My husband and I met in January 2018 and got married in August 2019. With only knowing each other for a little over a year and a half we decided to wait one year before trying to have children. We wanted to have “our” time, travel and just be husband and wife before our lives would change forever.
In August 2020 we began to try with the mindset of having two babies to complete our family. We thought our journey to parenthood would be a piece of cake but were we in for a rude awakening.
After a year and a half of trying, with the occasional help of letrozole, we sadly miscarried 2 times. Despite the heartbreaks, we remained hopeful that our rainbow baby (a baby born after the loss of a child to a miscarriage) would be with us soon.
After 2 miscarriages and my biological clock ticking at 37 years old, it was time to face reality. We needed to try IVF. In January 2022 we bit the bullet. We put down part of our life savings and started the IVF journey. Every IVF patient who has had success will tell you, “once you hold that baby in your arms, you won’t think about the money you spent!” We held on to these words as we had to do not 1 but 2 egg retrievals (yikes, that added up quick)! My first retrieval resulted in 1 viable embryo and the 2nd with 3 viable embryos. For those who don’t know, embryos are given grades kind of like diamonds. An embryo is superior based on the day it became an embryo. For instance a day 5 embryo is better than a day 6 or day 7. In August 2022 we transferred our best embryo, a beautiful Day 5 4AA (a boy). I sadly miscarried our baby boy a few days after implanting. We were now mourning our third miscarriage.
In January 2023 we decided to transfer again. Our doctor advised us that she would be implanting two embryos this time. We had a Day 7 6AA (a boy) that had a 30% chance of surviving on his own and he needed to be transferred with one of the last remaining embryos. Implanting two would give us a better shot of one of them being accepted by my body. There was also a chance of having twins but they were slim, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up. We liked the odds of implanting two embryos so we told our doctor to go for it and to choose the lucky other embryo for us. We could have twins, we could have one baby or we could sadly have no babies. On January 31st, 2023 we implanted 2 embryos. Our doctor chose our Day7 6AA (a boy) and our Day 5 3AB (our only girl).
Our first ultrasound was set for February 28th. The wait felt like forever! Three days before our ultrasound my body began having the all too familiar horrible cramps. My body must be rejecting the embryos. I knew it. I was devastated! Our one chance of having a little girl was no longer going to happen, and my little boy wasn’t strong enough to survive. I cried for a few days and came to grips with reality. I just wasn’t supposed to be a mom, my body won’t allow it. It was time to give up this parenthood dream.
On the morning of the ultrasound, my husband had Covid and couldn’t go to the appointment with me. I had to go alone and face the reality of yet another miscarriage. Seeing zero heartbeats and feeling defeated in front of my doctor. It was all too familiar what I would face that morning.
Since my husband couldn’t be with me, I told him I would FaceTime him if I had good news to share. Lo and behold – A FaceTime call was made. We not only saw one but we saw two heartbeats. We were in shock! We were having twins! For real?!? Our little girl was thriving and our little embryo with the smallest chance of survival had made it! The pain I had been feeling was just the embryos getting nice and comfy in my body. We were about to become twin parents to a boy and a girl! A double rainbow, double the fun!
My pregnancy was not a walk in the park. Since I was an IVF patient, 38 years old and having had multiple miscarriages, I had to be seen by a perinatal doctor on top of my obgyn. I was seen every other week if not every week to make sure the babies were growing and were healthy. We had a few scares of possibly having an early delivery, growth restrictions and NICU time but my body and the babies surpassed expectations. We went from possibly delivering at 28 weeks to making it full term at 37 weeks and 1 day!
On September 29, 2023 at 8:33am our twins came into this world via a scheduled c-section with no NICU time. Our miracle, double rainbow babies – our little boy who wasn’t supposed to survive and our only chance at a baby girl had made it. After 3 miscarriages, 2 rounds of IVF, and 2 embryo transfers, our family was finally complete!