“You want this end game, to be holding these babies. So you have to take it one step at a time.”
A Couple’s Story of Perseverance Through Fertility Treatment
This is the second installment of a two-part series. Read the first half of the the couple’s fertility journey or check out more stories about couples struggling with fertility.
For an entire month, being good, compliant people became the focus of Valerie and Jason’s lives. But even that didn’t guarantee that their fertility doctor, Suleena Kansal Kalra, MD, MSCE, would give them the green light to remove Valerie’s eggs at the end of the month.
Naturally, women give off one egg each month—the dominant follicle. Once that one is released, the others that were growing disintegrate. But in Valerie’s case, all of the medications she was using caused many follicles to take off, not just the dominant one.
The result: “Your ovaries are on steroids,” Valerie says. “That’s the whole point, but you feel unusually bloated. You have bruises on your buttocks from the injections. You’re sore, swollen and high on hormones that can throw you for an emotional loop.”
At the check ups, the doctor was monitoring the number and size of what they hoped would become Valerie’s harvested eggs—ideally 10 to 15 per side. She was also making sure that hormone levels were right, signaling that Valerie’s uterus would be a welcome environment when it came time to implant the fertilized egg.
High Hopes
When the time came in Valerie’s monthly cycle, Dr. Kalra approved Valerie for retrieval. The results were solid: about 15 eggs, which technicians mixed in a dish with Jason’s sperm. They were hoping for a call within the next 24 hours to find out if the sperm fertilized any eggs, and then another call about five days after that to hear if the process was continuing successfully.
“You’re just waiting for that phone call,” Valerie says.
On their second wedding anniversary, Valerie and Jason got the call from Dr. Kalra. Valerie could tell immediately that something was wrong. She felt sick and broke into tears.
None of the eggs had fertilized. And the doctor didn’t know why. The sperm hadn’t penetrated properly, and when they did, too many got in to each egg.
“We didn’t even get to the starting line. I got off the phone and had to tell Jason. It was a horrendous anniversary,” Valerie says.
Second Chances
Still, the couple wasn’t ready to give up. They had enough financial aid left to cover one more round of IVF. Valerie started on a different protocol of drugs.
This time, Valerie produced more than 20 eggs. All of them looked better than the first round. Yet, instead of giving them the chance to fertilize naturally in-vitro, the doctor suggested intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). With this procedure, the doctor wouldn’t leave it to the sperm to break into the eggs, but instead specifically implant one sperm into each egg.
Valerie and Jason approved the idea, but with so many eggs, they wanted to give some the chance to fertilize naturally. The doctor agreed to do half that way and half through ICSI.
Then, it was time to wait...again. Just like the first time, they anticipated Dr. Kalra’s call.
And that second phone call was very different from the first.
Surprise Ultrasound
Good news: 14 eggs had fertilized. But again, the ones that went naturally “acted goofy,” Valerie says. “We don’t know why, and we never will. We have to move on from that.”
They waited five days, with technicians watching the cells divide under a microscope. Some fizzled out, and others grew stronger. They wanted to pick the very best embryo for implantation. The couple ultimately had to decide how many eggs they wanted to implant in Valerie’s uterus, knowing that more eggs led to a greater risk of multiple births.
In the end, Jason wanted to protect their odds and try for two eggs. Valerie agreed. Guided by an ultrasound, the doctor implanted the eggs in Valerie’s uterus. It was late 2013.
“We have an ultrasound image of that,” Valerie says. “It’s in the very first page of our twins’ baby book.”
Moving to Motherhood
The next two weeks, waiting to see if the embryos continued to grow, may have been the toughest part of the whole process. All Valerie and Jason had to do was wait. There were no more phone calls, blood tests or check ups. Just the silent waiting.
“I felt like I was going to lose it. I was so nervous about getting a period,” Valerie says.
On November 21, they went in for the scheduled check up—the “big reveal.” It was Valerie’s 33rd birthday.
The ultrasound showed two embryos, growing strong side by side.
A month later, Valerie mainstreamed to a standard obstetrician. Eight months after that, on June 28, 2014, she gave vaginal birth to two babies, a boy and a girl—Blake and Paloma.
After the challenge of infertility, Valerie says, “I was lucky to experience a wonderfully ‘normal’ pregnancy, labor and then delivery. And much like any new mother probably feels when she holds her new babies for the first time, it was utterly surreal. Any hesitation or stereotypes I may have fostered towards IVF were washed away with a gush of pure adrenaline and joy.”
Looking back, she says she hopes that everybody who experiences fertility challenges has a supportive partner: “I can’t imagine if my husband wasn’t all on board. It takes two.”
She also says she wishes she would have known in the beginning how hard it would be to have kids. “You want this end game, to be holding these babies. So you have to take it one step at a time,” she says.
And whatever happens, honor your own struggles and dedication. Valerie still keeps a syringe in her fridge as a reminder of all she went through. Find a way to acknowledge your strength.
Read stories from couples struggling with fertility and find out the latest treatment options.