We tried another IUI at the end of December 2013… but it didn’t take. At this point, food had become my comfort. It seemed to fill the void I was feeling.

In January 2014, Dustin and I went to visit my Nanny. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November and it had quickly spread. We knew what this trip was going to be. It was so hard to see a woman who was once so strong in mind and body become so forgetful and frail. She just wasn’t my Nanny anymore, but I’m glad I had a chance to say goodbye. It was a visit that I will always remember and am glad we took because it wasn’t even a month later that she was gone. I am grateful she is no longer in pain, but I miss her so much each and every day and want to talk to her or play cards with her just one more time.

I again turned to food to help me navigate through all the grief. I needed something to be good… I needed something to go right. So, not long after my Nanny passed away we decided to try another IUI. I really thought it would work this time… we had Nanny up there supporting us.

Unfortunately, this one didn’t take either. Why did it technically work the first time and not the next two times? Why was this so easy for everyone else? Food became the only answer I could find.

Needless to say, after being told twice in the same pregnancy we were going to miscarry we were absolutely crushed.

I quickly threw myself into therapy… and food, a lot of food, to cope. And this time I scheduled a D&C… we wanted to know what went wrong, I needed to know if it was my fault.

The day of my procedure arrived. We were sad, nervous and scared. While anxiously waiting for the nurse to call us back the power went out… someone had hit a transformer. My husband and I just sat back and started laughing… I mean seriously… what else was going to happen??

They finally called us back and said they would start prepping me, but if the power didn’t come back on they were going to reschedule the procedure. We didn’t want that, we were as ready as we were ever going to be now… we wanted this to be over so that we could truly start to mourn.

Almost 2 hours after it went out, the power finally came back on. Shortly after, our doctor walked into the room to check on us. We asked him point blank if he always knew we would miscarry. He said yes, in his experience our pregnancy never presented itself as viable and he didn’t want to give us any false hope. He further explained that they would send the embyro and tissue they collect during the procedure to a lab to test for any chromosomal abnormalities.

The embryo and tissue they collect? You mean, our baby? We may have only been pregnant for 8 weeks, but we were still pregnant. I still experienced a lot of symptoms most women feel early on in their pregnancies… dizziness, sore breasts and even that weird and amazing feeling of your uterus stretching. It doesn’t matter how far along you were in your pregnancy, it doesn’t hurt any less to know you’ll never get to meet your baby… never get to hold your baby… and never get to kiss their keppie and tell them everything will be ok… to have to give your baby back.

A few weeks later we went back to our doctor’s office to go over the results from the lab. He started by offering his sympathy again for what we had gone through and said it was a girl. “A girl?!”, my husband asked as he choked back his tears.

For anyone who knows my husband, they know he was always adamant that we would only ever have boys (like we really have control over that my love). But, the look of pure joy on his face when he heard we were pregnant with a girl made me lose it and fall in love with him all over again at the same time. I always knew he would love whatever we were blessed to have, but it was nice to finally see him warm up to the idea of a little girl ☺.

Our doctor went on to say that our baby (my words, not his) was chromosomally normal. While we were grateful for that, it still didn’t give us an answer as to what went wrong. He said it most likely happened because she (again, my words not his) never implanted properly from the beginning. He then said we could try again in two cycles.

That was November 2013. Our due date was June 24, 2014. Today, Sunday June 21st, 2015 would have been Dustin’s first Father’s Day… we will always love you, Lily Rose.

Our fertility doctor called us within minutes of leaving the perinatal specialist’s office. He told us that while our baby had a heartbeat, it was a little low and he wanted us to remain cautiously optimistic.

We immediately called all of our family and friends back to tell them we were still pregnant. They were all just as shocked and excited as we were and agreed that we truly had a miracle baby growing inside of me.

We went for another ultrasound the following week (week 7) and our baby’s heartbeat was beating even stronger. It was the most amazing and beautiful sound.

Our final ultrasound with our fertility doctor was scheduled for the following week. We couldn’t wait… this would be our last appointment before we graduated to my OB’s office.

I remember lying back on the exam table and staring up at the screen, waiting to hear that most amazing and beautiful sound again… but there was nothing to hear. “Can you turn the volume up on the machine? Or move to another area?”, my husband asked. But, our doctor said in order to hear the heartbeat he needed to see it first, and… he didn’t see it. He then told us that given everything we’ve been through we can come back in a couple days for another ultrasound just to make sure there was still no heartbeat. We did… and there wasn’t.

After 8 weeks the roller coaster ride we had been on was over… we had officially miscarried.

A few days later, I received another call from my doctor after one of my infamous blood tests. He said that my HCG level had peaked, it still wasn’t a viable pregnancy and that he was worried I might have a heterotopic pregnancy… where there’s a baby growing inside and outside of the uterus. He was sending me to a perinatal specialist to get a better look.

My appointment was scheduled for a Wednesday morning. As my husband and I sat in the waiting room and filled out the endless paperwork, I became increasingly sad and angry. “How many pregnancies have you had?” was one of the questions. “What’s the reason for your visit?” was another. I just wanted this nightmare to be over.

