Amanda D's Story

My husband and I started trying for a baby at the beginning of 2021. We were both healthy and young so infertility wasn’t something that we even considered would be an issue. After a year of trying I went to my OBGYN and a blood test indicated that I had PCOS. Initially we were told that this was a very common diagnosis and there was no reason to think that this couldn’t easily be solved with a little medication. We were referred to our doctor at Texas Fertility Center where we tried 3 medicated cycles, 2 IUI cycles with no positive results ever. After extensive testing on both of us there was no medical reason why we weren’t conceiving. We were recommended to start trying IVF. Up until this point we had not told any friends or family about our infertility struggles and each month of failure was wearing on our hearts.

In late 2022 we started our first round of IVF. We decided to share our story with friends and were shocked to find out how many others were also struggling with infertility around us! I was lucky enough to have a few friends who had gone through all the different infertility treatments and acted as fertility mentors to me. Later in the process I was able to give back and be a fertility mentor to other friends. Our first egg retrieval went well and my doctor was able to get over 30 healthy eggs and in the end we had 10 embryos. It was the first good news we had had in this entire process! However, the excitement was short lived when our genetic tests came back and 9 of the 10 were genetically abnormal and incompatible with life. This spurred more genetic testing which revealed that my husband was born with a balanced translocation of two of his chromosomes. While this thankfully didn’t affect his health it did mean that statistically 50% of all embryos we conceived would have an unbalanced translocation which was incompatible with life. Even though this news was devastating, we finally felt like we had some answers as to why nothing had worked so far.

We transferred our one healthy embryo shortly after that, hopeful that we would just need the one, but the transfer failed. We had so much hope when we saw the picture of our little blastocyst and I cried all night when we found out the transfer had failed. Pregnancy felt farther away than ever. My amazing doctor recommended that we do more egg retrievals back-to-back instead of doing a retrieval and a transfer in order to get as many healthy embryos as possible while I was still young. This ended up being the best advice we were given because my body responded less and less to the medications and we got less and less eggs each time.

Three egg retrievals later we had a few healthy embryos and decided to try a transfer again. Our first transfer shocked us when we got the call that the blood test came back positive and at the 5 week scan we had a strong heartbeat! Our first pregnancy! At the 8 week scan we were shocked again when our doctor told us that our 1 embryo had split and she was now seeing twins! We couldn’t believe we could be so lucky. The next 18 weeks were a normal twin pregnancy. I was high-risk since they were identical and sharing a placenta but it was considered a completely normal twin pregnancy. They continued to grow and measure full size each scan. We celebrated when we found out that they were boys! We had a normal 16 week scan with my OB and got to watch the boys dancing around in my belly. After, we were scheduled for our anatomy scan.

I was nervous as all people are for the anatomy scan but didn’t think much of it. During the scan the sonographer was completely quiet but I was naive and just excited to see my boys on the screen so I didn’t notice anything off. My husband however looked at me with tears in his eyes when the sonographer left to get the doctor. He could tell something was wrong. The normally wiggly boys hadn’t moved during the whole scan. When the doctor came in he gently and compassionately told us that both of our boy’s heats had stopped beating and they were both dead. My husband and I both broke down and held each other as we cried in the office. I was filled with questions. Why didn’t I know? I had no indication that anything was wrong, I didn’t feel any pain, didn’t have any bleeding, my stomach was still growing. My doctors couldn’t find any cause for their death and told us “this just happens sometimes with twins.” I chose to get a D&E because it could take days or even weeks for my body to realize they were dead and go into labor naturally and I couldn’t stand the thought of waiting. Three days later my husband and I went to the labor and delivery wing of the hospital and checked in for the D&E. Our whole medical team was amazing and compassionate and we were blessed that our surgeon was able to get us their footprints and handprints to take home to have a physical reminder that they were real. At home our friends supported us in our grief and took care of us in the long months after our loss. We celebrated the milestones we were supposed to have with them like our first mother’s and father’s day and their due date. We will forever be their parents and miss our twins every day.

We decided to be more vocal about our infertility journey and our miscarriage story in order to help other families experiencing this pain. It is a unique torture to grieve your children while also hoping and trying to be pregnant again that only other loss parents can understand. We are lucky. We have an amazing doctor who became our favorite person to see each month because of how calm we felt with her. We had supportive friends who continued to check on us and talk about our boys months after our loss. Our marriage is stronger than ever knowing that we have been through hell with each other and can lean on each other through it all. Loss has brought us so much closer together and I feel like it will make us that much more grateful if we ever get to raise a child.

This year, after 4 years of infertility and a year after the loss of our twins we are again pregnant. While grief has changed how this and any future pregnancy feels we are cautiously hopeful and anxiously awaiting the day we get to hold him in our arms.