Pinch Me.

I had an opportunity to share our story awhile back in a different forum. Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a company manufacturing one of the fertility drugs we used to conceive our kids, sponsored an essay contest called My Little Miracles. Participants were asked to share the stories of their miracle children as a way to provide hope and encouragement to other women who desire to become a mom. The winning essay received $10,000 in scholarship money for their children. I decided to submit ours. The deadline was December 31, 2010.  We didn't win, but I was thankful for the opportunity to sit and reflect back on our journey and get a bit more of my thoughts down in writing. Maybe my kids will be thankful in the years to come to have more of their history recorded. I share it with you now. Thanks for reading!

 Pinch Me

I rolled over and looked at my husband of 5 years.

”Good morning, “I said. 

“I saw our kids in a dream last night,” He replied.

“You did?” I asked, surprised.  He didn’t often talk about our future children, or lack thereof.

“What did they look like?” I asked.

He said, “I turned around in my dream and there they were, two little kids running around and playing.  They looked about two years old; a brown haired little boy and a curly red-headed little girl. Twins.”

As a wife, an infertile one at that, hearing that my husband was dreaming about our yet–to-even-be-conceived children, that he loved them already as much as I did, and watched them playing in his sleep made my heart skip.   We had already been hitched to the infertility wagon for four of our five years of marriage.  

I knew my husband wanted kids as badly as I did, but he just didn’t talk about it much.  It wasn’t part of his every waking thought like it was for me.  Don’t get me wrong, Jeremy is my rock.  We were always on the same page when it came time for treatments and a new cycle to start, but at times, no matter how much I knew Jeremy was always there with me, it was a lonely road.

So that’s what made it even more profound to hear those sweet words about the children he dreamed we would have some day.  To have that confirmation once again, that we were in this together.  He longed for them too.  He simply was the strong one.  He kept it together most of the time, so that I could fall apart regularly.

Jeremy and I were married March 24, 2002.  Like many couples, we completed our first full year of wedded bliss and decided we would simply “stop preventing” and see what happened.  What happened was nothing.   From 2003 until 2006 we dabbled in infertility treatments with my OB, on-again-off-again in the midst of starting and closing a business, moving to a new city, changing jobs and just living life.   In 2006, finally settled in our new home in Columbia, Missouri we found a Reproductive Endocrinologist and were ready to get more serious. 

I still remember our initial IUI with clomid.  We happened to be out of town the night I needed to take my first ever trigger shot of HCG.  Jeremy was going to give it to me.  So, bent over the bed in our hotel room bare-bottomed, I called my best friend (an RN) for instruction and moral support.  She proceeded to give us step by step instructions over the phone and walked us through the process.  I still smile just thinking about that sweet comic relief!  How we must have looked to a fly on the wall that night.  But that cycle, and 3 more IUI’s with clomid at increasing doses followed and still nothing.

That early morning conversation where Jeremy shared his dream took place sometime in 2007.  To be honest, I can’t remember the exact date, but I will never forget that dream.  It was the sign from God we needed to nudge us down a road towards more aggressive treatments.  Dr. Wilshire, my RE suggested another series of IUI’s but this time with gonadotropin injections.

Having PCOS, I was a great responder.  Quantity was never a problem for me.  In fact, it was a fine line we walked each cycle trying to find the right dosing that would provide quality eggs, while not over stimulating me; risking high order multiples or OHSS.    But even with the great response, four more failed IUI’s and a laparoscopic surgery later we were still clinging to only a dream. 

 IVF wasn’t a no-brainer for us.  At one point Jeremy and I had drawn our line in the sand for what treatments we were willing to pursue and it stopped short of IVF.  But as we felt our options for a biological baby slipping through our fingers we became willing to move our line further back.  Prior to proceeding it took a lot of prayer before we felt a peace about IVF…but the peace did come and we moved forward.   

On our 6^th wedding anniversary, March 24, 2008 I had my baseline ultrasound and started Lupron shots after a celebratory dinner with Jeremy.  Like in my previous IUI’s, I again stimmed with gonadotropins, but this time Dr. Wilshire added Menopur to the cycle.   April 14, 2008 we had 13 eggs retrieved, 8 fertilized and by day 5 we had 5 blastocysts.  I started my Endometrin suppositories and on April 19, two perfect little blastocysts were transferred back to me.  We had three more good quality blasts that could be frozen.

April 28, the day of our first beta, I went in early for the blood draw.  Jeremy and I decided we wanted to be together for the results so we planned a lunch date where we would call the office for the results.  I drove to his office and picked him up but before I could get there my phone rang, it was the office; I didn’t answer.  Jeremy got in the car and listened to the message. 

“Hi, this is Katie. I have good news, call us back.”

Jeremy called back while I drove.  I could hear Katie through the phone say “It’s POSITIVE.”  I almost wrecked the car on the way to lunch.  That day was one of the best days of my life, until May 23, when we saw TWO heartbeats.  TWINS! 

