Seventh little soul in my sixth pregnancy

By Alyce Howe

I met my husband James at the end of semester party at the university tavern when we were twenty-one. We were instantly inseparable, doing almost everything together. The strength of our relationship was tested and cemented when a few days shy of our one year anniversary my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer, six weeks later he died.

James proposed after two years and we were married nine months later. Fast forward three years and we decided it was time to expand our family. This is our story of IVF, miscarriage and TFMR.

We were twenty-seven and were disheartened when after a year of trying I still hadn’t fallen pregnant, after all the routine tests with the gp came back normal we decided to seek help from a fertility clinic. Three unsuccessful OI cycles later we moved onto IVF. 18 eggs collected and 7 embryos later we were over the moon, making jokes about where we were going to put all our 7 children. How naive.

I had a month off to recover from mild OHSS before doing our first frozen transfer. It resulted in a biochemical pregnancy, the test was positive but the levels were not high enough. Another blood test a few days later showed the HCG levels were on a decline. We went straight back into another FET cycle, which resulted in a BFP! Sadly the first scan at seven weeks showed I’d had a missed miscarriage and I was booked in for a D&C.

Covid hit a couple months later so when my body had recovered and I was ready to do another FET all the clinics had stopped allowing cycles. By some miracle we managed to fall pregnant naturally that month. We did pregnancy tracking through the clinic and we graduated into the care of an OB. At 11 weeks our NIPT results came back high risk for T13, a scan revealed our little miracle baby was not compatible with life. I believe the comment the sonographer kept repeating was “I’m surprised this baby is still alive.”

Three days later I entered the hospital alone (thanks covid) to terminate the pregnancy of our very wanted miracle baby. I can still vividly remember every detail of that morning. From the light of the sunrise coming through the windown as the nurse did my admission, to the looks of pity as I sat in the waiting room alone hysterically crying. Watching other women coming in for c sections while I waited to terminate my baby was heartbreaking. I was informed by the doctor when I woke up that a scan before surgery showed the baby’s heart had stopped beating. They changed the classification to D&C after a  missed miscarriage, and the doctor said, and I quote “that should make you feel better because you were crying and upset before.” But the damage had been done, we had spent the week preparing for the termination, agonising over the decision even though we didn’t see another way through. Nothing prepares you for longing for a baby for years and then needing to sign paperwork to end her life. To being asked by hospital staff over and over again what led to the decision of termination.  To making arrangements to pick up her ashes. Our beautiful, perfect to us girl, Iris.

Three months later I was pregnant again from our third FET, another little girl but with T16. The 7 week scan revealed she was measuring behind, not a good sign in IVF pregnancies so we waited for her heart to stop beating. In November of 2020 I experienced my third miscarriage and subsequent D&C of the year. I remember after each terrible scan I would breakdown to my husband saying please don’t ask me to do this again, I cannot go through this again.

However of course we went back. Each time I would find my strength and surprise my husband by suddenly talking about another transfer. Our fertility specialist had a plan, we were going to start double transfers. His reasoning was we had four embryos in the freezer and we wanted to use them up so we could start a second IVF round with genetic testing but in the meantime if they worked, great! Our first DET was a BPN, but our second one worked.  Seven weeks later we saw our twins for the first time. Pregnancy after loss is such a rollercoaster, we constantly expected the worst, but we passed our NIPT and 13 week scan with no issues. We started to feel confident about bringing our twins home. It felt like our last two embryos had completed our family and wrapped everything up nicely.

We were utterly devastated to discover at our 19 week anatomy scan that one of our twins had died. The days and weeks to follow were so incredibly traumatic as we waited to see if the other twin would survive. There were and still are no obvious reasons as to why our twin  had passed away. Its a hard road to travel, carrying one alive baby and one deceased baby. Juggling grief and joy. Grief for the baby we lost, the loss of our identity as twin parents, the loss of that bond we imagined between our twins.

In November 2021 at 35 weeks my waters broke and we welcomed our beautiful baby boy Sam who spent the first 9 days being cared for by the saints in the NICU. Our other son who we named Jack was cremated, he sits on our cabinet, often next to a vase of sunflowers.

When Sam was eight months old I completed another round of IVF, 21 eggs and 8 embryos frozen. The first embryo transferred was another miscarriage and I had my fourth D&C. We took six months off before undertaking our next transfer. I am currently 13 weeks pregnant from that transfer, everything is going well but there’s an overwhelming feeling of waiting for something terrible to happen.

I’m writing this sitting here pregnant with my seventh little soul in my sixth pregnancy, something I do not take for granted. Pregnancy is a miracle that is so easy for some and so difficult for others. I’m not sure what can be taken away from my story, maybe to always have hope. I can only hope that telling it helps, even just one person.