More Than Miscarriage

There was a time when trying to have a baby felt simple.

I knew I wanted to be a mom. I imagined the moment I would see two pink lines, telling my husband we were having a baby, watching my belly grow, decorating a nursery, and eventually bringing our baby home.

I never imagined how much could happen between wanting a baby and actually getting to bring our baby home.

Our journey to becoming parents has included infertility, IUIs, IVF, countless appointments, medications, injections, procedures, embryo transfers, positive pregnancy tests, hope, heartbreak, and loss.

And somewhere along the way, trying to have a baby became so much bigger than simply trying to have a baby.

It became all-consuming.

It became the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the thing I thought about before I went to sleep. My life started revolving around cycle days, medications, appointments, bloodwork, ultrasounds, procedures, waiting for phone calls, and wondering what the next step would be.

Plans were made around treatment. My emotions were tied to test results. My body didn’t always feel like it belonged to me anymore.

There was always something I was waiting for.

Waiting for my period. Waiting for an appointment. Waiting for my body to respond. Waiting for a transfer. Waiting for a pregnancy test. Waiting for a beta. Waiting for an ultrasound.

Waiting to find out if maybe—finally—this would be our turn.

Infertility has a way of quietly taking up more and more space in your life until one day you realize just how much of yourself it has consumed.

When Trying Became Treatment

Part of our infertility story began with my diagnosis of PCOS—polycystic ovary syndrome.

Getting that diagnosis helped explain some of what was happening with my body, but having an explanation didn’t necessarily make it easier. PCOS can affect ovulation, and suddenly something I had always assumed my body would know how to do on its own wasn’t so simple.

Trying to have a baby started becoming less about trying and more about appointments, medications, monitoring, and figuring out what my body needed in order to give us a chance.

Before IVF, we tried IUI.

Our first round didn’t work.

We prepared to try a second time, but that cycle never even made it to the actual IUI because my body wouldn’t ovulate.

It was one of my first lessons in how little control you can have during infertility treatment. You can follow every instruction, take the medications, show up for every appointment, and do everything you’re supposed to do—and your body still may not cooperate.

Eventually, IVF became our next option.

And I want to make something very clear about that.

IVF isn’t a badge of honor. Infertility isn’t a journey anyone signs up for because they want to prove how strong they are.

This is something that gets dropped into your lap.

You don’t ask for the diagnosis, the appointments, the injections, the procedures, the financial burden, or the emotional roller coaster. You don’t wake up one morning and decide that IVF sounds like a fun way to have a baby.

You’re simply presented with circumstances you never wanted, and then you’re asked to make a decision: Do we proceed with IVF, or do we not?

We chose to proceed.

Not because I wanted to be brave. Not because I wanted to become an expert in fertility treatments. And definitely not because this was how I imagined becoming a mother.

We proceeded because we wanted a baby.

So, like so many people going through infertility, I learned an entirely new language.

Follicles. Lining. Estradiol. Progesterone. Embryos. Grades. PGT testing. FETs. Betas.

Numbers suddenly had the ability to completely change my day.

A good ultrasound could make me feel like everything was finally going to work. A disappointing blood test could send me spiraling.

I learned how strange it is to simultaneously know so much about reproduction and still have absolutely no control over whether you get to have a baby.

And with every embryo transfer, I allowed myself to hope again.

The First Transfer

Our first frozen embryo transfer was in July 2025.

We transferred a beautiful, genetically tested embryo.

I hoped this was it.

I analyzed every symptom. I wondered whether every cramp meant implantation. I imagined getting that phone call telling us we were pregnant.

Instead, the pregnancy test was negative.

Our first transfer had failed.

It was heartbreaking, but we still had hope.

So we tried again.

The Pregnancy That Changed Everything

Our second transfer was in September 2025.

This time, it worked.

I was pregnant.

After everything it had taken to get there, seeing a positive pregnancy test felt almost impossible to believe. I constantly was testing at home just wanting to confirm that those 2 lines were still there.

