So I'm sitting here thinking about the ride we've been on and it still honestly blows my mind. For those of you that don't know, surprise surprise, making a baby in a same-sex relationship isn't the easiest task. To sit back and think about the process we went through to even try and have a baby, to then having a successful pregnancy and then almost losing my life giving birth, like wow what a wild time.
For those who aren't close to me and don't know my life story, you wouldn't know that the one thing I've ever wished for in life is to be a Mum. I have a brother 9 years younger than me and I always had motherly instincts and babies have always always been my euphoria when it comes to babies I'm patient, I can't explain the feeling I get holding one, it's just like it's meant for me, you know. I've longed for that moment my whole life and honestly thought I'd be a Mum before turning 25. I'm 30 and looking back I think to myself no way could I have done this 5 years ago and I truly stand by the fact that everything happens for a reason. Mentally I couldn't have done this five years ago, sometimes I'm not even sure I cope now, but physically I definitely couldn't have done that.
A little backstory- Katie and I have been together for almost 11 years and spent probably a good 4 of those first years 'hiding' our relationship (we weren't very good at hiding- you know I'm talking to you) from a lot of people because we were so concerned about what people may think of our lifestyle, or our relationship and I can tell you there was nothing harder than living through that. One thing I will say though is it gave me an appreciation for genuine people, it really sorted the good people from the bad for us when we did 'come out' eventually -like this is something that people should still have to do in the 21st century (insert eye roll, you do you boo.) We have had hate and shame thrown at us over the years- mostly behind our backs from the gutless types but we have also had a mountain of love from so many who never gave a shit about who we slept next to at night time.
I had been talking about a baby for years with Katie and she was never ready, we really love traveling overseas every year- that's our thing and she wasn't quite ready to give all of that up just yet. We work long weeks and traveling became our little outlet and we would look forward to planning trips to America, over the years of being together we had spent the last 6 years going to the US. Katie proposed to me in Florida at Disney World in a hot air balloon (insert I'm a mad Disney lover) and we ended up eloping the following year in Las Vegas because Same-sex marriage in Australia wasn't legal yet. So you could say we really enjoyed our trips Overseas, I remember having 'The Chat' to Katie about when does she think would be a good time to start talking babies, I remember her clear as day saying "I just want to keep traveling and going on our little trips" and I had said, "Babe I don't think we'll ever stop wanting to travel, so we are going to have to bite the bullet and put trips on hold for a couple of years sooner or later if we ever want kids." Before I knew it, it was April of 2018, we had been back from our yearly trip only two months and we were booked in to have our first consultation at a fertility clinic to get information on what steps we needed to take to grow our little family.
Excited, nervous and thrilled were all emotions I felt the first day we met with our Doctor, I actually thought this can't be real, finally, the ball is rolling. We didn't tell anyone at the time that we were going to our appointment because who knew how long this ride might take us. The Doctor explained the different roads we could take on our journey and how each one would affect us, he explained the medical procedures, the testing involved and the psychology involved in all the processes and then the big one- the cost. We were extremely overwhelmed with emotions and we honestly left excited but thinking what are we doing, this is so much to take in.
Coming home we spent the next few weeks discussing our options and where to go to next, in terms of who would actually carry the baby, there was never any question, it was always going to be me and that decision was made by both of us. Katie wasn't exactly maternal, has a more stressful job than me and quite frankly was never bothered if she never carried a baby herself, she always said she would adopt if it came to that because she didn't need a genetic connection for her to love our baby. I always said that if I left this earth tomorrow and was unable to carry and birth a child then I would feel as though my life was somewhat incomplete. I always felt like I was meant to be a Mum and I was meant to carry and grow a baby so there was never any question, Katie knew how much I needed that. The first thing we had to do was run a series of both blood and urine tests to ensure we didn't have any STD's and to check our iron levels AMH levels etc, basically to make sure everything was ok with us before we wasted money trying and then something was wrong with our fertility, etc. I had to undergo a test called HSG, which was quite painful and involved a foam being flushed through my fallopian tubes to ensure there wasn't a blockage and it hurt like hell. I remember the doctor offering me the green whistle (adrenaline) for pain and me, of course, declining because I'm used to extreme period pain, and they were honestly shocked at how calm I was in the whole process.
