Before I start, I read this article months ago and if you’ve (fortunately) never gone through infertility, it really gives a great idea about all the emotions you go through when dealing with infertility. It’s a great read to try and understand the mindset.
I know I have mentioned our difficulty with conceiving a second child a couple times on the blog before (hereand here), but I haven’t gone into depth about everything we tried and what we have gone through. For quite a while our story has been composing itself in my mind. I have taken to writing during the very stressful points of infertility just to get my feelings out. Infertility is such an alienating situation and sometimes you want to talk to people and get your emotions out, other times you don’t think anyone can understand the sheer multitude of feelings that assault you at any given point during your day. Literally anything can be a trigger for tears whether you are on hormones or not. I had always wanted to share our story, but I had hoped to have closure by then. I wanted a happy ending to our story to share. It’s very hard to write a story that doesn’t have an ending. I tried to remind myself time and time again after all the shots, disappointments, and tearful nights that if it isn’t happy, then it’s not the end of our story. There was no way we could go through all of this without some kind of positive news. We aren’t quite there yet, but I really hope we will be some day. This week is National Infertility Awareness Week and although our story isn’t quite done yet, I still wanted to take this opportunity to share. If it helps one person, then this has served its purpose.
So, in order for you all to understand our story, I must start at the very beginning. Our story is one of secondary infertility. When we first decided to start our family, my husband was ending a work assignment in Ireland. He had been working there for the past 18 months and was finally going to be assigned to a position back in Wisconsin. We had been apart for 3-4 weeks at a time while he was over there so I could care for the house and continue my position. The timing, finances, and our desire to have a child all aligned and by some miracle, just over 2 weeks after he came back, we found out we were expecting!
Thinking about all this now makes me tear up. Although I was so excited and grateful to have gotten pregnant so quickly I didn’t have a true understanding of how incredible a situation I was in. Now, after almost 3 years of infertility, I look at our daughter now and I see God’s hand in our lives. HE chose her to make us parents and I am eternally grateful. I tell her what a miracle she is all the time. Our 8 week pregnancy check up looked good and we had our first ultrasound at 12 weeks. Seeing that little one inside of me so active already really had me excited. We finally started to tell people we were expecting.
The majority of my pregnancy was completely uneventful. The ultrasound at 20 weeks looked good and we found out we were having a girl! We had a name picked out for a couple years already (when you are married that long you talk about those kinds of things) and we were able to start calling her Claire.
Our sweet girl was due December 22, 2012. All my appointments continued uneventfully. Our last appointment at 39 weeks and 4 days we were told I was measuring small, but that really doesn’t mean much. On December 23rd, my contractions started. They continued off and on through the next day. We did our best to encourage them by walking around, but they never became shorter than 10 minutes apart. Early Christmas morning I woke up and realized my contractions were 7 minutes apart and growing quite painful. I tried not to wake up my husband, but continued timing them. Once they were 5 minutes apart I woke him up. To distract me, he had me open my presents! (Don’t tell him, but it didn’t really work). By this time it was around 5am. We finally started for the hospital when they got to 3 minutes apart (around 5:30am). Once arriving they checked me and I was only 1cm dilated, so they had me walk around for an hour. That was a rough hour. I realized later my daughter was head down, but facing the wrong way so the back labor was pretty painful. After that hour I had only dilated to 1.5 cm, but due to some nausea and the fact that contractions were 1 minute apart they admitted me. We tried the bathtub in the room for an hour to help with the pain. Finally around 10:30am I was almost 4cm and able to get an epidural. They broke my water and things started progressing quickly from there. Claire was born on Christmas at 3:30pm, almost before the doctor got there! Our little sweetheart weighed in at 8lbs, 4oz and 20.5 inches long. You’d never know I was measuring ‘small’ less than a week before!
Nothing during pregnancy, delivery, or any check ups afterwards would indicate what was to come. I want to stress this because I know it is human nature to look for a reason. We like to ask, “Why?” I can’t tell you how many times I have asked myself that question. My birth story with my daughter could be anyone’s story. It really isn’t unique in any way. But we wouldn’t think of it as truly miraculous until we tried to have a second child.
I plan to continue our story later this week with our fight to get diagnostic tests, treatments, and other things we have been through. But I also eventually want to do a Q & A post on infertility. Many of my friends and family had no idea how involved the process of getting pregnant is naturally and how many ways it can go wrong, possible diagnoses, different treatments (it’s not just IVF), and what happens during it all. If you have any questions about anything related to infertility or what you can do if you know someone going through it, please comment or email me at laura.bambrick [at] gmail [dot] com. I’m happy to answer anything privately, too. Just make sure to tell me in the email.