Then came another surprise.

There were two babies.

Twins.

For a little while, our entire future changed.

There weren’t just babies on a screen anymore. There were heartbeats.

There were plans.

There were dreams.

There was a version of our future where we were going to bring two babies home.

And then, in October, we lost one of them.

A few days later, we learned that we had lost both.

There is something about miscarriage that I don’t think I understood until I lived through it.

The world keeps going, but your world stops.

You stay frozen in that one moment in time—the moment someone tells you that your baby is not going to be born.

And somehow, while you’re still trying to comprehend those words, you’re being asked to make decisions you never imagined you would have to make.

Do you wait and let your body naturally pass the pregnancy? Do you have surgery? What happens next?

You’re being given options and asked questions, but part of you is still stuck on the sentence that came before all of them:

My baby is gone.

It feels impossible that you’re expected to make decisions about what happens to your body and your baby’s remains when you haven’t even begun to understand what just happened to your life.

And yet, outside of that room, the world hasn’t stopped at all.

There are birthdays being celebrated.

Anniversaries.

People are going out to dinner. Someone is getting married. Someone is announcing a pregnancy. Families are laughing together. People are making plans for next weekend.

There is laughter and joy happening everywhere around you.

And you are still standing in that one moment.

The moment you learned your baby wasn’t going to come home.

I remember realizing how strange grief is in that way. Something so catastrophic had happened in our lives that it felt like the entire world should have changed.

But it hadn’t.

The sun still came up the next morning.

People still went to work.

Cars still drove down the street.

The grocery store was still full of people buying dinner.

Life continued as though nothing had happened.

Their world kept moving. Ours had stopped.

I ultimately had a D&C on October 2025.

I walked into that day knowing I was still carrying the babies I had spent so long hoping for, while also knowing I would leave without them.

There are some moments in life that divide everything into a before and an after.

For me, this was one of them..

Trying Again

Eventually, we decided to try again.

Trying after miscarriage is different.

The innocence is gone.

A positive pregnancy test doesn’t automatically mean you’re bringing home a baby anymore.

You can be incredibly grateful and absolutely terrified at the same time.

In February 2026, we transferred another embryo.

And once again, I became pregnant.

When I saw that positive pregnancy test, I thought of my dear grandmother, who had always been one of my greatest role models. She had passed away in December 2025, and we had laid her to rest just before I began another round of medications.

Losing her had left an emptiness I was still learning how to carry. So when I found out I was pregnant, part of me wondered if she had somehow helped bring this baby to me.

After saying goodbye to her, beginning treatment again, and then seeing that positive test, it felt as though she was still with me—quietly guiding me, watching over me, and sharing in the hope of this new life.

I wanted to believe she had a hand in bringing this baby into our lives.

For a moment, it felt like losing her and becoming pregnant were connected by something I couldn’t explain. It gave me comfort to imagine that, even though she was no longer here, her love had somehow found its way to us.

Once again, I let myself hope.

And once again, we experienced a loss.

There are only so many times you can hear, “I’m sorry,” before you start wondering why this keeps happening to you.

Why can I get pregnant but not stay pregnant?

Is there something we’re missing?

Is there another test we should run?

Another medication?

Another protocol?

Another doctor?

Another explanation?

Infertility has a way of turning grief into detective work. staying up at night looking for the answers that no one has the answers to.

You are heartbroken, but at the same time you’re searching desperately for the reason—because if you can just find the reason, maybe you can prevent it from happening again.

Finding the Courage to Try Again

After our February loss, there were more questions, more testing, more appointments, and more searching for answers.

But eventually, we made the decision to try again.

In August 2026, we transferred another embryo.

By this point, pregnancy didn’t feel the way I once imagined it would.

There was still hope. There had to be hope, or I don’t think I could have walked into another transfer room.

But hope looked different now.

I knew too much.

I knew that a positive pregnancy test didn’t guarantee a baby.

