The Story of Our Infertility Journey and Whiting Miracle Baby #2!
The Story of Our Infertility Journey and Whiting Baby #2
We’ve been blown away by the response sharing our exciting news, and we’re still in shock that we got to share it! I’ve had so many questions about this one, and I’m ready to share some of the FAQs and the crazy story of why we feel this little person is another miracle baby!
I got pregnant last year and miscarried on Valentine’s Day. I spent February nursing my first blood clots of my life (my family has a history) while my body was clotting losing the baby. I had a huge one on my leg right before Alt Summit, and I literally had to search for some cheap maxi dresses last-minute to try to hide the atrocity that was my bruising legs, yikes! It was the first real, whoa, my health may not hold up for several more babies, and we had to wait a few months to heal and get in the clear to try for another one.
I held hope it could happen on its own again. Things have been so much more regular with my body since having our son and nursing, something I was told commonly happens in those with PCOS. So to anyone struggling with it, I hope that gives you some hope- not always, but often your hormones are more regular- hooray!
We decided to get serious and see our infertility doctor again after a few months, I’m getting older (see blood clots) and we knew it was time to get some help. I once again had an amazing experience with my doctor who let me know my body was looking so much better, and things could be so much easier this time. I was so hopeful, and also so humbled when she admitted she was shocked we ever got my son, that he truly is a miracle and we had so much against us!
This time I’m on different insurance, and it covered infertility, something I had to pay out-of-pocket for the entire time we tried to get our first baby. Consequently, we tried everything to basically make IVF work without doing actual IVF. We had to try to implant the best we could if we could get an egg without the same tools. It was crazy, but I’m amazed and in awe every day it happened. Anyway, this time we knew a few tries would be covered, and Jacob and I were seriously toying with just going straight to IVF and not having to deal with all the balancing and crap we dealt with when it wasn’t really an option.
A few months in, Jacob got the call to work abroad in Mexico City, and we knew it was a career move he needed to make. A husband not being present is all the more reason to consider IVF, technically you only need him one day and then the procedure can happen without him. And just as we were talking more seriously, Jacob went to a remote area to assess solar plant feasibility and he was bitten by a mosquito. If you don’t’ know, Zika Virus is incredibly prevalent and strong where he was, and our doctor couldn’t legally treat us with the risk he has it. We tried to have the Arizona Health Department asses him, but they let him know they don’t really do that we just need to assume he may have it. It was about as discouraging as anything to be told, sorry, no chance at even trying for a baby for three months.
And at the same time, that’s about the time he would be gone, so we thought maybe we’d just hold off a few months, try to be patient and not have me cry too much as my miscarriage baby’s due date approached and we couldn’t even do treatments, and that we’d face this together when he was back. I tried to enjoy as much sushi and running and high-intensity workouts and fitted clothing, and a trip to Europe not pregnant or nursing (it’s been a while!) and tell myself we believe in God, and we believe in His timing for when this was supposed to happen.
Our wait period and Jacob’s return home came, and we were excited to be able to proceed again, once again thinking we’d plan for IVF if we decided on it in the new year.
But there was still one thing lingering, Jacob needed to be assessed before we could proceed with anything to make sure the problem was still just with me. And can you say scheduling conflicts galore? Jacob went back to Mexico for a few days here and there, he was so busy trying to catch up on almost four months of missed life, home projects, other work projects, and winning over his toddler again, that we were just buried for about a month.
Then one day in November, we sat down and said WE HAVE TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN! So we planned a week, set a Wednesday time for him to get assessed, and began getting excited about momentum again.
On Monday morning I woke up early to work out before my toddler awoke. I’ve been doing the BBG for over a year now, and I was just getting into some intense weeks and really honed my time with zero distraction working out 100% pushing my limits. As my workout ended I felt weird, and I ran to the shower only to find myself throwing up very suddenly and unexpectedly. I’ve had this happen once in my life when I was pregnant and went for a run and decided to push harder one day even though my body told me to slow down. I was on a treadmill and had to quickly sprint to the bathroom. It was the same feeling, and I thought, “Wait a second, there’s no way!” and then did some timing math in my head, and thought, hmm well there is a way but this is SO early!
I had a pregnancy test, I took it, and I was about the most shocked I’ve ever been in my life to see a positive! I know false positives are rare, but this test was probably a year old, so I went and picked up some more after we went to my son’s class that morning. Both were positive! I was amazed!
