I began trying to get pregnant at 34 and my husband and I tried for a year naturally before I decided to seek infertility help. I was devastated to find out both of my tubes were 100% blocked. I had not chance of getting pregnant. This was the beginning of my long journey.

I had my first surgery to open my tubes and then decided to try clomid and incemination. That didn't work so I moved on to IVF. My first IVF failed although I had 25 eggs and very good embryos.

I decided to look for a doctor with a refund program since I was paying with cash. I found a doctor that gave me three more cycles for the price of one. The first IVF cycle with the new doctor failed as well. Then came my second surgery to remove my left tube which was blocked again. I didn't have any frozen embryos so I started on my third IVF and I was so happy to finally hear I was pregnant only to lose the baby at 9 weeks and my third surgery D&C.

I did have some frozen embryos from my third IVF so I tried FET and it failed. I was so tired by this point I took about six month off trying and did some counseling with my husband. After I felt strong again I went back for one more IVF cycle. The doctor said he really felt I needed to remove a fibroid off my uterus to increase success so I went in for my fourth surgery.

This fourth IVF cycle was a success and I was pregnant again and with twins! I was so thrilled that all my hard work paided off, but then I lost one baby at 8 weeks and began to panic.

The doctors assured me the one baby was going to make it and looked strong. I was placed on Heparin because I showed a slight blood clotting problem. I was now 39 and went to specialist every two weeks for scans. My beautiful baby girl is now 21 months old and the light of my life.

I am now 42 and decided to try another FET as I have 10 frozen embryos. My first FET failed. I have 8 more frozen. I am going to try one more time and maybe transfer 3 - 4 to increase the chance of success.

I hope my story gives someone hope and courage to try everything in your power to make your dreams come true and if one more door keeps opening then go through it because behind that last door may be your dream!

Fiona's Story

We believed that as soon as we had completed our honeymoon, we would start trying for a baby and succeed before our first wedding anniversary. How cruel life can be!!

We started trying for a baby in the April and in August I unknowingly fell pregnant. I didn't know due to an extremely long bleed - I didn't even bother doing a pregnancy test. It was only when I missed my next period that I decided to do a test which came back positive. However, our joy soon turned to tears very suddenly when I started bleeding heavily, experiencing pain like I never knew existed and being rushed into hospital for an emergency operation. I had experienced an ectopic pregnancy*. It led to a long road of infertility and IVF cycles.

At the time, I was told that the ectopic had only ruined one tube and that my fertility was not effected. This was certainly not the case and after six further months of trying, we became impatient and went to an IVF clinic that had been recommended.

After being diagnosed with polycystic ovaries, my first cycle proved positive on the initial blood test but the result was low and they wanted to retest in the next two days to ensure that the hormone was increasing, by which stage I was already bleeding and the hormone had vanished completely. My next two cycles were frozen ones, neither of which were successful.

My fourth cycle was successful, with a good blood result after the two weeks and my husband and I thought, with a lot of trepidation, that maybe we were finally going to be parents. Our success was shortlived however, and the day before my six-week scan, I miscarried. My consultant still wanted to see me for the scan, just in case there was more than one baby and the slight chance that I could still be pregnant. In my heart of hearts, I knew this was not the case and I tried desperately to psyche myself up for the inevitable, but when there was nothing on the screen, I just sobbed.

Fortunately, my consultant wanted to do some blood tests as I was actually miscarrying at that time and he thought that he may get some answers that he would not be able to get at any time. I agreed - I didn't really care! My husband and I went on holiday and made the decision that we had gone as far as we could go, financially, emotionally and physically.

When we returned, my consultant asked to see us with regard to the results. He informed us that I appeared to have a clotting problem, had higher than normal levels of testosterone and anti phospholipid syndrome - all of which went completely over our heads. After long discussions, he explained that my immune system was not allowing an embryo to implant properly and I was getting blood clots in the placenta, causing it to fail early on. His diagnosis let to me being treated with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) before my next cycle (the one we had decided not to do!) and again immediately after implantation, together with daily injections of heparin to thin the blood.

