When I was 19, I had a large tumor that also had cancer cells. I was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, but was lucky enough to get away with only losing one ovary, one fallopian tube, my appendix and some lymph nodes. The doctors were "pretty sure" my fertility would be okay, and sent me on my way.
When I was 21, I got married and at 22, I got pregnant with my first. She was a beautiful little girl that was born just 4 days before my own birthday, and she was everything I've always wanted. One child born into our family, and we had hope that many more would follow. We always wanted "at least four" children, with the possibility of one or two more.
We got pregnant again when our first was 15 months old, but that was our first taste of loss. Everything went perfectly until I started bleeding at 12 weeks along, and a day before I turned 13 weeks, I miscarried our baby. It was a horrible experience, and it left us feeling so upset for months after.
What helped heal us was our next miracle. We accidentally got pregnant just a few months after our loss, and that turned into our rainbow baby. Our son was born at 42 weeks and 1 day, healthy and perfect.
When our children were 4 and almost 2, we decided to start trying for another. We tried for three months. Just as New Year's Eve was beginning, I was rushed in the middle of the night to the ER, where I was told I was pregnant but there was something wrong. At first, they said it was a regular miscarriage. Then they discovered a large ovarian cyst that was bleeding into my abdomen. I had to be observed for days. We got second opinions, and then thirds. No one could tell what was wrong, I presented as a normal miscarriage with a chance of ectopic, but the ectopic didn't seem right either. My numbers were doubling higher than ectopics normally reached, I was in no pain, no tenderness and had gone back to feeling fine. A week and two days after I was in the ER, I was finally diagnosed officially with an ectopic and was brought back into the hospital to be given the surgery.
The tube, the only remaining tube I've had since I was 19, bled too much in surgery and became too damaged. They had to take the entire thing, leaving me with being unable to ever naturally conceive.
I have my ovary and my uterus left, which means IVF is the only chance I have at multiplying our family.
The problem with IVF is it's very expensive and a long procedure. We do not live in a mandated state that has insurance cover it. We checked our insurance and it in fact covers nothing for IVF at all.
This means not only was infertility completely changing our lives, but now we had many lifechanging things to come. We are currently in the middle of these decisions.
Our first steps are looking into jobs at the hospitals surrounding us and finding out which hospital offers the most IVF coverage. We need to find a job that has minimal education needed (so far it looks like everything needs 2 year degree plus 1000 hour clinicals.
Once he has the training for that job, we have to see if we can find an opening in a hospital that does IVF coverage. If not, we'll be making a move out of state to a mandated coverage state and be applying to a hospital nearby.
This is a ton of work that will need a ton of money and patience. It means sacrificing time with my husband so he can work and go to school and do clinicals. It means moving away from family (we were planning an out of state move anyway, but half of my family was going with. Now we may be moving away from everybody depending on which states has the best coverage). All of this just to get a chance at the IVF process and pray that after going through weeks of medications, shots in the stomach, painful surgical procedure to get the eggs removed, then praying the fertilized eggs grow enough to be used and have some left over for freezing for other cycles...it's overwhelming, honestly. But THIS is how much we want a chance of growing our family.
I always felt such a pull to have at least four kids. I feel incomplete. I feel robbed of what I was destined for. I so desire another pregnancy, going through all the joys of growing a baby and having a tiny infant again. I want another little toddler, another buddy for my two kids. I'd love to have two more, but right now I'm focused on at least getting one more chance. Of course, I'd love to have twins next time and have the best of both worlds, but I'm not focusing on that right now. Right now is the boring part - calling around colleges to finish up my husband's degree, despite just finishing off our student loan debt three weeks ago. It's a bit of a slap in the face, after 6 years of struggling under student loans we finally were able to get rid of them and not even a month goes by when we find out we'll be taking on more.
I wish I could say we could take the easy way and just only have two kids. But I think I'd regret it forever if we didn't try IVF, if we didn't make any attempts to have more. I'm not just in a baby fever phase, I'm not whole yet. I'll know when we're complete, and right now we're not. Of course everyone throws adoption and fostering at us, but it's not the direction I feel pulled to. It's not the same. I want the pregnancy, I want the birth, I want it all. Fostering would break my heart and adoption would skip over all the things my body is craving so much. So IVF is something I need a chance at. If it doesn't work, then I can at least reconcile myself with having tried everything we could to make it happen. Not trying at all just seems like it would forever hurt my heart.
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