The Story of Our Rainbow Baby

I’m only one week away from the 3rd trimester and realized I still haven’t taken the time to write down baby girl’s story. What a start she had, seems like that’s a re-occurring theme with this family. So here it is, the story of our little fighter.

To tell this story we have to back way up to this summer, as you may recall I had surgery in June to remove both of my fallopian tubes, cut out endometriosis and remove 3 polyps that had grown again. Once that surgery was over we ramped right up to get ready to transfer. July and August I had Depot Lupron shots- my least favorite IVF med. It puts you into menopause and the rest of the summer I dealt with massive headaches, hot flashes and insomnia- oh my! I would do anything for my kids and voluntarily going into menopause is just one thing in a long list of horrible meds I’ve given myself to have babies.

Somewhere in the midst of prepping for a transfer Rob and I thought getting a puppy would be a good idea- man are we idiots.

We introduced Theo and we all fell in love with that sweet puppy, well everyone except our giant cat Thomas. Thomas had a different opinion about us getting a dog, one that left me in the ER on IV antibiotics just one week prior to transfer.

After breaking up a literal cat and dog fight and concerns about how my injury would impact our transfer, Rob and I made the very hard decision to bring Theo back to his breeder. We are so happy to say he found an amazing home, it just wasn’t meant to be with us. The scars on my arm will never let me forget our one-week adventure in being puppy parents though haha.

After returning Theo it was time to focus on our baby, I had one more check-up with my doctors in the cities, my lining was nice and thick and ready to welcome our little peanut home.

So, on Monday, September 13th I spent the morning having breakfast with Rob and then getting acupuncture from my absolute favorite Nicole Lange in the cities- she puts me at peace and has been there for every single success and failure since we started working with CCRM. She pumped me up, got my body ready to accept the baby and off we went for the big moment.

Some of you may know this, but we haven’t talked broadly about the fact that we only had 1 girl embryo. She was our weakest and lowest rated embryo of them all. Don’t get me wrong, she was/is a very good quality embryo- just compared to the 5 brothers in front of her, she was the lowest rank. Rob and I did a lot of praying and decided that we wanted to give her a chance to join this family knowing that might mean it wouldn’t work. We still don’t know if this is our last baby, but if there was one small silver lining in our horribly hard journey to having kids it was that we got a choice with her. Our little day six 5bb girl was transferred perfectly by our incredible doctor April Batcheller. We were all smiles, laughter and joy in the room that day.

Home with our babies, post transfer.

Once a transfer is complete, you have to wait 9 excruciatingly long days to know if it worked. Those days are filled with daily meds, awful hormones and fun progesterone shots in the butt- daily.

Some women test at home early, I don’t because it gives me so much anxiety to think about a negative test. In fact, up until this baby I NEVER tested before the phone call from my clinic, but this time I decided to test that morning so Rob and I could find out at home together and then hear from the clinic on the actual beta number. So, at 5:30am I peed on a stick, waited 3 long minutes, and there -faintly- was 2 lines. We were pregnant.

Rob was ecstatic, I wasn’t. That second line was so faint, I knew something was off. Being an infertility patient, sometimes we know too much. I knew that at 9 days post transfer we should be over an HCG of 50 making a line on a pregnancy test pretty dark. With the twins I was over 300, with Noah, the baby we lost, I was over 100- just a few hours later the call would come in- she was only at 24.7.

So many tears that day. I thought it was over. I thought we were already losing her- our sweet little girl. My amazing nurse Andrea was calm on the phone but clear- this could go 2 ways. Either we would see the number rise in 48 hours or we wouldn’t. She reminded me that she had seen much lower numbers- at even a 1 with positive outcomes. This isn’t the number we wanted, but we were far from done.

Rob, through all of this, was a rock, his faith un-shook. He never waivered, he knew she was in there growing and fighting. His strength and conviction got me through and gave me steady shoulder to lean on when I was weak. Having a strong partner through all of this is so important. There have been times I was the rock, pulling us through unimaginable pain and sadness and other’s where Rob takes the wheel. We lean into each other, something I love and appreciate about him.

The next day, I tested at home again and to my surprise the line looked a little darker.

Hope. What a powerful thing hope is. It got me to the next day, 11 days post transfer, where I tested at home again before the blood draw and lost it because the line was lighter. Stupid home tests and stupid me- this is why you shouldn’t test at home when you’re an IVF patient- they are unreliable. I once again thought it was game over until I got a phone call saying my HCG had doubled- we were up to 51.3. We made a plan to test my HCG one more time in 4 days.

That was the day I decided to trust. To trust His plan, to trust my body, to trust my doctor, to trust my daughter. That day I decided I was going to will her to live. To grow. To thrive. I decided to ditch the home tests and trust that I would meet my daughter here on earth. I leaned into my faith instead of away from it. Do you know what gave me the strength to do that, even before we knew what our next number was? Noah. Driving home from getting my blood tested I was praying and listening to my favorite play list and the song Rainbow by Kasey Musgraves came on. I was of course singing, praying and crying. The sky was clear, no rain in sight and wouldn’t you know it, when she sang the words, “let go of your umbrella, darling I’m just trying to tell ya, that there’s always been a rainbow hanging over your head” my windshield wipers went off on their own. I knew it was Noah. I knew he was telling me to let go, to trust and that he was right there with me and his little sister getting all of us through these hard days. An hour later we got the call, my HCG had quadrupled and was now at 213.2. Praise God.

The next step was to wait another 2 weeks for our first ultrasound. To say I was free from anxiety at this point would be a lie. The trauma of losing Noah just one year ago is still there. The first ultrasound is a big one- there is either a heart beating or there isn’t. The baby is either on track with growth, or it isn’t. We drove to CCRM on Monday October 11. Yes that’s right the 11th- if you’ve been here a while, 11 is my number, my sign from God that I’m on track. We were checked in at 1:11 for my ultrasound on my 11th transferred embryo.

We were brought into a room, my favorite nurse Andrea was right by my side, holding my hand.

Rob was there, eager and anxious just like me. I was shaking so badly it was hard to sit still, the ultrasound tech was amazing- she knows how big this moment is and almost immediately said, “you transferred one embryo, we have one healthy baby with a strong heartbeat!” We did it. There she was, right on track- heart beat of 126. Once the heart beat is over 120 beats per minutes, the likelihood of losing that baby falls to under 5%.

Here I sit at 27 weeks pregnant still in awe of our rough start. So thankful to know she’s soon going to be in our arms. These 27 weeks have been dotted with so much joy and so much anxiety. There is always a little fear lingering in the back of my mind of what could go wrong. But, I choose to trust in the plan and I trust that she is here to stay.

So, the count down is on- with bated breath we have 13 (or less) weeks to go. The final sign- her due date. She is due on 5/31/22. My birthday, her brother’s birthday. Not planned by us, but surely by her, her brother Noah and our Father in heaven. An amazing gift to us from them. What a birthday celebration it will be.