It's been hard to want to share this news, as pregnancy after loss is a very scary experience filled with a lot of anxiety. Not only that, but after being so very open about going through IVF and then being disappointed by our viable embryo results, we needed something to be private and just for us to savor as long as possible.
This pregnancy has had so many twists and turns and complications from the start. The day we left for Ellie's birthday trip to Vegas, we had an ultrasound at our IVF clinic where they saw a gestational sac, but no baby. In medical terms this is a blighted ovum. While our doctor told us it didn't mean miscarriage yet and that it could possibly be too early still, we were scared. It was one of the most difficult vacations to go on. Having to do daily intramuscular injections in my butt and blood thinner shots in my belly at midnight, while also believing this was going to end in miscarriage was so incredibly painful. I was bloated, terrified, and angry.
Thankfully, when we got back from the trip, we had another ultrasound where we saw Addie for the first time, and saw that little flicker of a heartbeat. We both cried. A lot. Which very much confused the staff in the office until we explained we were just that happy.
At our final IVF appointment, the day that is supposed to be exciting and happy, we learned I had a subchorionic hemorrhage. Basically it's a pool of blood between the placenta and uterus. They can get reabsorbed, or can cause miscarriage. Once again, we were on edge. It ended up reabsorbing, and things started to go "OK."
On January 27th we had our anatomy scan, and all went well. We set up an appointment to see a pediatric cardiologist for a fetal echocardiogram due to the increase risk of heart defects with babies conceived via IVF. February 6 we learned that Addie does have a muscular ventricular septal defect. While these aren't cause for too much alarm - according to the doctor - we were still scared. This defect SHOULD in theory resolve itself before birth or soon after, however, there is always that chance it doesn't.
We keep falling into these categories of complications in our journey to grow our family. 1 in 160 to experience stillbirth, 1 in 8 to go through infertility, preeclampsia, heart defect, etc. It's been exhausting to say the least. I'm angry, frustrated, and tired. This journey has truly tested our marriage. While losing Ellie has been insanely difficult, we are both experiencing the loss, whereas I'm the one going through all the IVF stuff. Being pumped full of hormones that your body doesn't normally produce (hence, infertile) was really hard mentally and physically. Joel couldn't relate even a little to it. I couldn't even workout to take out my stress. No one saw the pain and difficulty of IVF, just the smiles we would put on. I would get more angry when people questioned if I was pregnant (IVF meds make you bloated), or when we were going to do IVF. NEWS FLASH: DON'T BE THAT PERSON. You have absolutely no clue how painful it is, how invasive that is. We DID IVF. And we shared that part of the journey. We even said that we wouldn't be sharing anymore from there on out and people still didn't listen to that or respect it.
While I'm sure we will have many people say "Congratulations," it's also VERY difficult to hear that. I didn't understand that when my loss mom friends would say that, but now that we are here, I completely do. It's a reminder of how far we still have to go, and all the things that can still go wrong. Know that we are so very excited to have Addie in our lives, but we are equally scared.
P.S.- HUGE GINORMOUS THANK YOU to Jessie at Jadie Foto! I love you so much, thank you for doing this on such short notice for our family!
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