Little Bit of Hope

After this first miscarriage, we were instructed to wait a minimum of two cycles before inseminating again. The doctor suggested we try at-home insemination a couple more times before we moved on to another method. By April, Nikki was still not pregnant. We decided that a "break" was needed.

The rigorous testing, planning, stressing, and failures had taken a tole on us both, especially Nikki. She has struggled with blaming herself for "losing" our first baby, and for not being able to get pregnant again. I constantly reassured her that she had done everything right. She quit smoking. She ate healthy food. She took vitamins. She did everything "by the book". I couldn't stand to see her hurting so badly.

During our "break", we just focused on each other, and our relationship. We took a much-needed vacation to Florida in June. We stayed at the hotel, and relaxed on the beach where Nikki first proposed to me on July 3, 2007. It was a wonderful stress relief for both of us, especially Nikki. Which she definitely deserved after all her body, mind, and emotions had been through.

The next step in our journey would be to go about starting our family in a little more medically assisted fashion. We would go to the doctor, and she would perform an IUI (Intrauterine Insemination). IUI is a fertility treatment that uses a catheter to place a number of washed sperm directly into the uterus. The goal of IUI is to increase the number of sperm that reach the fallopian tubes and subsequently increase the chance of fertilization. IUI provides the sperm an advantage by giving it a head start, but still requires a sperm to reach and fertilize the egg on its own.

Nikki had the IUI done on July 2nd, the day after her 29th birthday. About two weeks later, we had a positive pregnancy test, just a couple days before my 32nd birthday. July was proving to be a very important month for us.

Our first prenatal visit was on August 15th. We were excited, yet nervous at this first appointment. We sat in the waiting room well beyond our original appointment time. Later, we would find out that the doctor had been in surgery all night, all morning, and she was "running behind schedule" to see her in-office patients. She also was being more rushed due to the fact that she had an early afternoon meeting.

After we were called back to the room, the doctor came in quite rushed. She first did the routine exam, followed by an ultrasound. The screen did not appear as we expected. Our expectation was to see a large gestational sac, with a much smaller yolk sac, with a small "speck" that should have been the fetal pole. Indeed, there did appear to be a perfectly formed gestational sac, but as the doctor "scrolled around", we couldn't see anything else. We were very frightened and our eyes began to well-up with tears.

The doctor told us not to panic. That she had seen this before with other patients, and everything had turned out to be fine. She stated that the baby may be smaller, and not as far along as we'd thought. Due to the fact that we had done IUI, we didn't feel comforted by this statement. But, this doctor had always been upfront and honest with us along this journey. She was the type to tell you "like it is". So, we held onto the little bit of hope she had given us.

Written by Barbara