by Iris

My husband and I got married later in life. I was 42 years. He was 38. My mom had several miscarriages and I had just assumed because of my late start and her history being a biological parent would not be an option for me. I was shocked to learn I was pregnant a couple of months after our wedding.  I lost the baby in my first trimester. It was devastating. I suddenly realized just how much I wanted to become a parent.  My husband also wanted to be a father. He really wanted to have a genetic link to our child.  Because of my age the best chance for becoming parents was using an egg donor.
It took us 9 months to find an egg donor. The process felt long and difficult. How do you know who is the right donor for you?   We found somebody we felt was perfect.  She had my physical characteristics which was important to us.  She even loved to play softball which was a passion of mine.  I was about to begin my course of medication and we had the date to do the transfer.  We got a call and were told that our donor was pregnant.  We had to begin again.  I felt like I had lost another baby. A friend gave us a fertility statue that she claimed had worked for 2 relatives.  I kept it by my bed and rubbed it’s belly every night and said a little prayer.
We renewed our search and after several more months we found another egg donor.  We called her the “gift lady” because we couldn’t imagine a more amazing gift to give to anybody.  She gave us 9 eggs which resulted in 4 frozen blastocysts.
I remember quite clearly the day the doctor did the transfer. It was a doctor we had not met before. He came in with his surgical mask on and transferred 2 blastocysts. He slapped me on the back and said it was “a good day to get pregnant.” I called him “the lone ranger” because we never did see his face. He was right.  I got pregnant. I had chosen to keep my infertility journey a secret from everybody but close family and a few close friends. I didn’t want to have to answer lots of questions and continue to talk about our struggles with infertility. Infertility became all consuming for me and on my mind and in my heart all of the time.  We learned I was pregnant. A few days later we had an  unexpected  meeting at work.  They called us in to tell us we were all losing our jobs.  It was incredibly sad.  Later that week I had another miscarriage. I always felt the stress of that experience contributed to my miscarriage.
We had one final chance. We had agreed if this didn’t work that our quest to be parents would end. The embryologist told us one of the blastocysts looked “marginal” and the other looked “really good” He gave us two minutes to decide whether to implant both of them. We chose to implant only the one “good one”. I again learned I was pregnant.  I was very nervous during my pregnancy fearful something would go wrong. I wouldn’t allow myself to believe everything was OK till I saw and held my baby. My husband was the eternal optimist.  We were blessed with our daughter, Grace, when she arrived one month before my 46th birthday.  Our infertility journey took three and a half years. We called her Grace because we were so “amazed” by her.  She is almost nine now and continues to amaze us on a daily basis. We have never forgotten how blessed we are.