Keeley and Josh

I never thought in a million years even with the history of my mother that I would ever struggle to get pregnant and sustain a pregnancy. All through out my life I have been taught you have unprotected sex that you will instantly get pregnant and I think it was the same thought process that my husband had. My husband and I always decided that we wanted to spend some time as husband and wife before we start trying and we did that. However, something inside me told me that I wanted to start trying a lot earlier into our marriage than I thought I would. My husband was not ready yet and took him a bit to come around to the idea of “trying”. In 2017, we decided to start “trying” and month after month nothing happened. I knew that my mom struggled to get pregnant with me (took her over a year) so I thought that maybe it was a possibility that I could be going through something similar.

After 6 months of struggling, I went to my doctor and told him that I wanted to see a specialist as I felt like something wasn’t right. The doctors tell you your supposed to wait a year before they will send you to a clinic so yes I had to fib a bit. It took about 2 months to get my first scheduled appointment at the clinic in my city and about a month later before I actually had the appointment.

The first appointment was nerve wracking as my husband was in the last week of his program and could not attend with me. After the first appointment, I had all these standard tests to check all their basis. During the standard ultrasound test, the tech asked me if I had both my kidneys and I said no. We discovered when I was 11 that I only had my left kidney and was born this way. She continued to tell me that she could only see one fallopian tube with an ovary but had difficulty finding my right ovary. She also told me that my the shape of my uterus was abnormal and was a unicornuate uterus pointing towards my left side. I left that appointment pretty defeated and frustrated as I always felt my entire life that I was not “normal”. I was always the person in my family with all the medical issues.

Once all the tests were done, we had our follow up appointment with the Doctor. She reassured me that the shape of my uterus would not affect my chances of getting pregnant as everything else was normal. My left ovary had the right amount it needed, my blood work was normal, nothing was blocked and the sperm test was great. She said the only thing I would may affected me was as the baby got bigger in pregnancy that I had a higher chance of a later miscarriage or a preterm baby.

In August of 2018, I finally got pregnant. I was nervous and excited so I called the OFC and the followed up with bloodwork. However my blood work was showing that the numbers were not growing enough so I was followed up with an ultrasound. Since it was too early to tell, I had multiple ultrasounds to make sure everything was growing as they could still only see the sac. In September, it was determined that there was no baby and that I would need to expel the products. I was devastated, I waited almost a year and a half to get to this point and this is what happens. I knew no one who had a miscarriage or who had struggled to get pregnant so I felt very alone.

As a couple we really struggled with the fact that we were not getting pregnant and now we are having a miscarriage, it was devastating. I have always struggled with anxiety and depression so it was tough watching people get pregnant and it got worse once we lost the first baby. Shortly after the miscarriage, my sister who was not married, who was not trying got pregnant and it was a tough pill for me to swallow. I went into a deep dark period of my life that just destroyed me. I was devastated. Also my teaching partner at this time informed me she was 8 weeks pregnant and I just didn’t know how I was going to handle life.

After waiting two cycles, we decided to try again even though I still had very little retained products. We instantly got pregnant but found out at 8 weeks there was no heartbeat. I was heartbroken that I would have to go through this process all over again. Shortly after this miscarriage another close friends of ours got pregnant. My thought process was “why am I going through this nightmare all over again”.

As a couple we couldn’t understand why this was happening to us. My family struggled on how to handle this situation as my sister was pregnant and I was loosing babies. I decided after the first miscarraige I was not going to be ashamed of our infertility journey and the losses of our babies so I began to talk about it to people. I felt better acknowledging that this was happening then pretending to hide it. I think with my strength of talking about it, my husband began to open up to his friends and family of what we were going through. Once we began to talk about it we had so many people tell us they have been through it. After my second miscarriage, I had a hard time sitting in the lunch room at work and spent a lot of my time in my classroom. Many of my coworkers were very understanding and knew what had happened. I was very lucky to be surrounded by women who told me their stories and it finally made me feel like I was somewhere where I was not alone.

I took me taking medication and therapy to be able to get to a place where I could feel like I could handle life around me. We decided as a couple to give my body a break, allow it to heal, begin to take supplements and focus on us as a couple (enjoy that time together alone). During this time, I made the decision to attend my sister’s baby shower (this was a huge step in my journey and a huge step in our relationship as we had next to none).

In June of 2019, about 2 years after we began our journey we found out we were pregnant again. We had a lot of scares and I was on progesterone till week 13 so I had difficulty sharing my pregnancy publicly. I was always on edge because I worried that I would loose another baby that I did not get to enjoy this pregnancy like I should have been. We did get to welcome our rainbow baby in December of 2019 (the same year both our miscarriages babies were supposed to be born in). Our daughter was born at 27 weeks and 4 days so as exciting as it was, I still lived with this fear of loosing her due to our infertility journey. I was lucky enough to meet a mom who spent a couple of weeks beside me go through infertility as well and it gave me hope for everyone who is suffering through infertility.

I consider myself very lucky that my rainbow baby is here and thriving. I am not sure after our journey, the pregnancy and crazy delivery that I would want to put myself through what I went through the past 3 years. During this virus and closing of clinics, my heartbreaks for people who are trying to conceive but have to put it on hold. As I share my story, I want you to know that you are not alone. There are many people who may not have shared their stories with children who have gone through it. For everyone who has gone through, they want you to know that they are hear to listen to you and want you to know they know exactly how you feel.