I am currently 26 weeks pregnant...will be 27 weeks on Thursday.

We started trying to conceive in the beginning of 2023, and after 4 months I went to my primary care doctor to express concerns about my irregular cycles after coming off birth control. Some of my friends suggested I might have PCOS and encouraged me to seek a diagnosis. My primary care doctor ran some hormonal blood tests and said everything came back normal, and thus it couldn't be PCOS. However, I still felt like something was off. After another month or so, I went to my OB, who ran additional tests and scheduled me for an ultrasound. This is when I first received a PCOS diagnosis. I did one medicated/ovulation induction cycle with the OB and when it was clear I didn’t ovulate, I decided it was time to move onto a reproductive endocrinologist (RE).

The RE ran a ton of tests, including sperm count on my husband and for me: hormone panels, thyroid, AMH, FSH, and a saline hysterogram... which all re-confirmed the PCOS diagnosis. My husband and I did one medicated monitored cycle of timed intercourse, which failed. At this point, we had been trying for a year and we were ready to move on to other interventions. The RE said we were good candidates for an IUI, which was our next step. We got pregnant from our first IUI and I was aboslutely over the moon sobbing with joy. We told our friends and family and immediately began picking baby names. All three HCG betas at the clinic looked textbook, but something in my gut told me to get another one at LapCorps. This test revealed my HCG had dropped. I went back for another test, and it dropped again. When I went into the frist ultrasound at the fertility clinic, it was confimred that I was measuring a week behind and there was no heartbeat. I was utterly devastated, and because my body wouldn't naturally release the pregnancy, I took medication to cause contractions and miscarry. After my HCG dropped, we immediately did another IUI, but had the same thing happen: HCG rose well, but when I went into the first ultrasound, there was nothing on the monitor. I sobbed on the exam table; half naked, utterly raw from grief. I will never forget how the doctor hugged me and refused to let go until I did. We were so grief-stricken and traumatized. While we waited for my HCG to drop, we had even more tests done, including genetic carrier screenings, chromosomal tests, blood clotting disorders, diabetes, and a saline sonogram. Everything came back normal for both of us and there was no explanation for the recurrent losses other than likely aneuploidy with the embryos we were creating. We were encouraged to try IVF and told to seek support through RESOLVE.

As soon as my HCG dropped, we moved immediately into an egg retrieval cycle and did PGT testing on the embryos. Our first transfer got cancelled because my lining didn't get thick enough, but eventually we did our first transfer at the end of October 2024 with our best quality embryo, and that’s what’s turned into our 26 week old miracle baby that I’m now carrying.

I am in awe daily of the miralce of science, of life, and how fortunate I feel to be able to carry our daughter.

I remember writing this in my journal during the darkest parts of our journey on Mother's Day:
"My infertility journey has been long and hard and sad at at times, punctuated by hope. I wonder how it has all changed me. But if I think about it, I know in my soul that it has made me a mother."  

The Walk To Her

Ann Marie's Journey

RESOLVE has been a huge part of my journey. I kept delaying joining the support group because I kept thinking, "surely next time I will get pregnant and I won't need it!" Even after the first miscarriage, I didn't feel I was ready to join because it felt like admitting that this wasn't going to be as short-lived as I thought. But after the second loss, I decided I needed a community of people who understood what I was experiencing. Who saw me and validated me. Who weren't going to try to make it better because they could hold the sorrow and the grief with tender hands. I've made incredible friends that I continue to connect with to this day - some are pregnant like me, and others are still walking the hardest path there is to walk. And I am grateful for each of them. We have cried, laughed, dreamed, and raged together. We are each others witnesses.

I also started sharing my journey on social media, and I was blown away by the support and by how many people were also impacted by infertility.

I found support through therapy and journaling as well. I wrote A LOT as a creative outlet, including the following poem:

" For weeks, I told myself I didn't need hope. I didn't want it.
I was stronger than hope.
Hope was reserved for the lucky, naive people who hadn't already experienced the depths of soul crushing grief.
Hope was for people who didn't look at their dining room tables and become transported back in time to a version of themselves as a wailing mother drowning in tears, burying her loss in jigsaw puzzles as she played the phone call over and over again in her mind: "You should prepare yourself, and come in if you start bleeding."
Hope was for beginners; the people fresh with optimism. Those who only saw possibilities looking out at the horizon, rather than the impending suffering ahead. The hopeful people don't have bruised knees and aching soles (see also: souls); their bodies crying for a reprieve from the constant ups and downs of the hardest path they've ever walked.
I had made up my mind: hope wasn't welcome here anymore.
Hope painted a future filled with beautiful mundanity - tiny socks and messy bibs - that felt like coming home after the most excrutiating day, and then burned it all to the ground without leaving so much as a note.
I had no need for hope anymore. I was going to be practical. Realistic. Reserved. Grounded.
After all, everything about this cycle felt strange. Off. Different - and not in a good way.
But now that I'm in the two week wait, I feel a familir senstation in my chest when I close my eyes and take a deep breath. That fluttering feelnig like your lungs are filling with helium, and rather than seeing only the pain of what was, my eyes brim with visions of the future.
I can see myself with a positive pregnancy test.
I can see us hearing our baby's heartbeat for the first time.
I can see us leaving the fertility clinic, hand in hand, with a depleted bank account and nondescript gift bag they give to patients who "graduate" from high risk care...and I as I walk towards the doors, I see myself in all the couples stuck in the waiting room, knowing their grief and hope are tied to my own - one of the deepest aches anyone can experience.
I thought I would feel frustrated at hope for sharing these thoughts with me. After all, hope as burned me over and over, in the worst possible ways.
But if I'm being honest, I feel only relief
because I know now that the grief has not hardened me.
In the face of of insurmountable pain,
I have remained soft.
So I tell hope to stay a while, sitting arm in arm together through the in-between;
The friend I didn't really want to see
but the friend that showed up
knowing deep down,
I needed them.
And as I look hope squarely in the facem
I don't see a beginner.
I don't see naivete.
I see scraped elbows and bleeding fingernails and dark undereye circles.
I see someone that lost a baby and swam to the depths of the darkness of grief and didn't let it kill her.
I see that hope has been with me
in the pain all along."

The Walk To Her

Ann Marie's Journey