written by Annette Pearson

I met my husband, Tom, on match.com, I didn’t contact him at first, and he was completely different than what I was looking for or what I thought I was looking for. Tom and I had our first date on 8/12/2005 and it was an instant dream connection.  Tom had two kids from his first marriage and we all sort of just “went together” and formed an instant family. Shortly into our relationship, Tom told me he had a vasectomy after the birth of his daughter in 2001. I was devastated but he told me that he would be willing to have it reversed because he wanted a family with me. We were married March 24, 2007 and Tom has the reversal in February 2008.

I have had seven laparoscopy procedures for endometriosis, cysts, fibroids, etc. but the Dr’s told me I could still have children; what they didn’t tell me is I had uterine septum, which was the cause of my previous two miscarriages. They also did not tell me that I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  Both I would find out while being treated for infertility.

Tom and I tried to have children on our own and were not successful; we tried it all, temperature, diet, herbs, acupuncture but nothing was working. We went to a Reproductive Endocrinologist who did some tests and confirmed that Tom did not have optimal sperm quality and that combined with my history, she gave us less than a 3% chance of conceiving on our own. The Dr recommended Intra Uterine Insemination (IUI) with Clomid. After two rounds we were still not pregnant so we started the path to IVF.

There is so much involved with IVF; from the financial verification to the required classes, the paperwork testing and the shots but we were determined. During one of the tests the Dr found that I had a uterine septum, which would need to be surgically repaired. Without the repair, I would continue to miscarry. Forty-five days post surgery we were able to start our first IVF cycle. I started to receive my three shots a day in my belly, daily ultrasounds and daily blood draws….

The day came for our retrieval, our finances only allowed one shot and we had to get this right. I went to the procedure with 40 follicles and from those 40 follicles they were able to retrieve 15 eggs. We used a combination of traditional insemination and ICSI (injecting the sperm into the egg), 10 were treated the traditional way and 5 with ICSI. Of the 10, none were fertilized. Of the five, four were fertilized. The embryologist concluded, based on these results, that Tom and I would never be able to conceive outside of a lab. We had four embryos to start; two were put into my womb, one was a six cell with fragmentation and the other was eight cells with no fragmentation. The other two did not make it passed four cells.  The Dr told me to start thinking of names for the eight cells; I of course was already thinking what we would do next when this failed.  The next five days were pure torture, especially since I did nothing but stay in bed based on the Dr’s advice.

10/1/2009 I found out I was pregnant. When the Dr called, I asked “so what do we do next”, she replied “nothing, you’re pregnant”. I didn’t believe her..but she ordered a repeat HSG on 10/5 to make sure my levels were increasing and on my birthday I found out that for sure I was pregnant. The joy was short lived, on 10/8 I started cramping and bleeding.  By the 11th, I was bleeding heavier than the heaviest of periods. I went to the ER and after eight hours they told me although the ultrasound shows a pregnancy the pregnancy was not viable and it was only a matter of time until I lost the baby or until the Dr’s terminated the pregnancy. I was placed on strict bed rest. We had our six week ultrasound and there was a heartbeat, of 172 BPM, but I was still bleeding very heavy, bed rest was changed from strict to modified.  At week ten I had severe cramps and was doubled over in pain, a few days later I passed a significant clot in the toilet. I called the Dr on call who told me most likely I had a miscarriage and I should report to the office at 8am the next morning to confirm. Tom and I cried the whole night, the next morning we carried in a bag with the clot and went for our ultrasound. We were prepared at this point to here we had lost our baby. To our surprise, there she was with a strong heartbeat. Even the Dr’s were surprised.  From this the Dr’s were able to determine that I had a clot right above my cervix, which was causing the bleeding and pain.

The bleeding stopped as I entered my second trimester but I was still so fearful. Besides developing gestational diabetes, the second trimester was pretty uneventful.  The third trimester brought one more challenge; on one of my routine diabetes screens they saw a spot on the babies heart and sent me to see a pediatric cardiologist at 34 weeks.  The spot turned out to be artifact but would be confirmed by an echo after the baby was born.

I was induced on 6/5/2010 and Faith Nellie Beatrice was born on 6/6/2010 at 8:22am. Her Apgar score was 9! During the IVF and pregnancy, my husband just kept telling me to have Faith and we prayed together every day for our beautiful baby. Guess what..we have Faith!