We decided on trying DI (donor insemination which has a success rate of 12%) which is a process that involves using a catheter to insert sperm into your cervix in the exact spot where the follicles ovulate. The option to do that involves using either a 'Known donor' or an 'unknown donor' we made our choice and chose our specific donor for our own personal reasons. Before we even started we had to undertake the next step which was the psychological side of things, this meant literal counseling sessions, with a psychologist. We had a total of three sessions over a month and we had a lot explained to us and we talked a lot about the support we would have in the real world. I know you're probably thinking, what do you mean you had to have counseling to have a baby when any idiot can fall pregnant- don't worry I thought the same thing at the time, but it ended up being quite a useful tool in our journey. Our test results had come back and I had low immunity to rubella so I had to have an injection and wait until this cleared through my system before we could start. After this whole rig moral we were able to try our first attempt on my next cycle at the end of August.
I got my period and went to see our Doctor on day 10 of my cycle, it was here that he did an internal ultrasound to measure my follicles to estimate when they were due to ovulate. We decided to use 'Ovidrel' which is a needle you self inject into your stomach the day before you want to ovulate to force it on at a particular time. This basically gave us more of an accurate day for us to do the insemination process to hopefully have more of a chance of it working. We went in on Thursday the 30th of August to attempt to make our baby, excited was the understatement of the year. Within an hour the process was all over and done with and the Doctor gave us a blood test to complete 14 days after the insemination to see if we were successful or not. I had completed genetic testing for Cystic Fibrosis at that time for myself as we have a family history of carrying the disease. After a $300 test, it turns out I am actually a carrier of Cystic Fibrosis which means any donor we use must have tested. If you don't already know if you are a carrier of Cystic Fibrosis and you fall pregnant to someone who is also a carrier, its a 25% chance the baby will have Cystic Fibrosis and a 50% chance the baby will be a carrier also. This blew my mind.
I don't know about any of you but I thought I was a pretty patient person but I can tell you for the next 14 days I was Dr. Google, I read into every symptom I had and the problem with Ovidrel is it puts hormones into your body which can cause false pregnancies on tests if you test too early, it also can have a side effect of sore boobs and all kinds of crazy things. You can imagine I thought I had every pregnancy symptom under the sun because I read into every.single.thing. We did the wrong thing and tried at home tests 10-14 days past ovulation and thought so many times there was a faint line. Throughout those 14 days, the only thing that consumed my entire thought process was Am I pregnant?? My heart fell into my chest the day the clinic called Katie (because I was too scared to answer their call) and she came home and told me, the day before my birthday, that we weren't having a baby this time. I was shattered and broken, I underestimated how much of a mind game this was and how much I thought it was going to work first go. I couldn't believe it hadn't worked but I had to put my big girl pants on and get ready for round two.
The second time around which was a month later at the end of September, the process was quite similar. I used Ovidrel again and this month I honestly felt different, I kept telling Katie I think it's worked this time I feel weird, she told me not to read into it and not to get my hopes up- like that was possible. I remember it was the day before my blood test and I was at the shops and went to the toilet and I had what I thought was implantation bleeding. I could have sworn that was the day the embryo had implanted, It was exactly like what I had read and seen. The next day Katie came home from work and broke the bad news to me again. It didn't work. I didn't believe her and it tore me up inside. I cried and cried for days, how could I have imagined all of this? The following day I got my period and I continued to bleed for the following 10 days. We went in on that 10th day to see our Doctor and I explained to him that I had my period for the past 10 days. The Doctor said he wanted to check the blood results I had done, and my HCG level was a 2 which is too high to be nothing but also too low to usually be viable. He told me to head in the following day to have another blood test, but we went home that day and tested on one we had at home and bam two lines. What did this even mean? We went to pathology the next day and the results came back at an HCG level of 17. The nurse from the clinic called and told me to come back and see the Doctor but she explained that a 17 generally would mean I have fallen pregnant but most likely the embryo has stopped growing as I would have been about 5 weeks and this number was far too low. Overcome by all this information, knowing inside that I knew I wasn't making things up, I was definitely pregnant and accepting that but also trying to comprehend that I'm more than likely going to lose this baby. This completely tore my heart apart. The Doctor explained to us that we may have had an ectopic pregnancy, so he wanted to do an ultrasound, I was trying to tell myself through all of this that everything happens for a reason. I was kidding myself I didn't believe that at all at that moment. The Doctor completed the scan and told us that no, it was a normal pregnancy but it looks like it has stopped growing and you are likely to have a miscarriage in the next few days. Try explaining that to me thinking I can even comprehend what you're saying to me at this point in time. I fell into Katie's arms when we got home, I was a broken woman and I thought I will never be a Mum, maybe none of this was meant to be.
