From Heartache to Hope: My Journey with Infertility and Finding Peace

By Kelly Townsend

I once read a quote that gave me hope, hope that fertility and the ‘what if’s’ wouldn’t always hang over me, they wouldn’t always be a weight on my shoulders, or they wouldn’t always be something that would occupy space in my mind. Although I cannot recall or find the exact quote, it read something like this ‘I have come to a time where I don’t think about fertility every moment and it is freeing, and one day you will have that too’. It was a quote that was so simple, nothing profound but it made me realize that this could be me one day.

My journey started about 9 years ago and it has been a long one. I have been through explained infertility with a blocked tube and then unexplained infertility once the tube was unblocked, which is a rather uncomfortable and painful procedure. We were told that once the tube was unblocked that we should see it as starting from scratch, but how can you just erase time. It definitely did not feel like we were starting from the beginning, and we still could not get pregnant. We were told that IVF was our only choice and to us that did not sit right, so we sought a second opinion. We went back on the fertility clinic waitlist to see what other doctors might have to say. Through that time, we had come to terms that we could not get pregnant without some sort of intervention, and we were ready to take the next step. Once we finally got into the fertility clinic, we were ready to proceed with fertility treatment, and we had a successful IUI and our first boy was born.

In trying to grow our family we experienced our first miscarriage, and this was an awful experience. It was a missed miscarriage, so we found out at the dating ultrasound that our baby did not have a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I was not given any guidance on what comes next. I did not know and was not informed that with a miscarriage you can get extreme cramping, that I should cancel all plans when this happens, that bleeding might come in waves. I felt so angry that no one took the time to simply give me the heads up. We still wanted another child so we decided that we would proceed with treatment as this is what worked best for us. We did our second IUI. Again, we were successful and our second boy was born.

I wanted to keep growing our family, but my husband was on the fence – are we ready for another, what if we have another loss, how will we cope with that. We got pregnant naturally but again we experienced loss. We then got pregnant again but had a chemical pregnancy. We were at the point where I was absolutely devasted and my husband did not think he wanted to keep trying, he saw what it did to me along with being uncertain about having another child. Eventually we came to the decision to try again; however, I noticed a shift in my body, and I became worried that we could not get pregnant naturally. Month after month we tried but nothing. Originally, we didn’t want to do IUI because what if we got multiples – two to four is a lot! I knew that we would not get pregnant naturally, so we considered IUI and decided to proceed. Again, we were successful with IUI and we were expecting twins. However, at 11 weeks I miscarried one of them. We were devastated. It was a very weird feeling to experience loss while still feeling grateful and happy that the other baby was growing. The other baby kept growing and our third boy was born.

I am very thankful that we have been lucky enough to have had 3 successful IUIs and that this journey lead us to our babies. However, through our journey there was extreme heartache, pain (physical and emotional), difficulty in our marriage, a dark shadow/cloud that followed me around at times, and everything in between that just weighed me down. Infertility is A LOT and you feel completely powerless throughout it all.

I have unexplained infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss – 4 miscarriages and years of trying with no answers. I have had 1 tubal canulation, 1 hysteroscopy, 1 endometrial biopsy, 3 trigger shots, 4 hysterosalpingogram, many pills of clomid, countless ultrasounds, and I don’t even know how many times I’ve had blood drawn (too many, that’s for sure). I am relieved that this is all behind me, a weight I no longer carry. I know the weight everyone else carries with infertility. I know it seems impossible that one day this won’t be there, but it is possible!