There is a lot of controversy about IVIG in the UK but it certainly worked for me! It wasn't the easiest pregnancy in the world and I had to be constantly monitored, having scans every two weeks until week 16 and then four weekly until the end. However, I was supposed to be induced at 40 weeks, I was not allowed to go overdue, only to discover that I was already dilating. After all our hassles, I had a very speedy delivery with no drugs at all (1.5 hours) from breaking my waters to delivery. People still say how lucky I was!

We now have a beautiful little boy who is now 21 months old - he is our life and has fulfilled our dreams in every way.

We are considering another cycle at the moment in order to try and give him the sibling we want so much for him but we will only try once. We could not go on the same rollercoaster whilst caring for our beautiful toddler. If it works, we will all be happy but guess what, if it doesn't, we will still be happy. My only comment to everyone reading this is that it is always worth trying that one last time!

Kristina's Story

After a year of trying the natural way, we moved onto clomid and then clomid w/ IUI's. Nothing happened. I went to a big specialist and went to injectibles with IUI. As a result I contracted Strep A Toxic Shock Syndrome and nearly died. After 2 surgeries, 8 days of ICU, 7 days in the hospital and 3 months of rehab, I beat the odds, which were that about two-thirds of people who contract this awful disease die within hours.

After a year of dealing with this near death experience I went to a different specialist and with a careful hand, we had a successful and unremarkable fresh IVF. My beautiful twin girls are now 3 yrs old. Mother's Day is every day for me.

I'm now considering a FET cycle, but it is too early to decide yet. While Streptococcal Toxic Shock is a rare and deadly disease, it was the result of dangerous bacteria passing through the body's natural defense barriers and into a fertile, prepared uterus. The ER Dr's initially thought is was Ovarian Hyperstim (OHSS), but I'm grateful that the Trauma Chief rerouted my gurney away from the ob/gyn sono room and straight into the OR. I would have died while getting the sono. Clearly, I don't recomend the "big specialist" as it was at least a half dozen unanswered calls to him that landed me in the ER. I often do recommend the doctor and practice that ultimately helped me with my pregnancy. They are my angels on earth.

Update from Sept 30, 2008

My husband and I decided to do a FET back in July. We met with the doctor who helped us with our twins back in 2005. He perfectly understood our situation of wanting to have another child and our concern about the idea of having another set of twins. He explained that he typically transfers between 2 or 3 embryos for their FET cycles because, in general FET has a lower success rate vs fresh IVF. And even so, he has a relatively tiny FET twin rate, with a decent success rate. But my doctor was sympathetic to our concerns and agreed that we should do a single embryo transfer, so as to almost eliminate any chance of twins. And while his practice has had amazing advances in embryo selection which would help mitigate the recuded probability of success, given the single embryo transfer, we were all prepared to undergo a couple of cycles, hoping for success sooner than later. So we thawed 3 day 3 embryos, cultured them to day 5, selected and transfered one, and refroze the other two.

To my amazement and the credit of awesome doctors, I am now starting my 12th week of my singleton pregnancy. The only little suprise I encountered is how long the progesterone shots and estrace tablets continued after the positive prgenancy test. In fact, tomorrow is my last shot! Hurrah!

My message is that anyone having fertility issues should find a doctor/practice that they are comfortable with, and have faith in. I mean, have a real rapprt with the doctor, who takes the time to undertsand you as a whole patient, not just via the stirrups - and then do some praying, and don't give up hope.

I highly recommend my doctor, who has given my husband and I the opporptunity to be the parents of 3 - which was my girlhood dream of the perfect family and which was almost taken away from me by another doctor who processed me like cattle.

If you're in the NY area, please go see Dr. James Grifo at the NYU center for IVF. It is worth the trip(s)!

