Paying it forward....

Peanut is as small as an olive/grape and is 9 weeks and 1 day old today. The joy I feel every time I look down and see my little belly (it's not a proper bump yet) is indescribable... I just feel so so blessed to be his/her mommy. So blessed that against all odds here I am 9 week pregnant with the most amazing little baby ever. Those two years of TTC, the tears, the anger, the pain, the injections, the ERs, the suffering at seeing BFN month after month are not forgotten but are no longer my main focus. I know and I don't want to ever forget how lucky we are to have gotten pregnant and for everything to be going so smoothly ( I don't like saying it just in case...!). We thank our lucky start that against all odds here we are pregnant. We know that the journey is not over, it has just begun but I am feel very much in love today and I wanted to share it.

I remember when I was reading through other pregnancy blogs and thinking: "will that ever be me?" "will we ever be parents?" and now I feel like I have to "pay it forward" to the other ladies who are cycling or waiting to start a cycle or who just found out they face a struggle. Ladies, it can happen. Next cycle or the one after could be the one that works and then you too will get to experience the most wonderful of miracles. I know it does not happen to everyone but there is always hope that it might happen to you. When Dr. S told us that because of my closed and damaged tubes, IVF would be the only chance we had at getting pregnant I was so depressed. I felt like my body failed me big time. I kept on asking: "how could this be happening to me when I was only 28?" Wasn't I supposed to just get drunk and get pregnant on the first try? All the advice about relaxing and taking it easy started to annoy me by the 5th month and by the 6th D and I had such a strict bedding schedule that people would have assumed we were going for some kind of a record. I could not understand why this was happening to us?

Before our first IVF cycle we were told the devastating news that on top of the retroverted uterus, the blocked and damaged tubes now we had premature diminished ovarian reserve to deal with as well. I read up on it, researched it and I was convinced that I would have had to use donor eggs. Don't get me wrong, I am fine with this procedure but the problem is that this procedure is not allowed to be performed where we live so we would have had to travel abroad...and the cost involved etc. When the doctor mentioned that we would have to jump into the strongest and most powerful of IVF protocols, I started imagining all sort of side effects and issues. I am not going to lie and tell you that IVF is a walk in the park, it's not. It halts your life and transfers into this alternate universe that only IF people understand. You start referring to days as CD3 and schedule your outings according to your injection schedule. You look at your husband and for the first 2 weeks he looks at you as if it's the last time because he is in such a bad mental state that he thinks that he could murder you with an injection that goes wrong. Life becomes a routine of appointments, injections, ultra sounds, more injections. Then comes the "fun part" the part where you are put under and you wake up in the middle of it (yes it did happen to me, nope it was not fun!). In the meantime and throughout your cycle you wait. You wait for signs that things are going well that your eggs are growing and later that your embryos are attaching and growing. You make yourself believe that this time could be the lucky one. You watch every symptom and catch yourself over examining everything... I have an eye twitch, could I be pregnant? Do my boobs look bigger? My cm is much more than normal.. could I...?

The irony of my story is that after 2 years of thinking myself pregnant every month, the month where I really was pregnant I did not see it happening. First I saw the first, faintest of BFP and then I spent the next 3 days convincing myself that it was all in my head and I was nuts for even thinking I could be pregnant. How could I be so lucky? If there is one thing that I always wanted was to surprise D with the news and I felt that I was going to be deprived of ever experiencing this. Well, The-Night-Before-The-Day our lives changed forever I had a mental breakdown. I was in tears all day thinking it had not happened as my lines were not getting darker. Went to work and someone told me that a much older colleague was pregnant again and I just burst out crying. Here she was in her 40s pregnant and me at 29 not pregnant. I was a state. I went home and broke down to D. I have NEVER cried like this since I was a baby. I had snot coming out of my nose, I was hysterical, laughing one minute and crying the next. D didn't know whether to hug me or shake me a little. I was that bad. He said that if I was not pregnant now than we would have definitely needed to see a psychiatrist next! Sure enough the next morning I POAS on two different tests and the lines come out faster than I can say PREGNANT! I had that moment that many women before me had, that moment when you are on the toilet holding two pregnancy tests and crying hysterically! I ran to the bedroom (it was 6.30 am) and turned on the light, D was half asleep and looked shocked. I screamed it.. I am pregnant and held the test to his sleepy eyes!! We were going to have a baby or two!!!

When I relive this last part of our story I get goose bumps.. it really did happen, I am really pregnant. Ladies, I know it's not fair that we have to go through all of this and much more but I feel that in a way we do get to appreciate pregnancy much much more than people who get knocked up immediately. Our emotional roller coasters, our bruises and the sacrifices will live with us and will be translated into love for our babies who are the most loved and wanted of babies. Hang in there, keep believing and remember that miracles do happen every day. I am thinking of you.