Coming to terms with Infertility

As little girls we grow up planning our wedding, and from our wedding we instantly imagine ourselves as Moms with lots of babies, I don't know why we do that but at least that's what I always did growing up.


My fairytale day arrived on July 5th, 2008. I married my best friend and we chatted and chatted and chatted about the life we were going to create. I think it was about 6 months in to our marriage that I began to recognize that something was possibly wrong. I would be travelling home from work and have an intense amount of lower abdominal pain. Some mornings it would be so bad that I would end up fainting to the floor. It was at this point I began googling absolutely everything and only one word kept coming up with all of the symptoms I put in....Endometriosis.

I made a doctors appointment and immediately he scheduled me to see the gynocologist. At this point we were beginning to role over our first anniversary. The gynocologist confirmed all my symptoms and scheduled be for a laparaoscopy which confirmed that I had stage 2 Endo.


He referred us to the London Health Sciences Fertility Clinic to begin the process in case we needed the assistance. At this point I couldn't even imagine that we would need to do any invasive treatments. Little did I know what was ahead over the next 5 years.

We met with our Dr. and she recommended that we attempt doing Inter Uterine Insemination before proceeding to anything drastic such as IVF. Simple enough, right? Take some meds, have some blood work done and BAM I will be pregnant! Lets do it!

I won't forget the very first time I had to give myself an injection. It had to be given between the hours of 4-7pm and I stood in my kitchen on the phone with my best friend Emily who also happens to be a Paramedic.....and finally at 6:58 the needle went in!

IUI after IUI was done and IUI after IUI results came back negative. Originally, I was ok with it. Because sometimes it just doesn't work the first time, it might take a try or two. But by the third time, our hopes were beginning to diminish.

Everyone around us was beginning to grow their families. The pregnant bellies, the baby showers, the new birth announcements. I slowly began to push myself emotionally into a hole and on the outside numbed myself so that I looked like I was handling it all, but on the inside....how can you not break.Everything you ever dreamed of, and you had zero control at creating it.

Fast forward to 2010 and our Dr begins to mention three letters that scared me beyond belief.....IVF. This was something we always said we wouldn't do, we weren't going to pay the crazy money for it but when you actually begin crossing everything else off the list and this is the point you get to, it's amazing what you agree to do. Prior to beginning IVF I had to undergo another Laporoscopy to clear up any Endo. July 2010 the surgery was complete and we were excited to begin the next steps...until the DR comes in the room and confirms that I have Stage 4 severe Endo. Ok, I thought...but you go it all, right?! This was the point that I was informed that before IVF I was going to have to attempt 3 months on an infection called Luron which essentially puts you into Menopause. Another delay.....



I had my first injection, I had my second injection and I cancelled the third! I couldn't bare it. Chris and I were fighting...I was miserable and couldn't handle the side effects anymore. My dr didn't want to loose the effect of the Lupron so she rushed me in for an IVF cycle immediately.

I was happy, I was excited, I was nervous.....our family, friends, co-workers...they were all amazing and super supportive of everything we had to do that month in order to make this happen. And it happened! Retrieval day came and we had 12 eggs retrieved:) At this time we had also opted for something called ICSI...where they force fertilize half of the eggs with sperm and this helps to determine with there is a sperm/egg issue. By day 3 we were down to only 3 embryos.....all of them forced fertilized...none of the naturally fertilized eggs formed into embryos. We decided as per our dr to transfer all three embryos and hope for the best of even 1 sticking. I remained home for 7 days after the transfer, hoping and praying. The day came to go back to work and I was ok. Until 3 days before our Beta test was to be done. I was at a clients home, asked to use the washroom and saw something that I didn't want to see....I immediately packed things up and asked to leave due to illness. I cried the entire way home from work, calling the dr until they answered. The next morning my results were confirmed....negative.

How could this even be possible? You take the hormones, you travel for monitoring, you scientifically have your embryos formed and pay the crazy money....and it didn't work?!?!

Our hearts were shattered....more and more reality was setting in. We were getting older, life was beginning to pass us by only because how do you not focus your entire life on trying to conceive and build a family.

During our follow appointment our Dr convinced us to try one more time, that the odds were actually greater. I won't go into great detail about the second cycle but what I can say is that this time, my period didn't start early. It was the one time it was late and the one time I THOUGHT it might have worked. It was a Sunday, we drove to london for the blood work. I was requested to cover a shift at the restaurant and thought no problem....my test results will be positive and I feel good about this!

I happen to take the results phone call during my work shift...terrible idea. Negative....I became an emotional wreck....I had no idea what to do at this point.....how to handle myself.....or where to turn for help.

More to come.......