The tech finally called us back. She said she was going to start with an external ultrasound. I lied back, she put the cold gel on my stomach and as she started to move the wand around we heard a noise, at which point my husband shouted, “What’s that??”. The tech replied, “That’s your baby.”.

I called my husband immediately after receiving the call from the nurse. We couldn’t believe it… we were going to have a baby! Because I’m terrible at keeping secrets, most of our family and closest friends knew our good news within the hour ☺.

When you do any fertility treatment you find out at week two if you’re pregnant or not, and you pretty much know your conception date (aka the date of my IUI, September 25th, 2013). To make sure your pregnancy is going to be viable, you have to get a blood test every 48 hours to see if your HCG level is increasing properly. I have very hard veins to find and I bruise easily… needless to say my almost daily blood tests were not the highlight of my day, but we were pregnant so it was ok ☺.

Now, normally after my 8 AM blood test I would get a call from the nurse within a few hours to tell me my level and that everything was on track. But, one day, during week 6 I didn’t receive a call all day. I had just pulled up to my mailbox around 5 PM when my phone finally rang. My doctor told me that although my HCG level was rising, it wasn’t rising enough for our pregnancy to be viable and that we were going to miscarry… but don’t worry, I would still be going every 48 hours for a blood test to monitor my HCG levels, but this time to make sure they were going down.

I went inside my house and just collapsed. I couldn’t believe it. I quickly called my husband and somehow through the tears he understood what I was saying and rushed home. We texted all of our family and friends to tell them the awful news and that we weren’t ready to talk to anyone yet. They were all so understanding and sent us such wonderful messages of support.

The next day both we called out of work and just held each other, cried, sat in silence and cried some more. We decided that after all my body had been through recently (my surgery, the fertility drugs and now this) we would allow the miscarriage to happen naturally.

So the room finally stopped spinning and I went on to make a full recovery from my surgery after about 7 weeks.

Once I was cleared by my OB, we went back to our fertility specialist. We quickly learned that our insurance company doesn’t tend to cover, well, pretty much anything… only the diagnosis and treatment of the underlying causes of infertility, not the actual fertility part.

After a few more tests on both of us, our fertility specialist determined that our cause of infertility was “Unknown”… which meant no real specific course of treatment, basically just trial and error.

September 25th, 2013 was the date of our first IUI (Intrauterine Insemination, aka The Turkey Baster Method). It was kind of weird to think that this might be the day our child was conceived, and we wouldn’t even be in the same room since my husband would be doing his part 2 hours before me! My husband and I had previously joked about how we’ll know we’re getting his swimmers. When our doctor came into the room he showed me the barcode on my paperwork and the barcode on my husband’s swimmers so that I could confirm they matched. I laughed and told my doctor my husband and I were just joking about that… he wasn’t amused. He sternly told me that they take that VERY seriously. OK. I’m sorry! I was just trying to make light of a stressful, and somewhat awkward situation!

After what seemed like a year (2 weeks) I went for my first blood test to see if we were pregnant or not. After what seemed like several weeks (several hours) we finally got a call from the nurse… my blood test had come back positive. We were pregnant!!

So after a trip to the ER later that morning to make sure nothing was broken or dislocated, I learned that I did just tweak my wrist and my rotator cuff was royally screwed up. But, even though my pain was at a 😭 on a scale of ☺ to 😦, no pain meds for Jayme because I was having surgery in 3 days 😛.

The next 3 days were spent recovering from my untimely injury (what injury is actually timely?) and preparing for my surgery, which would keep me out of work for at least the next 4 weeks.

Surgery day came… after finally finding my vein for the IV it was time to get rolled away. Everyone in the OR introduced themselves, but without my contacts or glasses they all looked like a giant blob.

I always hate getting woken up in the recovery room. Just let me sleep the nausea and all the meds off! Anyway… I woke up to hear my surgery was a success but that during the two procedures I was having my OB do while I was under, a hysteroscopy and a hysterosalpingogram (HSG for short) she found that my right tube was blocked for unknown reasons.

My post-op nurse assured me that I could still get pregnant with one tube… that she has a blocked tube and went on to have multiple children. I wanted to learn more about what this all meant, but mostly I just wanted the room to stop spinning.

So after meeting with the fertility specialist we were told there was nothing he could do until I had the approximate 6 cm cyst removed from my left ovary. My OB had been monitoring it for a while but chose not to do anything about it since it wasn’t growing and I wasn’t experiencing any pain. The fertility specialist was worried about treating anything he might find because it could cause the cyst to burst.

My surgery was scheduled for Friday August 2nd, 2013. While I was doing some new curl and press thing with a bar at the gym the Monday before, I did something to tweak my right wrist.

Later that night I woke up in excruciating pain and walked to the bathroom to get some water. The next thing I knew my husband was trying to wake me… apparently I had fallen asleep… literally… on the bathroom floor! I had blacked out from the pain in my wrist and landed on my left shoulder. Right wrist, left shoulder in pain and surgery on my abdomen scheduled 4 days later… when it rains it pours 😛