Pregnancy after infertility

Apologies for the radio silence, and rest assured that it’s not because anything has gone wrong. It’s partly because I’ve been really freaking busy with work and visitors, and also partly because I’m still figuring out how to talk about pregnancy in an infertility blog.

First, there are the questions about my blog name/Instagram handle. Then there’s the matter of adjusting to a new reality after such a long road. And finally, there’s the fact that I still don’t look or feel particularly pregnant. Let’s tackle them each in turn.

The formerly bunless oven?

“You’re not bunless anymore! You’ll have to change your name!”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this over the last couple months. The thing is, this donor egg IVF pregnancy — while a scientific miracle — doesn’t change the fact that I’m infertile. I don’t mean that in a mopey please-feel-sorry-for-me way, but as a matter of fact. Obviously I feel immensely lucky that modern science ultimately still made pregnancy possible for us. Nevertheless, that doesn’t just erase everything it took to get here.

There’s also the issue of ever having another kid, assuming this one makes it out alright. We’re extremely fortunate to have three more frozen embryos from Marie’s eggs, which is a luxury many people don’t have. Still, if we ever wanted to try for a 2nd — a decision most couples make over a casual dinner, or not at all (#bonusbaby) — that means more hormone therapy, long drives to Belgium, and potentially even finding a new egg donor in yet another foreign country to start the whole process from the beginning.

So in summary:

• Super grateful to have gotten where we are today.
• Still definitely keeping the name.

Fitting in with the ‘fertiles’

Transitioning from the infertility community to the pregnancy community has been strange, to put it mildly. Many people assume that the transition happens instantaneously the moment you get the news, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Going through what we did was a massive emotional and physical burden — I didn’t just magically wake up pregnant one morning like all the other women in my pregnancy yoga class. I feel like a warrior among lottery winners, and coming to terms with the full extent of this new reality will take some time.

One of the ways this manifests is in the way I feel comfortable talking (or not) about the pregnancy. I’m not the type to gush about baby stuff or write carefree ‘Lovin’ pregnant life!!’ posts anyway, but this has made me probably even less so. Part of this is because I’m super-conscious of all the couples still struggling — I’ll be the first to admit that pregnancy-related posts were a big trigger for me during our multiple IVF attempts. But it’s also because it’s hard to endure so many years of failure without experiencing a little bit of post-traumatic stress. When you finally get something that you’ve fought for for so long, it’s natural to treat it more seriously than those who ended up there by chance.

Nothing to see here

The final reason I haven’t posted much is that even now at 17 weeks, I still don’t feel (or look) particularly pregnant, and not much has been going on. We had two more ultrasounds at 10 and 12 weeks when I tapered off the estrogen and progesterone, but everything looked perfectly normal. We also had another small bleeding scare at around 12 weeks, but thankfully nothing more since. The genetic testing came back with no evidence for Down’s, Edwards, or Patau syndromes. In addition, my blood work all came back looking excellent, and my blood pressure has always been extremely low. Aside from the whole prematurely-failing-ovaries thing, I’m really the absolute picture of health. Honestly, the most exciting thing to happen during the last couple months was learning that my blood type is not O+, despite having believed that my whole life. (My real blood type is apparently A+, which seems perfectly fitting if you know me at all.)

Since everything seems to be going well, we finally announced our pregnancy to our wider network a few weeks ago. So in case you haven’t already seen it, here’s our long-awaited pregnancy announcement featuring all of the used needles from our IVF attempts:

“Today we want to introduce a project that we’ve been working on for over half a decade*. After a very difficult journey, including 6 attempted IVF embryo transfers, 5 medicated (and >55 unmedicated) two-week waits, 4 separate egg retrieval surgeries, including 3 for Allie in 2 different (foreign) countries, and ultimately the generosity of 1 amazing friend who donated her eggs, we are happy to report that we are finally expecting our miracle baby. *This is longer than it took me to get my PhD in Physics. I think I should get to put this in my tenure report.”

Follow me on Instagram: @thebunlessoven