Silent Battles: Talking About Infertility and Breaking the Taboo

When Daniel and I met, he wasn’t sure if he wanted any kids. But as soon as he held our daughter for the first time, everything changed for him. And soon, just a year after she was born, we were aching to give her a sibling. At this point, we had no idea I had issues with fertility.

We had discussed around the thought of having 6 kids. We knew it sounded crazy, but to us, it just seemed like the right number. Well, turns out, in the 6 years we waited for my son, I have PCOS and needed help to conceive. Through a lot of heart to heart talks, because of how hard it would be to have a lot of babies, we thought maybe we should stop at 3. It seemed reasonable.

But in 2023 Testicular cancer took ahold of Daniel, and we thought for sure we would be forced to stop at 2. And it took us a hot minute but we learned to be okay, and accept that. Until low and behold a little over 2 years since chemo I got pregnant. It was a huge surprise to the both of us. Unfortunately all of those pregnancies thus far, have ended in Miscarriage.

At first, my doctors first thought was to send me and my husband in for Genetic Counseling. They tested the baby I miscarried and it came back for Trisomy 16, one of the more common reasons to miscarry, which didn’t make since with my history.

So when that came back normal, they needed to test us, which was just a blood test, and overall, we both came back normal, no seen reasons as to why we would have frequent miscarriages. Life got in the way after that, and I never really perused anything more, until February.

I had gotten better about tracking periods and ovulation. So that would help determine how far along I should be. But I was astonished when I looked at a pregnancy test and saw the 2 pink lines. Instantly I started taking a whole food vitamin, and my progesterone like a good girl. And this pregnancy felt great, I didn’t have this overwhelming sensation of doom like in all my other miscarriages.

And things were going great, turns out I ovulated twice my last cycle, so I was extremely early, had no idea, but that’s alright. But then, of all days my sons birthday I start bleeding. Nothing to major, so I try my best to stay calm. But by Saturday I was passing clots and knew what that meant. My pregnancy symptoms had since reduced and I was loosing the baby.

Instead, I decided I needed to put pedal to the medal and request more be done about this problem. But turns out, my doctor was already on the same page. He has a plan for when I get pregnant again, but were going to a Reoccurring Loss blood panel to see if that shows anything, since with age, some women can develop a problem over time. And my cycles went from irregular with no ovulating, to regular and ovulating fairly normally. So there has been changes I’ve noticed as I got older, never thinking that it could be related to my many looses. But for the first time in a long time, I end this miscarriage with more hope than any of my others.

Typically, I’d end my last miscarriage appointment with “wait 1 cycle before trying again, it was just a chromosome abnormality” to this time, which was “Lets do some blood work, see why you keep having losses” and reassuring me that considering I got pregnant with my son right after a miscarriage, to not worry about preventing it from happening again. I feel like my voice is being heard now, where as I didn’t feel that before.

So now is the ultimate decision? Do I keep trying? Or just say enough, I can’t do this and just be happy with my two beautiful children already? Part of me wants to see what this Blood panel will say. Will it say that its just a simple blood clotting disorder I’ve got because of so many repeated losses? Or is it something untreatable? I think I need to just see what happens with this blood test before I answer that question.