In May of 2022, my husband and I found out we were pregnant with our first baby. We were over the moon. I will never forget seeing the word “pregnant” pop up on that digital pregnancy test. We called our family to share the news and celebrate, my husband surprised me with flowers and a balloon, and we even started talking about baby names. There are no words to describe how devastated we were when that pregnancy ended in a very early loss. We were shocked and full of grief for the little one we would never get to meet. This was our baby Soraya.
Yet, our doctor told us this type of loss was very common and that we would likely go on to have a normal pregnancy if we just tried again. So we did. My very next cycle we discovered we were pregnant again, and couldn’t have been more overjoyed. We really believed this baby would make it and we were ecstatic when we saw our little guy squirming around and heard a beautiful heartbeat at our first ultrasound. But when we went in for our second ultrasound, even though we saw our baby and heard his heartbeat, we could tell from the tech’s face that something wasn’t right. We were told that our baby was dying. And sure enough a week later when we returned, my sweet child had passed and was curled up in my womb. This was our baby Jevanni.
There are no words to describe the pain and grief we experienced over the next month as we endured the emotional and physical journey that is miscarriage. My body didn’t process the loss, so we went through multiple rounds of misoprostol, multiple ER visits, and ultimately ended up having a D&C. Having experienced two back-to-back losses, we took some time to process and adapt to our new reality. Our doctors assured us that what had happened was very rare and just bad luck, and they again encouraged us that the statistics showed that we would go on to have a healthy pregnancy. So we tried again.
We took comfort in the mantra, “the third time is the charm.” We were pregnant right away and somehow managed to find hope that this baby was the one we would get to hold in our arms. But it wasn’t so. We experienced another early loss with our sweet baby Kehlani.
This time we didn’t listen to the doctors when they told us this was normal. We had officially experienced recurrent pregnancy loss and we felt that the doctors were missing something. So we decided to try IVF. The egg retrieval process was emotionally and physically challenging, but we were relieved to end up with two PGT-A normal baby girl embryos. We couldn’t wait to transfer as we believed this was the solution that would give us the chance to be parents to a living child.
On Valentine’s Day, which felt like a lovely sign, we transferred our baby girl Solana. We became pregnant and we couldn’t have been happier to know our girl was healthy since she had been conceived through IVF. We were shocked once more when we lost her very early. I have said it once before, but there are truly no words to describe the despair as a mother when your babies repeatedly die and there is nothing you can do to save them. This wasn’t just disappointment that I wasn’t going to be a mother to a living baby yet. This was deep and never-ending grief that my family would never be complete and that I would never meet so many of my children in the physical realm.
We did have one more baby girl embryo, so on St. Patrick’s day, which again felt very lucky, we transferred her. This time it seemed like we never even became pregnant (it’s hard to know for sure when you use HCG trigger shots with IVF) and we lost our little embryo, 3BC+1.
With no embryos left, we decided to do one last egg retrieval. I cannot describe the level of anxiety that we experienced during this time, but we were lucky to end up with one PGT-A normal baby girl and one PGT-A normal baby boy. This time the embryos had higher grades, so we were hopeful that we would finally have a successful pregnancy.
On Mother’s day weekend (my body loves to align it’s cycle with holidays) we transferred our girl. We became pregnant and we just knew that this was the one. Our first HCG draw looked great. My at-home pregnancy test lines were progressing. But then our second HCG test did not double as it should have. And we embarked on a 10-week journey with an anembryonic pregnancy. We prayed and prayed that our girl would develop, but even though I was pregnant, we never saw her or her heartbeat. We ended up having to endure a second D&C. That was our sweet baby girl Sofia.
After months of physical healing, we decided we were done with IVF for now. It hadn’t changed our outcomes. We decided to try naturally again instead. We became pregnant immediately and experienced another early loss. That was our sweet Baby Blue.
At this point we had begun to accept the hard truth that we might never be parents of a living baby. We contemplated every possible option – just celebrating our partnership and loving on our angel babies, exploring more invasive treatments, and even flying across the country to meet with recurrent pregnancy loss experts. I would never wish the grief, pain, anxiety, and devastation we experienced on anyone.
And then unexpectedly, we became pregnant again. And for some reason, this time, the pregnancy has continued to progress. We did take some new supplements and try some infusions, but otherwise it was nothing short of a miracle. We cautiously and anxiously tracked our baby’s development until we made it to second trimester, which we’d never gotten to before. Recently we made it to 29 weeks and it seems so surreal. Pregnancy after recurrent loss is one of the hardest things we’ve ever been through. Every day we pray that our little boy will continue to grow and that we will be lucky enough to hold him soon.
We will teach him about all of his angel siblings and we will carry them with us always. We love all of our children regardless of their life span, and we do our best to honor them every day. Soraya, Jevanni, Kehlani, Solana, 3BC+1, Sofia, Baby Blue, and now little Kairo, we love you all so much. Thank you for choosing us to be your parents.
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