Update from Oct 4, 2008

Last week I sent in an update for my story (orignal posted back in May) and here is an update to that update:

Unfortunately on 10/2 I went for my regular ob checkup to find that the heart had stopped beating. I was 11 weeks 3 days, and measurements indicated that growth had ceased at 11 weeks one day. My heart pretty much stopped beating when I heard the news. I got a second opion, but unfortunately it was the same. So yesterday, 10/3, I had a D-N-C and now it is all over. I am devasted.

Both my OB and my fertility Dr. tell me it is simply a coincidence that this happened the day after I stopped the estrace/progesterone therapy, but I'm wondering if anyone else had a similar situation. Both sets of doctors were also suprised that it happened so late and without any symptoms, especially after having been a strong pregnancy up until then.

For now, I have a lot of healing to do, but it helps sharing stories with this community who have have a unique sense of empathy.

Update from Oct 9, 2008 (in response to my letter)

It was so unexpected, because I had no signs - no cramping, no bleeding, nothing. And by that point of the pregnancy, you tend to breath a little easier.

Each day gets a little better, but it still is pretty crappy. I don't know how women can get remotivated to try again after such an experience. I'd love some of those stories to help me start to wrap my head around what seems like a closed door right now.

Thanks for the work you do with the website. It is helpful to have such a connection to a community dealing with similar issues.

Update from Jan 7, 2009

I'm considering another go at FET. Follow up tests show that I have a factor II mutation, which sometimes causes blood clotting issues. My fertility Doc isn't convinced, but my OB and my "new" Hematologist seems to think this was the issue. I'll likely be on lovenox if I try again. It seems that there is some inconsistency as to when in the cycle to start the lovenox, so I was wondering if you had any experience with that.

Update from July 8, 2009

I felt like my story could not end with the October miscarriage, so my husband and I decided to try another FET this past May. We were armed with Lovenox shots from my hematologist to counteract any potential impact of the Factor II mutation and with a bank of 7 frozen embryos we marched forward. The lovenox shots stung pretty bad, but once I got used to icing them it was just fine and I was happy to start them concurent with the estrace since that drug increases your clotting potential.

The Dr postponed my transfer 1 day because we thawed two beautiful embryos and he wanted another day to see if one developed even better than the other, since I was determined to only transfer 1. My first HCG was a BFP at 68. We were thrilled and yet a little nervous at the same time because of the October miscarriage, but we decided to be happy when you can be happy. On the second HCG things started to go bad - it had increased, but not at the rate the Dr's had hoped (it was only doubling every 2.8 days). The 3rd and 4th betas over the next week kept showing the same trend, so we were worried about an ectopic. Finally, after another week, the gestational sac appeared in the uterus, ruling out ectopic, although it was smaller than expected.

My Dr recommened that we wait until day 52 for the pregnancy to present itself with a heartbeat, although two of his partners were already suggesting at day 44 that I stop all the meds. My husband and I decided that we had come this far and HAD to give it another week to be 100% sure either way. The weeks between the second Beta and day 52 were pretty awful. I was pregnant (technically), feeling fatigue and nausea and caring for myself like every other woman in her early pregnancy does, yet I didn't know what I was doing this all for. One of my Dr's partners suggested that I "prepare for the worst, but hope for the best" which in this case is way too contradictory to even make any sense. Unfortunately, there was no heartbeat at day 52 and after discontinuing the drugs, nature took its course 5 days later. After spotting during the day, I had the worst cramps ever for about 3 hours and then everything passed and relief came: physical and mental.

Sure I am disappointed with the outcome, but I am absorbing this in my mind as the baby "never really took", since it really never progressed beyond a typical sac. The Dr says to wait two cycles to try again, which brings me right to my 40th birthday. It is too early to know, but I'm very much considering closing the book on trying again. I've spent my 30's trying to have children and I do have my beautiful twins. Everyone needs to determine how much is enough, and I think I may be ready to stop having my life on hold. We'll see - so for now, I'm signing off as a happy mom of two.

