One year ago

Last year at this time we made the biggest decision of our lives. It was very difficult for me to talk to people at the time because many people did not understand and it was extremely emotional for me. This year I thought I would share what we went through and what a miracle we have. Since we have had the triplets I have had many people ask how we did it. Many people are just interested, some are nosey, and believe it or not I've actually had people ask because they want to have multiples (just plain crazy if you ask me)! For three years we tried fertility drugs and a round of IUI with no success. After our IUI we discovered I had level 4 endometriosis and had an endometrioma in my ovary (kind of like a large cyst). The only way to get rid of it was through surgery. A month after my surgery the endometrioma had returned so I had to have a second surgery to remove it. After that surgery my doctor recommended that if we wanted to get pregnant our best chance would be to try IVF and she suggest we do it the month following my surgery before the endometrioma had a chance to grow back again. If it came back a third time there was a great chance that I would have had a hysterectomy so Steven and I made a quick decision to go through with the IVF process the month following my surgery. Because of the cost we swore we would never do IVF but I've learned never say never! I began taking 2 shots a day and several pills. Most of these were given to me by a reluctant Steven but after the first few days I think he got the hang of it and started to enjoy sticking me with a needle. Along with the shots I would make trips to my doctors 2-3 times a week for the doctor to monitor my levels, do ultrasounds, etc. I would make trips to both my OB in College Station and to the Woodlands to see my fertility specialist. On October 27th we had our egg retrieval, we were a little disappointed to find out I only had 9 eggs to remove and only 5 were the right size to fertilize. We did a 3 day embryo transfer and on October 30th we had only 3 embryos make it to a transferable size. The doctor asked us how many we wanted to put in and we didn't know what to say. With him being the expert we asked him what he would recommend. Given my history and the number of eggs/embryos we had his famous words were "I would put in three and hope for one". We knew several people that were not successful on their first try at IVF and so what he said made sense to us. After the embryo transfer I was sent home for three days of bed rest to increase our chances of the embryos attaching to the uterus. During those three days I was so fearful that we had gone through all of this and spent all of this money and we would not end up pregnant. I think I prayed so hard that we would be blessed with one child but secretly hoped that with everything we had been through that 2 babies would be such a wonderful miracle. I guess we were a little naive but it NEVER crossed our minds that all three embryos would take. Those famous words from the doctor just made us think it wouldn't be possible, we would be "lucky" to get one! This was only the beginning of our process so I will continue to share what we went through in the coming days.
Steven and I on transfer day!