The story of me and my partner was atypical as was our journey of infertility. I met my partners identical twin brother as he was dating my dear friend. We were 21 first and I literally said "your hot, is your twin single? It started with a one night stand that is still going 22 years.
We didnt know we were infertile until I was 33 and trying to have a baby naturally, as we could not. After failed IUI and miscarriages we were moving towards IVF when I got pregnant. Sadly that turned into an ectopic pregnancy requiring emergent surgery as I was bleeding to death, so we decided to focus on our mental health and take a little vaca to Hawaii before starting IVF.
There about a month after my ectopic pregnancy I had a stroke at age 36. I couldnt read, write, talk, drive or work and all I heard was "I cant proceed with fertility treatment" so I worked on my mental health, recovered from my stroke, had heart surgery (required to do further fertility treatment) 2 days before our wedding (I had nothing to do so I planned a wedding lol).
Finally, I was cleared to do IVF. After 18 months of failed IVF (more miscarriages including twins) we decided to trial egg donation. We bought 6 frozen eggs from My Egg Bank (love them) and one went to blast, that blast turned into my son.
I then went into multiorgan failiure after giving birth and was told to not try to carry a baby again so we worked on adopting from India. During that time I couldnt find a book that really captured the birth journey via egg/embryo donation so I used my professional experience as a mental health Nurse Practitioner and my personal experience to write my first picture book "The Search for the Magical Egg".
After 3 years of paper work and money (always lots of money. I should have got one of those machines they by rappers and just shoot my money at the fertility clinics) we met our adoptive son Hani. He was 2 years old with a cleft lip and palate and we loved him immediately.
My family was complete after 11 years of hell. We had 8 magical wonderful happy months until a negligent Doctor killed our little Hani and broke our family. So, here I sit grieving my baby boy, loving my egg donor son, reluctantly and exhaustedly back on the infertility journey to complete my family.
Rebecca shares her story from Canada.
Comments