Rachel's Story

I thought that marrying young would guarantee my being a young mother – something I’d always dreamed of. When we started trying to conceive, I would count down the days (and sometimes the hours) until my next period was expected & it was frequently late – sometimes two weeks late. Every time I got my period, I saw it as a new beginning, a new opportunity to finally become pregnant. But I didn’t. It was only after an entire year went by that I even made an appointment. It was so clear to me that nothing could be wrong. I was young, I was healthy...

Most of the tests were fine, but about two months into the testing, I got back one of the results. I knew it was bad. It was my 22nd birthday and I stood at a pay phone to call the doctor to give him the results. He explained them to me and said he was very pessimistic. I stood there crying and then I gathered myself together as best I could and went to work. I wasn't able to think of anything else the whole day.

I was 22 years old, six-thousand miles away from my parents, and I was battling very real fertility problems. I felt very isolated.

I went to the library, trying to gather information. I read everything I could get my hands on. And while I was there, I peeked at some information about emotional aspects of infertility. The article I came across was so powerful that I photocopied it, took it home and read it over and over.

It talked about the things you commonly hear like, “oh, just calm down and you’ll get pregnant!” and “My friend adopted and she got pregnant right away.” and then pointed out that if you said you had a brain tumor, people wouldn’t tell you to “calm down” to make it go away. I kept that in mind while I heard people’s uninformed and hurtful comments – as if I was somehow either responsible for or making too big a deal out of my infertility. I felt that discussing the details was an unnecessary invasion of my privacy and was able to reassure myself that my situation was very real and that none of my feelings were exaggerated or ridiculous.

My emotions were very different from my husband’s. In retrospect, I don’t remember his ever sharing his emotions, but I do remember his not understanding anything that I was going through. My pain had to do with letting go of a dream and my frustration at an unknown future I felt I had little or no control over.

We tried various medications (some I had suggested to the doctor), none with any results. After the medications, we started IUI (intra-uterine insemination) and signed up for adoption. I hated the IUI, found it painful, torturous, and not particularly hopeful. After a few cycles, even the doctors gave up and let us move on to IVF (in-vitro fertilization).

We went to visit my husband’s grandmother who tapped my stomach a little too hard (I felt as if I’d been punched) and said about the only word she knew in English, which was “baby”. Double-punching. At the time, she already had more than ten great-grandchildren. Believe me, my baby was no big deal for her and a very big deal for me. I smiled and nodded. I didn’t speak her language either.

With my cycles being as far apart as they were, everything took a long time, so it was only after over 2-1/2 years of “trying” that we had our first IVF attempt. Our doctor recommended a medical center two hours away from our home. It would have been OK, except for that we only had one car and it usually wasn’t available to me. They let me do most everything nearby and I only had to be there a few times – this was an advantage in terms of traveling, but throughout the treatment, I didn’t feel that I had any support – they barely knew who I was.

It was finally time for the egg retrieval. There were about 13 eggs, but only one was fertilized and even that didn't split properly (it was 3 cells when they transferred it). We came back two days later for the embryo transfer. I started to bleed before I was scheduled to have the pregnancy test. It was part of the procedure, so I went anyway and the test came out positive. I didn’t actually think that I was pregnant and when I called to give them my results, the nurse brushed it off saying “Oh, that number’s too low.” And then hung up. I had to call back to understand that what had caused the test to be positive was actually the shots that I had gotten in order to support the pregnancy (had there been one).

Some of our friends were already having children. At first, I was cool about it, but as time went by and I felt like having a baby wasn’t going to happen for me, it got harder and harder. I stopped going to baby showers. I only went if they were really good friends. I had trouble smiling and being happy for other people.

Our best friends provided tremendous support. Calling and asking how things were going, taking a real interest both in my emotions and in the process. Even the failures were easier because of them.

It took another six months to start the next treatment. Despite all our previous failures, I started each treatment with an optimistic attitude and the feeling that I was a part of modern medicine. I actually found it both fascinating and exciting.

