Jessica Joys Fertility or not…

I am 34 years old and my husband is 45, yes I know, woah! Big age difference… oh well, we fell in love and here we are 14 years later, still in love!!

We got married when I was 22 years old. Before getting married, we imagined ourselves having 4 children, and thought how cute they would be… my husband is adopted and longed for some genetic connection so we wanted to jump right to it!

After a year of not getting pregnant I saw an obgyn doctor where we tried 6 rounds of clomid that made me an emotional crazy b*%#!… after that didn’t work it was time to move onto a fertility specialist as my doctor said, “there’s nothing else I can do”. She had expressed my extreme FSH levels and was shocked by the numbers of all of my hormones. So, on we went. We went to a very good fertility specialist in the Bay Area where we had my husbands sperm tested and all of our genetic and auto-immune tests…. well, yay for my hubby, he came back with millions of fast and furious sperm, so that meant the problem lied within me. After all of my test results were in, we were told to come in to have a discussion. I had no idea what to expect but I didn’t plan to go in and leave so very sad. The doctor said “Unfortunately, I don’t have good news. You have diminished ovarian reserve and unfortunately by the look of your hormones, you are in premature ovarian failure, and your eggs are old” I thought wtf does that mean?! I’m only 24 years old!!! He told us that I had a 5% chance if that of conceiving on my own and that we would need to use donor eggs with hubbies sperm. They told us they would give us a profile to look at of egg donors, and we had a financial discussion.

I left the appt. so very sad, probably more sad than ever. I couldn’t believe that at 24 years old I couldn’t have children especially as this was something I yearned for my whole life. I starting questioning my life decisions, maybe choices that I made, did this affect my fertility, what did I do to deserve this. I went home in complete sadness and for weeks was depressed and confused. I felt inadequate, and less of a female. I was so disappointed that I could not provide a child for my husband, who so badly wanted a genetic link, someone to call his own. We both wanted someone that looked like us, a combo of us both… it was so hard to get past the hurt but eventually I realized it was time to be proactive. I had gotten a book that got me through my darkest days. A book that explained my infertility, my loss. A book that not only explained what premature ovarian failure was but made me feel like I wasn’t abnormal and that I was still just as much a woman- that book is called “The Premature Menopause Book”.

My husband and I moved forward with the thought of donor egg and looked through the many profiles. We found women in the binder that looked just like me and often we felt excited. The financial aspect for us started getting scary as it would have been at least $25k and that wasn’t feasible at that time. So, again a major set back and disappointment. After a couple years of going back and forth with doing egg donor or not we decided that it wasn’t the right decision so we closed that door.

I went back to a different fertility clinic where a doctor told me that she believed she could get me pregnant stimulating my own eggs and that we should try it. Well- week after week I would go in- we would do ultrasounds etc… and couldn’t ever see anything. I did shots in my stomach to try and stimulate something and only a couple times could they see anything. I left crying that office almost every time. I would have to go back to work in utter shock that my body was failing me… the drugs wouldn’t even work that they gave me, that I would inject myself every day… so unfortunately that door closed too.

A little side note- adoption is huge in our family- my husband, his sister, my brother, my sister, several cousins and more are all adopted.
So, it only seemed natural that we should look into adoption! So we did- we went through an agency my sister and cousins were adopted through and took all of the necessary steps to become adoptive parents. We wanted an infant and that we got. We made a book of our family, took many classes, and more. 6 months after we had finished our home study our dreams had a come true. We were contacted by our agency that a birth mom was due in June (this was april) and she was interested in us! I was in school at the time of the call and was on cloud 9! Our dream was coming true. Well- it did, our daughter Josie was born in May and we got to see the birth and bring her home from the hospital. She has been the biggest blessing and we know that she is ours for a reason. All that we went through led us to her and for that we are forever grateful!

Well fast forward 4 years and we so badly wanted a sibling for our Josie, and I still so badly wanted the opportunity to carry a child. We went to the fertility center and explored our options… our doctors told us about embryo donation and how this would be a good option considering there didn’t seem to be any underlying reasons my body wouldn’t be able to carry a child. So we moved forward with more tests and got on a waiting list for embryos within our clinic. My husband and I decided that we wanted embryos that would fit well with our family.  Although these requests seemed set, every time the clinic would present us with embryos of different race, we were definitely open to it, especially as my husband and I are of different race (he’s Mexican and I’m white). Well none of the embryos they said were available seemed right and so each time we would pass…

In the meantime I became a member of an embryo adoption/donation Facebook page. This was a place where women could confide in each other and also post their profiles where possible donors could see them. Well one day I went out on a whim and replied to a donors profile. She had posted what she and her family were looking for in a family to adopt their embryos. She had very specific requests and I liked them! Well shortly after I replied, she wrote back and well she and her husband chose us! So they donated 4 embryos to us and we were ecstatic. She and I meshed really well, had many similarities and we immediately started the legal process to have the embryos transferred to us. Yes, I know sounds like a business transaction, and to be honest it kind of was. But with that came a whole new friendship and love for another family and this set of embryos. We are forever grateful to our donor family and look forward to the future of getting to know them and meet them in person 🙂

So we had our first embryo transfer in July and after the horrible and very long 2 week wait, we got a negative. I was devastated again and wondered wtf is wrong with me! How could this not work?? I thought the embryos are genetically tested, I have good insides, it’s just supposed to work. Unfortunately the body is a very big mystery and sometimes we don’t know why things fail. I was sad, really sad. Nobody understand that this was a huge loss for me. Nobody understood except for my infertility community, that I was assumed pregnant for 2 weeks and then not. So I grieved sort of and moved on… this was the only girl embryo we had so I had to really get through the fact that our next transfer would be a boy. Don’t get me wrong, I love little boys and being a boy mom in my mind sounds so lovely, I just had a hard time grasping it…

So here we are, less than a month away and we just signed our consents for our next transfer, Starting injections and mentally preparing…

xoxo