Pregnancy was a breeze until 21 weeks, when I went on bed rest for a shortened cervix and premature labor.  Jeremy made me scrambled eggs with ham and cheese for breakfast every morning before he left for work and reminded me to stay off the internet.  My perinatologist, Dr. Grant, put me back on Endometrin as well as some other medicines to help control the contractions.  By the grace of God and the support of my medical team, family and dear friends my babies remained snuggled inside me for 9 more weeks.

At 30 weeks I left my weekly fetal non-stress test at Dr. Grant’s office feeling great; both babies having passed with flying colors.  “Yes! Week 31 here I come,” I thought.  I went straight to my OB’s office for my bi-weekly appointment and was in shock as he told me he suspected I was becoming pre-ecclamptic although my symptoms were atypical.  He sent me immediately to labor and delivery for more labs.  The on-call OB came in and instead of giving me my results said she was ordering steroid shots.  That’s when I knew I was about to meet my babies for the first time.

Thanks to my OB’s foresight I had time to get two rounds of steroid shots 24 hours apart and they were able to hold off delivering the babies until the meds were in my system for 48 hours and had time to work their magic.  We had time to visit the NICU and consult with a  neo-natalogists at our hospital, Dr. O’Connor.  He told us not to expect to hear our babies cry upon delivery but not to worry, they would get them on the vent as soon as they were born.  He assured us that 30-weekers had statistically very good outcomes. 

October 30, 2008, at 30 weeks 3 days I was wheeled into the OR and after I was prepped Jeremy joined me at my side.  Within seconds I heard a baby crying.  It happened so fast and was so surreal I couldn’t register what I was hearing.  I thought maybe there was another delivery taking place in the room next door.  I had to ask, “Is that MY baby?”  It was.  Chance Michael was born at 12:07 pm, defying the odds he screamed with everything he could muster from his 3 pound 8 ounce body.   It was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.  His head was covered with brown hair. 

At 12:08, another cry when his sister Luci Bella entered the world. She weighed 2 pounds 13 ounces.  Even on that tiny little head we could see the wisps of red hair.  My heart again skipped, much like that morning in 2007, as I remembered Jeremy’s dream.  “Pinch me,” I thought.

5 ½ weeks later, after a stint in the NICU, Chance and Luci joined us at home at 36-weeks gestational age.   Today they are two years old. They are Joy.  They are Perfect.  Complete.  Beautiful.  Smart. Healthy.  Ornery.  Mischievous.  Miraculous.  Chance still has brown hair.  Luci, taking after her momma at the same age, still has very little hair but what she has is the most beautiful shade of red, just like Jeremy’s.  The curls remain to be seen but her daddy knows they are there.

March 2, 2010 two of our remaining three frozen embryos were transferred back to their “mommy house.”  March 11 we were blessed with another miracle; the first of two positive beta’s.   Unfortunately, at our 6 and 7 week ultrasound there was only one gestational sac, and no yolk or heartbeat seen within.  I miscarried on April 3.   We hurt and love and miss those babies that we never got to meet but they are still miracles to us.

August 12, 2010 we transferred our last remaining embryo, conceived on the same day as Chance and Luci.   We are thrilled to be expecting another miracle on April 30, 2011.  As of this writing I am 21 weeks pregnant with our daughter and all is well.  It’s amazing to me every time I think about the fact that I can have babies 2 ½ years apart that were all conceived at the same time.  And that one of those babies who has been asleep in a freezer waiting for us that same amount of time is now alive and healthy and growing inside me.  That is a miracle. 

To you mothers-yet-to-be, whose hearts I still cry for and minister too any time God allows me; I believe Menopur in our IVF cycle played a HUGE role in our success and why we had such quality embryos.  After 5 years of trying, that cycle was the first and only time we used Menopur.  It was the extra boost to the gonadotropins my eggs needed to mature before retrieval.   Don’t be afraid to ask questions about different treatment protocols.  Don’t give up hope.  And, as much as I cringe saying it, do anything you can to make this ride with your husband while you’re waiting for your miracle as enjoyable as possible.  Take a trip…volunteer…drink some wine…see a movie…talk to God…sleep in…stay up late…make love because you want to…make it count.  

As for me, if I knew then what I know now, I wish I could say I would do some things differently; that I would ask Dr. Wilshire to use the Menopur or agreed to IVF sooner.  But today looking at my kids, my two-year old twins, my brown haired little boy and my red headed little girl; I can’t say that.  I wouldn’t change a thing.   Yes, my road to conception was long and difficult.  Yes, my pregnancy was complicated.  But we have Chance and Luci as a result of our waiting and tweaking and trying.  Conception was at the perfect time so that the exact egg and sperm combinations would meet to conceive them.  Any other combination at any other time would not have conceived them.   We might have had another baby sooner, but it wouldn’t be them; those babies that Jeremy dreamed about over a year before they were conceived. 

Miracles at conception.

Miracles at birth, survival and perfection at 30 weeks.  

Miracles every day I look at them giggling, running, crying…

And as I sit here and feel my third little miracle squirming and kicking inside me, eager to meet her big Bubba and Sister…I say to myself, “Pinch Me.”