We switched medical centers to one that was nearer our home, which turned out to be a much better experience. I remember walking down the hall thinking of Kevin Costner's line in Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves: "so it begins..." I too was starting my journey.

I learned to give myself the injections, so I didn’t have to run around as much. 15 eggs were retrieved and 4 were fertilized. They transferred all of them (this was back in 1992). 18 days after the transfer, I discovered I was pregnant. I continued to give myself daily progesterone shots for an additional 10 weeks. My daughter was born a little less than 4 years after I started trying to conceive. I was 24.

My daughter and me, just minutes after her birth

Having a baby left me just as infertile as before and I wasn't willing to let go of my dream to have a big family. The technology was improving and the next cycle also led to 4 embryos. None implanted. The treatment after that was phenomenal, leading to 8 embryos. We transferred 4 and froze 4. Another failure. Then, surprisingly, the frozen embryos led to a healthy twin pregnancy. I was just 27 and mommy to three children… and still infertile.

My marriage, which probably had been strengthened by the infertility – we had had a common goal – basically fell apart shortly after the twins were born. I kept trying, but finally realized it was hopeless. I also felt the dream of ever having another child fading away. I forced my husband to let me try again. The twins were already 5. I got pregnant on the first try, but there was a big hematoma in my uterus and my early beta HCG levels were poor and didn’t double properly. The embryo grew normally and survived until the end of the first trimester and then the hematoma washed it away. After all of the bleeding I’d had, it was partly a relief to know it was over. Coming home from the hospital to my very unsympathetic husband let me know that something else was over too. Less than six months later the divorce was final.

I am now remarried. Shortly after I got this site going we celebrated the birth of our beautiful daughter, Abigail, born on March 14th, 2005. (See Abigail's birth story). Amazingly, another fantasy of mine became a reality - I had always fantasized about wheeling a stroller while being very pregnant. When Abigail was less than 5 months old, we learned we were expecting again! Our daughter, Nomi, joined us on March 25th, 2006 (read about Nomi's birth on the fertility blog). In June 2007, we learned that we are expecting again (yes, it was planned :-)). We're due February 23, 2008.

When I was pregnant with Nomi, before I started my real blog, I kept an amnio blog as we waited for the results of the amniocentesis.

Tiffanie's Story

When my husband and I got married, we both knew that we wanted children. We choose to wait however until we had some more time together as a married couple and until we were settled in our careers and home.

After waiting for a year, we made the decision to start trying for a baby. Month after month of negative pregnancy tests however made me quickly realize that this would be a more difficult task than expected.

After 7 months of trying, I decided to schedule an appointment with my OB's office to see if there were any tests that could be done. I went through several tests and everything came back normal. They put me on Clomid however.

A month later, my husband had a semen analysis which came back normal as well. After 3 more months of trying on our own, we made an appointment with a reproductive endocrineologists office. He suggested a protocol of IUI (intrauterine insemination). He said that the typical protocol at the office was to try the IUI procedure for 3 times and then move on to IVF if the IUIs weren't successful.

Luckily, our insurance covered everything including medication. We started our first IUI that September. Month after month however, each IUI came up negative. The next step was IVF.

Our first IVF was a learning experience. From doing the self-injections to several medical appointments, it was a totally new experience for us. After so many failed IUIs, we were skeptical about our efforts. The first attempt was unsuccessful. The same week I found out that the IVF didn't work for us, two people in my office announced their pregnancies. I was devastated.

Our doctor suggested another round of IVF with the same protocol and we agreed. This time however, I took on a more optimistic attitude, did aggressive acupuncture treatments and prayed diligently daily. It worked!

During our 2nd attempt, I never doubted that it would. I am now a week away from my due date and all of the struggles with infertility are a very distant memory. We were blessed to have the resources and opportunity to go through such an aggressive process that worked for us.

No matter what happens, I learned that it's okay to be sad, but to never give up. Our son will never question whether or not we wanted him.