties. I played house and carted around my doll. My favorite assignment in Home Ec was carrying around the egg and caring for it like a baby.

In high school, I remember having a conversation with a group of friends about pregnancy and how it’s not easy for everyone to become pregnant. I’m not sure why, but I always had this feeling in the back of my mind that I could be one of those people. Medically, there was nothing that concerned me. I had a regular cycle, no family history of infertility or miscarriages, no fibroids or endometriosis or abnormally shaped uterus. But I still just had this feeling.

Because I was 28 when we got married, I wanted to start a family right away. Not that 28 is old… but I felt ready to have a baby. Six months after we were married, we moved to our acreage and I ditched my birth control. I told my doctor we were trying, and she sent me for the necessary bloodwork. We were good to go! Three months after it hadn’t happened, I was panicking. I went to a walk-in clinic and was told it could take up to a year. A year!! So, I went out and bought ovulation strips and downloaded an app to ensure that we were timing this right. I started monitoring my basal body temperature and all the tricks that people tell you to try. I peed on sticks every 28 days only to see a single pink line. One year later and nothing…

For anyone who has struggled to get pregnant, you know that getting a referral to a fertility specialist is virtually impossible until you have had one year of frustration and tears and let-downs. But we were finally here. We were referred to a clinic in Saskatoon who sent us for a number of tests, ultrasounds, and labs. The HSG or hysteroselpingogram, is a particularly awful procedure where they fill your uterus with a radioactive dye to see if it is the right shape and to ensure your fallopian tubes are open. I would describe the pain of the procedure like someone taking a knife to your insides… I’ve had 4 of these over the last 8 years. All the results came back normal and they deemed us good candidates to start the IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) process. In an IUI, the female takes an oral medication (Clomid or something similar) to stimulate egg development. An injection of HCG is taken to release the egg at a certain time. The male gives a sperm sample which is cleaned, put into a solution, and then placed into the uterus via catheter. The hope is that the timing of the egg and the semen will align and BOOM! You will make a baby. Our experience with IUI will continue in my next blog post.

Our Love Story…

This infertility story began as a love story… and it still is a love story.

I like to hear about of how couples met. I like to tell people how we met. It started as a grade 9 crush. Dustin was in grade 11, had curly blonde locks, and played in a band. Of course, he had no idea who I was. But as luck would have it, our families ended up attending the same church and we finally met. Fast forward a few years, when I was 19 and he was 21, and we started running into each other out and about. Still had a crush on him, but I was a “serial dater” back then and I always seemed to have a boyfriend. Fast forward a few more years, the stars finally aligned, and Dustin took me out on our first date. It was January, -40 outside, and we went for drinks downtown. I think I knew on the first date that I was going to marry him. On March 17^th, he asked if we could “make it official” and said he chose St. Patrick’s Day so that he wouldn’t forget our anniversary.

We dated for a year and a half and on New Year’s Eve 2011, Dustin proposed on a beach in Los Cabos. He was planning to pop the question on a yacht, but the yacht turned out to be a catamaran with all you could drink Corona. So instead, he had the resort staff set up a table on the beach with champagne and flower petals and the whole bit. He told me we were going to have sunset pictures taken. So, I got all dressed up and walked down to the ocean and that’s when I saw the setup. The proposal was beautiful, and I was over the moon. We didn’t want to spend years planning a wedding, so we got right to it. We had a large but simple wedding on June 2^nd, six months after we got engaged. As I mentioned in my previous post, all my grandparents and our parents were there. It was an amazing day.

At the end of July, we travelled to Costa Rica for our honeymoon. We had more adventures than I could have imagined, including repelling, ziplining, hiking, surfing, quadding, getting stranded on a broken-down quad 3 hours from our hotel, and almost sliding down the side of a cliff in our rental car.

When we returned from our honeymoon, we encountered two of our first hardships together. First, my mom had invasive surgery to remove cancer in her colon. Second, my grandpa had fallen while out for a walk and broke his neck. I was able to visit mom and grandpa in the hospital at the same time the day we got back from Costa Rica. Grandpa passed away the next day. Looking back, I think these two events prepared us for our challenges to come. When it felt like my world was collapsing, Dustin was there. Sometimes when we’re faced with adversity, we want to run… Dustin and I have never run from each other. Challenges have brought us closer together.

It Might Be Something Better Than You Planned

At the beginning of September, Dustin had to take our dog, Pieces, to the vet. She has an underactive thyroid (just like me!) so, she is on daily medication. When her prescription runs out, she needs to have blood work done (also, like me!) to make sure there are no adjustments that need to be…