Two days later we met at the clinic with the Nurses to weigh up our options, maybe we should take the IVF road now, we had spent between $7K- $8K trying DI and no luck and IVF was going to cost us about $12K with no Medicare rebate. No medicare rebate because in Australia it isn't recognised as a medical reason to do IVF, it is deemed as a social reason for same-sex couples. I sat in the clinic that day and was so full of emotion it was so much to take in and I really didn't want to take that avenue. The thought of so many drugs toying with my body and emotions was too much for me to handle. I was supposed to go back to work after our meeting that day and Katie could see how full of emotion I was, she told me to just go home and try and relax. The last week had been so much on both of us but Katie went back to work and kissed me goodbye. I cried the whole trip home, this was so hard on me- all of it, I couldn't understand anything.
I got home from my appointment at about 1:30 pm on October 24th, 2018, I had a bit of period-like pain on my way home so I went to the bathroom. It was then that I realised, I had a Miscarriage. I was somewhat prepared for it, I knew it was coming but nothing prepared me for the emotions and feelings that followed that day. I was so lost.
One thing I learned over this extremely difficult stage of our lives, is what a lonely time this can be for families. So many people are out there, trying to have a baby and no one knowing what you're going through because you don't want people knowing that you're trying so damn hard to make a baby. This was so hard on both Katie and me, I never mentally prepared myself for the possibility of having a miscarriage and then suffering in silence because no one knows we are even trying to have a baby. Going through both a Traumatic labour experience and miscarriage I found that it's not until you open up to people about what you have gone through, that people come out of the woodwork and tell you their stories. Why is it not spoken about? Why are people forced to hide behind the reality that is making a baby? It's a cruel world where the most popular people feel lonely at times, but when we are suffering a really hard time we are supposed to just do this alone, pick up our feet and get on with our lives erase it all, or put that baggage away? it's just ridiculous, so cruel and unfair in my opinion.
The next few months for both Katie and I was probably the hardest time in our relationship thus far. We struggled massively but we both suffered alone in silence, in our own ways. We weren't there for one another when we really needed to be. I'm quite an emotional person and Katie probably gets emotional in a more angry sort of way. When I would be at home crying she would be away, at work, avoiding me and not asking me if I was doing ok. When she would come home I would beg her to talk to me but she would say nothing was wrong and pretend for my sake she was fine. She was definitely not fine and she was suffering big-time inside, she continued to drown herself in work and it was the time of year to do so. It felt like every weekend over those next couple of weeks we spent them drunk, going out with friends, getting home at all hours and again not communicating with each other. We just pretended to put on a happy face for everyone around us but inside we were empty. We lived under the same roof but it felt like we were living separate lives. Katie wanted to get straight back into trying a third time and she couldn't comprehend that I needed time to get over what has happened, both mentally and physically. I wanted to wait until the New Year, Katie didn't understand why and this drove a wedge between us. It felt like those couple of months, we spent more time apart from each other than together, both physically and emotionally.
We got through that really difficult time and took a trip to Bali in January 2019 with our friends, we had planned to start Round 3 when we got back from our trip. We came back relaxed, chilled and in a much better, clearer mindset. Looking back its apparent to me that everything happened for a reason and we were meant to go through that hard time as a couple, it was a test and we passed.
We met our Doctor and started the third round, we decided to give DI one last shot and if it didn't work the third time then we would go down the IVF path, this time it felt different. I was so relaxed I wasn't even really thinking about it. I had however done a lot of research on what remedies we could do that may help the embryo stick. I left the Doctors office that day, Katie went back to work and I just had a natural good feeling. I stopped on the way home and got a clear liquid soup, ate it and went and put my legs up vertically on the wall while I laid in bed. I had read that eating hot clear soups, drinking warm or room temperature liquids can help conception. I also read drinking a lot of water, maintaining a healthy diet whilst avoiding cold things, eating oysters and drinking teas can all help. I can tell you I did every single one of those things and told myself while drinking 5 litres of water a day, if this does not work it's not through lack of trying.
Only 10 days after insemination we got our first really faint positive line at home, we sped to the chemist to buy a digital and sure enough, it read 'pregnant.' On day 14 we got the call, we tested positive on our pathology test. I probably cried for the next month, we actually didn't believe it, it really worked, we are going to have a baby, we are going to be Mamas.
Jess
XOXO
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