Impatiently Waiting for our Miracle(s)

It’s been a little while since I posted about my husband, Reid, and our fight to get him a new liver. Honestly, I think I’ve focused on talking about our fertility journey more because with that I have more answers. And a timeline. I have been so anxious this week. And while many of you probably think it’s because we’re getting ready to start IVF round 2, it’s not completely. I am so anxious about what is going to happen to my husband. Because without him, none of this even matters. I’m not saying the infertility and pregnancy losses is the lesser of our struggles. I don’t know that there’s a comparison… each struggle has its own significant challenges, and each affects me differently depending on the day. When we first learned of Reid’s diagnosis of Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), it was always a maybe he’d have to have a liver transplant one day, and maybe he’d get cancer. But one of those maybes has become a definitely, and the other is now a very likely. It just feels ...

A year ago today, I shared on Facebook that we had experienced two pregnancy losses, and were struggling with infertility. At that time, we were mourning the recent loss of our 2 nd baby, and I was really having a hard time. Through sharing our losses and our struggle, I have found incredible strength. Pregnancy loss is the hardest thing I have ever had to experience. The first day I saw two pink lines on a test (April 17 th , 2015), I became a mother. At that moment, I pictured our future with that baby. I pictured telling all of our family and friends, I pictured my belly growing. I pictured the first time we would get to hold that baby. I wondered what we should name him or her. I wondered whether their hair would be brown or red and their eyes blue or green. Once we learned the due date, I planned the next 8 months and I thought about how pregnant I would be at each of the weddings and family events we had coming up. I wondered what kind of personality our baby would ...

So I mentioned last week that our first IVF cycle failed. We were so hopeful, and had two good embryos make it to freeze, but the PGS testing came back a week later and we learned that both embryos had abnormal chromosomes. We were pretty heartbroken. This past Tuesday we met with our RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist – fertility doctor). He gave us a little more hope. And answered a lot of questions. Our doctor believes that the chromosome abnormalities have to do with my DOR (Diminished Ovarian Reserve). We can’t know for sure, and there’s really not many ways to test for that, but that’s the assumption that we’re making. After our 3 rd loss, he did some extensive blood work on both of us to see if there were underlying issues, and the only thing that came back was that I have an MTHFR mutation, which is fairly common with infertility. But neither of us have issues that should cause the embryos to have abnormal chromosomes. Also, the chromosome abnormalities have been different ...