I waited a few days to tell Jacob with our first pregnancy, I wanted to do something grand and film it (which I did, and you can see the big pregnancy announcement to my husband and read all about it in this post). With the miscarriage, I waited a few days to do something and ended up losing the baby the day I planned to tell him. It was rough to say, by the way, I was pregnant, I’ve known a couple of days only, and now I’m going to the hospital because it looks like I’m losing it and my doctor told me I need to go. So this time, I wanted to tell him that night so I could have him by my side no matter what happened and not keep a secret.
I’ll write another post about how I told him, but I did tell him that night and he was like, “How excited do we let ourselves be? Are you going to lose it again since you can’t seem to keep the ones that happen naturally?” I told him we didn’t even let us accept we were having our first child until the infertility doctor released us at 15 weeks, and it had robbed almost half a pregnancy of joy. And we may lose it, but I think we plan and celebrate and let ourselves get excited.
AND THEN THE SCARE
I called my infertility doctor to tell them Jacob wasn’t coming in, but I’d like to! And they agreed, they’d like to make sure hormones were okay. They did some blood work, and low and behold things looked great! They did again the next week, and things still looked awesome! At six weeks they said I should come in for an ultrasound, and that’s when the scare and story really begins.
The baby was measuring small, and something was off. They let me know that mistakes happen with measuring when they are this small, so to come back the next week. At week seven, I went in and baby had only shown about a day or two of growth, and a super faint heartbeat was there. The doctor said we may need to do some hormone therapy.
I was never sick with my son, so I was shocked to have terrible morning sickness hit so hard and my throw up most of my medications in the morning. Some days I couldn’t even swallow it. When I went in the next week, the doctor told me I was measuring two weeks behind schedule, we still had a heartbeat, but if we didn’t have growth the next week, we needed to plan like we’d be losing this baby because that is just the way things go.
We threw a Hail Mary and did a lot of hormone therapy, progesterone is what I don’t make enough of, and that’s how I lost the last baby. We switched up methods of therapy, and I diligently took as many pills and treatments as I was recommended with so much sickness it was amazing. We also prayed. Oh how we prayed. And we decided to just accept that maybe this was another loss and natural conception wasn’t in our cards.
THEN WE LEARNED TO BELIEVE IN MIRACLES…AGAIN
We had the week pass before our next appointment, and I’ve never been more terrified in my life. It was the most emotional day of my life, as we waited an extra hour to be seen and I just had a pit in my stomach bracing myself for the worst.
An ultrasound revealed a truly miraculous thing: the baby had grown a week, plus a day! There was so much more hope and a heartbeat where it should be. We had to wait two weeks to be seen again after the holidays but decided to tell our parents for Christmas asking them for faith and prayers for this little thing. Let me tell you, women don’t come more faithful and stronger praying than our two mothers!
At the two-week appointment, we once again waited for the worst, but we found another miracle had happened. The baby had not only grown two weeks but over three weeks worth of growth. We were put at only 3-4 days behind where it should be, with as strong a heartbeat as you can see at 11 weeks, and we signed paperwork to be released from infertility doctor supervision and moved to a regular OB- with the clause I needed to stay on my hormone therapy for two more weeks. I can’t tell you the joy and the tears and miracle that happened in one month! We went from, brace yourself, your odds are low, to WOW, your baby miraculous grew and caught up thanks to the infertility doctor catching the issues and monitoring us and switching up treatments weekly.
HERE WE ARE TODAY
I’m about to see my OB this week, and I’m still as queasy and tired as ever. Morning sickness, you are a jerk, but a jerk I’m so grateful for! I just started showing as I’ve entered the week 12 mark, and we decided we feel good enough to share the news with the world while people start to wonder just how many holiday cookies I must have consumed. Answer: a few gingersnaps to try to ease queasiness, which didn’t work, so none other because sugar made me so sick!
I can’t believe that the very week we set IVF appointments in place, we found pregnancy had miraculously happened! I can’t believe it happened right after the Zika scare was over and we were cleared! I can’t believe the strong feelings to see the infertility doctor and be monitored again. I hugged her on my way out and told her I had her to thank again for saving this baby. She was humble and said we did this one on our own, and reminded her, this was a pretty miraculous Hail Mary, you said so yourself! I’m still in shock that our Christmas miracle happened and we were given hope a few days before, and indefinite clarity it’s going to be fine (at least for trimester one). The odds were not in our favor here, and we’re still in shock every day that this baby now looks completely healthy and progressing at normal levels.
Truly, we believe all babies are miracles, but we’re humbled and overwhelmed to get to announce another Whiting miracle baby.
Photos by the amazing Chrissy Blake
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