Our IVF Process and Journey to Becoming Pregnant After 7 Years of Trying.

I will go into full detail about IVF cost and IVF treatment so you know 100% about the IVF process.

Hi friend. Thanks for coming to the blog today. I am going to be very vulnerable and real with you. And share the O’Bray IVF process. It’s been a long road and one that has many tears. It means the world to me that you are interested in our story and our journey on this bumpy Infertility/IVF process road.

I feel like I’ve written this blog post a million times in my head. But truth be told I never knew if it would really make it on the blog or get shared with the world. Infertility is a battle I have fought like hell to get through for the past 7 years. It’s become my reality and something Tyson and I lived with daily. It consumed me it’s all I thought about almost 24.7.

And it broke me to pieces many times. Sometimes there were days I wondered if I would ever feel whole again or be completely happy. I wondered if living a life where I was married to my best friend would be enough. I always felt like I was called to be a mom. From my childhood I knew that I was supposed to have children.

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• Letter to my daughter after 7 years of infertility

My mom died when I was 8 so living without her growing up taught me how bad I wanted to be a mom. And get to experience that. I really felt like it was my calling in life. And I thought God and I were on the same page when it came to that. We weren’t. Once I realized it’s about God’s timing not mine, my life became a lot easier.

So when I started dating Tyson at 23 years old we jumped all in from the beginning. We fell in love quickly and were living together almost from the beginning. I felt like this was my happily ever after.

He was the person I was suppose to be with forever and have lots of babies with. I just knew it!

We have male and female caused infertility. I have PCOS and Tyson has low motility sperm count. So mixing those 2 things together our chances of having a baby were slim to none. But still for many years we tried every medication, surgery, ALL the treatments – medical (multiple IUI’s), and natural (diets, meditations, positive mindset shifts) literally anything you can think of we tried it. We fully believed we could heal our bodies and that we could get pregnant naturally.

7 years of trying and pleading with God. Begging him to let us have a baby. That’s all we wanted. I would tell God everyday I will do whatever you want me to do, just please give me a baby. I begged for many years. But that’s just not how it worked for us.

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Last year my little sister announced she was pregnant after only being married a couple months and less than a year of knowing her husband. Truly that news was more difficult to hear than it probably should have been. I had been surrounded by many people being pregnant over the years. Most of them were in Tyson’s family. It shouldn’t have been this painful for me. But it was.

That’s when Tyson and I made the decision to stop Infertility treatments the beginning of 2018. Stop going to our fertility doctors. Stop everything. I was done. Trying to have a baby was too painful for me.

It caused me constant heartache and it was no longer worth it. So Tyson and I focused on our relationship building a rock solid marriage. We traveled like crazy. We took more vacations last year than I can count. I was happy again. Truly, and genuinely happy. And so was Tyson.

The worst thing about infertility is that my husband felt like it was his fault. Because the main issue was low count.

That was the hardest part it killed me inside…

That Tyson could only blame himself over and over again for something that was out of his control. It was painful to watch because it hurt me so bad that he was hurting. I wish I could have taken all his pain away and given it only to myself. Seeing the one person who I love more than anything else in this world hurting is the worst experience ever.

2018 healed us, it healed our marriage, it healed our hearts. And we actually felt whole again. It’s amazing what focusing on how blessed you are rather than what your life is lacking will do to your soul.

I was the happiest I had ever been up to that point in my life. My marriage was thriving and all I could do was think about how blessed I was to be working full time for myself running this blog, and Tyson’s constant support and love with everything I did.

I had it all I thought. And it would only keep getting better from that point forward. After a few months of not trying to have a baby making a conscious decision that being a wife was enough for me something happened in my life.

I had a very personal experience where I knew that that wasn’t supposed to be my life. That I was still supposed to have a baby.

I was terrified to bring it up to Tyson. Because he supported my decision that I no longer wanted to have a baby. He agreed that the process was too painful to continue. So I didn’t know what he would say when I said “Babe something happened to me and we have to start trying to get pregnant again.”

My thought process was I knew he would think I was crazy. Crazy for being so adamant on being done. And then months later change my mind and want to start the process again.

I didn’t know if he would want to be done with me, leave and say “nopeee not doing this again.” Or if he would support my decision and agree to start treatments again.

I couldn’t get myself to bring it up to him for a few days.

I almost didn’t bring it up at all. But my heart kept saying you have to do this. Once again, it’s all I thought about 24.7. I started feeling positive about all the what if’s our future could have if we became parents. And knew I had to talk to Tyson. There was no other choice.

So I told him about my experience. I told him about how deep in my heart I knew we couldn’t be done. I knew we had a baby waiting for us in heaven, our baby was waiting to come down and join our family. Once I told him he cried happy tears and said that’s all he ever wanted. I think deep down we both always wanted a baby it never went away. But sometimes after so much pain and trauma you have to get into defense mode and guard your heart. There is nothing wrong with stepping back and taking some time to breathe and find joy again.

