It’s the situation none of us wants to be in. In my own infertility journey this looked like an IVF cycle whose two transfers ended in pregnancy loss leaving us with zero embryos and back at square zero. For you, it could be related to pregnancy losses, or transfers that never took or an IVF cycle that ended with no viable embryos. If you’re struggling to pick up the pieces after a failed IVF cycle, I hope the words found in this blog post will make the road to recovering a little bit easier and remind you that you’re so not alone 💕

If you’ve been following along with my journey for a while, you know that in this most recent chapter of growing our family we did two additional IVF cycles, experienced three losses and went through four transfers (the most recent of which stuck!) So here’s some exciting news… If you’re reading this it means I’m officially on maternity leave with our rainbow IVF baby! And even though over the next few months I’ll be focusing on nurturing myself, my family and this new baby - I want you to continue to feel so loved and supported as a member of the thrIVF fam as this community means the world to me and getting to walk alongside you in your infertility journeys is truly one of the greatest honors ❤️ So here’s what you can expect from this corner of the internet over the next couple of months…

This wasn’t the story I was expecting to share. Then again, life isn’t filled with perfect stories with happy endings. It’s a journey of messy middles. Highs and lows. And some of the best surprises you never saw coming. And here’s what I know now with more certainty than ever…

Ory, my husband came home one fall evening. He had just gotten his results back from the urologist. “We need to talk,” he said. “You went to a urologist,” I said. “For what?” I could feel the nerves welling up in my stomach. He wasn’t about to say anything I would want to hear…

My husband, Ory, was in medical school when we started going through our infertility journey. We were accruing debt by the minute and my 50k higher ed salary wasn’t quite the money tree we had been searching for. We invested all this time and money into this process - the tests, the appointments, but it never once crossed my mind to invest in myself. And if you had suggested this to me at the time, I would have given you all these excuses…

Let me start with a full blown confession. I am a terrible baker. In fact, the last time I tried to make some cookies that weren’t break and bake, I got the portions all wrong so much so that I had to throw out my batter and start all over again when the sand like consistency refused to become anything that remotely resembled a cookie… It was rough. I could have given up right there, but I didn’t.

The infertility journey can quickly become a roller coaster of emotions. One minute you think you’re doing fine and the next you’re bursting into tears on your bathroom floor or angrily fuming at the internet as everyone around you seems to get getting pregnant, except you. There are days where it truly feels like the world is against you.

If you've been on your fertility journey for any length of time, you’ve learned how to talk in acronyms. Your new magic power is transforming phrases and procedures into an alphabet soup - AMH, CD, FSH, HSG, RE, TTC, and TWW. This secret-sounding fertility code is fine and dandy until a few more letters find their way into the conversation. One particular acronym is one that few couples want to hear…one that’s much more intimidating than letters abbreviating lab values and cycle days. IVF.

As a total planner, I went into type A mode once I found out that IVF was going to be part of our infertility journey. I started googling all the things in hopes of consuming as much information as possible. The more information the better you feel right? Sort of. The various processes and protocols and even the personal stories were fascinating, but there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of information out there about how I could actually prepare for my upcoming IVF cycle.

For the last few months, I’ve been waiting for my gut to kick in, to tell me it was time, to feel that tugging again on my heart. I always pictured having multiple kids, but Mila has filled our life with so much joy that I haven’t felt the strong pull that I felt before. And even though that strong pull might not be there yet, if there’s anything I learned from my first go at this whole infertility thing it’s this…