I called my fertility clinic in November and scheduled an IVF consultation appointment. There was no more messing around. I knew IVF was the only way I was going to get pregnant. My doctors office got me in a couple weeks later to talk to my doctor about the IVF process. Mid December I was ready and knew I wanted to do this.

We were part of a 3 try guarantee program. I paid $26,000 to be a part of the program. I would get 3 chances to become pregnant. If none of those 3x worked I would get $17,000 of my money back. Everything but the money I paid for medications. That was a no brainer for me. I knew I had to be a part of the program.

Our first round of medication for the IVF process.

I started my IVF meds January 8th. Taking pills and shots everyday to get my body ready for egg retrieval. Which happened on January 15th.

This is the first set of shots I took.

The doctor retrieved 49 eggs. The normal amount is 10-20 eggs. So my case was a lot. And I started getting OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome) as a side effect. It’s a disease that can be long term if it isn’t taken care of right away.

The IVF process was suppose to be smooth and have a set schedule. So because of OHSS a fresh transfer wasn’t an option for us. We were supposed to have the embryo transferred a few days after retrieval. Anyone that isn’t sure what the embryo is.. It’s the start of a baby after the sperm has been injected inside the egg.

It wasn’t smooth and things kept happening to change our plan. But that’s how life goes.

My body needed to heal because if my OHSS got worse it could have long term effects on my body. Best case scenario is that it heals itself in a few weeks. So I stayed in bed and did low movement activities. And my OHSS was gone and my body was ready for transfer 6 weeks later.

The embryos were frozen. And ready for whenever we transferred. I have 7 out of my 8 still in the freezer at the hospital.

We went in for transfer at 7 am on March 13th. The process was very thorough. They showed us our baby embryo in a tube and I was able to watch on the ultrasound machine as it was put in my body. Tyson was holding my hand and we were experiencing this together.

This is IVF transfer day waiting for our doctor to come in.

It was one of the happiest days of our lives. Going through the process and watching the doctor put our embryo baby inside.  After that appointment we were filled with so much hope and faith for the outcome. We waited for 2 weeks to see if the embryo stuck and prayed like crazy it would continue to grow into our baby.

That black circle around the small dot is our embryo baby.

The waiting period was long and hard.

I tried to focus on anything and everything to keep my mind off the waiting. So after the 2 weeks I had to go in to the doctors office for a blood test. They told me to wait a few hours and I would hear from my nurse to let me know if the IVF process was successful or not.

I got a call from my nurse a few hours later telling us that the IVF was successful. That we were going to have a baby.

OMG I had no words. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I was in shock. I called Tyson he was at work waiting for my call. He said he had stepped off the job site for a few minutes because he had a feeling I was going to call him. When he picked up the phone I told him “We’re pregnant!” All the happy tears came on his end and on mine. It was one of the most magical moments of my life. Telling him the news will forever be one of my favorite stories.

I called my dad immediately, and my sisters. Because everyone knew it was happening that day. Everyone was waiting to hear from us. Both of my sisters came over to spend the day with me. I will forever be grateful for a supportive family who cheers when something good happens for each other. A family who wants our IVF process to work out as badly as we do. What an amazing feeling that is.

Of course I had to take an at home test as well.

That night we went over to Tyson’s parents to tell them the good news. We wanted to tell them in person. Because seeing the look on their faces was priceless. It was another best moment of our lives. They were so incredibly happy for us. Everyone was!

I just wanted to tell family and a few close friends or people that knew we were going through IVF the news for the first while. I was still guarding my heart because of everything we had been through. We went to our first ultrasound at 7.5 weeks. It was a beautiful thing to see our babies heartbeat pumping away so fast. And seeing how small and perfect it was. Our doctor told us that we had the ideal situation. That our babies heartbeat was strong. She gave us some peace of mind by saying there is no liquid or blood around the baby that should cause us any worry. She told us that everything looked about as perfect as it could.

That was the best news I had ever heard! Besides telling us we were pregnant of course. 🙂

I have been praying and meditating everyday. Putting out positive vibes that this baby will continue to grow strong and be healthy. We feel so blessed.

We went to our 7.5 week ultrasound and saw the baby and saw the heart beat.

 

What a beautiful thing this IVF process and infertility journey is. It’s the foundation and the beginning of a baby that is so loved and wanted more than anything else in this world. The one thing our baby will always know is that we fought hard to get them here and couldn’t give up no matter what. Because we need them in our family. My life isn’t complete without them. I’ve only been carrying this baby for 13 weeks now. And no matter what that baby will be the center of the O’Bray world. And we can’t wait. This is what we’ve been waiting and praying for for 2,555 days. We wouldn’t want it any other way. We will always appreciate this baby and journey we took to finally have it. Hearing the heartbeat today was magical, and I can’t help but thank God for this wonderful life.

Thanks for being here friend. It means the world to me that you are sharing this experience with us!

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If this is something that interests you then take a look at infertility clinic near me and talk to a specialist about the IVF process.