I knew that a good beta didn’t guarantee a heartbeat.

I knew how quickly everything could change.

Still, we transferred that embryo.

And once again, I became pregnant.

For the third time, there was a baby we loved, wanted, and immediately began imagining a future with.

And in August 2026, we lost that baby too.

Another miscarriage.

Another baby we would never get to bring home.

I wish I could say that experiencing pregnancy loss before somehow prepares you for the next one.

It doesn’t.

You may recognize the medical terminology. You may recognize the signs. You may know what questions the doctor is going to ask. You may even know what comes next physically.

But knowing what is coming doesn’t make losing your baby hurt any less.

If anything, there is a different kind of heartbreak in realizing that you are living through something you had begged never to experience again.

After everything we had already been through, I wanted so badly for this pregnancy to be different.

I wanted this to be the one where I could finally exhale.

Instead, we found ourselves grieving again.

Four Babies

Today, our story includes four babies we desperately wanted and never got to bring home.

I wish I could write that sentence without it hurting.

I can’t.

I don’t know if I ever will.

They existed.

They were wanted.

They were loved.

And they changed me.

For a long time, I wondered what I was supposed to do with all of this grief.

Because when you have spent so much time fighting to become a mother, pregnancy loss can make you feel like you’re carrying an enormous amount of love with nowhere for it to go.

That’s part of why this blog exists.

Where We Are Now

After our fourth loss, we were once again left asking the same question:

What do we do now?

Except this time, that question feels different.

We’ve reached a point where my fertility doctor is nearing the end of the testing, medications, and treatment changes they can offer us.

That’s a difficult thing to hear after spending so much of this journey believing that if we just kept looking, eventually we would find the missing piece.

The next step is to look outside of my fertility clinic for more answers.

That means seeing a reproductive immunologist to explore whether there could be an immune component contributing to our recurrent losses. It also means seeing a hematologist to take a deeper look at whether there could be something happening with my blood or clotting that we haven’t uncovered yet.

I don’t know whether either of those appointments will finally give us an answer.

That’s one of the hardest parts.

You keep searching, testing, and hoping someone will find something—not because you want another diagnosis, but because sometimes having an explanation feels easier than being told there isn’t one.

And while we’re searching for answers, we’re also preparing to do something I never imagined we would have to do again:

Start another egg retrieval cycle.

More medications.

More injections.

More appointments.

More bloodwork.

More ultrasounds.

More waiting.

More hoping.

There is something incredibly complicated about reaching this point.

Part of me is exhausted.

Part of me is scared.

Part of me wonders how many more times I can put my body and my heart through this.

And yet, there is still a part of me that hopes.

That’s where our story is right now.

There isn’t a beautiful ending I can give you.

There isn’t a final diagnosis that explains everything that has happened.

There isn’t a treatment I can point to and say, This is the thing that’s going to work.

Right now, there are more specialists. More testing. Another egg retrieval. More decisions.

And so many unknowns.

For so long, infertility has felt like constantly reaching the end of one road only to discover another road waiting for us.

So, for now, we keep searching for answers.

And somehow, despite everything we’ve been through, we keep finding a way to hope.

Why I’m Telling My Story

I’m not starting this blog because I have infertility figured out.

I don’t.

I’m not here because I’ve reached the other side and can give you a perfectly packaged story with a happy ending.

I’m still living it.

I’m still trying to understand what comes next.

But I’ve learned that there can be an incredible amount of loneliness in trying to conceive, infertility, IVF, and pregnancy loss.

There are things people don’t talk about.

The jealousy you feel and immediately feel guilty for.

The pregnancy announcements you aren’t emotionally prepared to see.

The bathroom trips where you’re terrified to look at the toilet paper.

The way you memorize your HCG numbers.

The way you can love an embryo you’ve only ever seen in a tiny photograph.

The way grief can exist alongside hope.

And the exhausting decision to keep trying when you know exactly how badly it can hurt.

I want to talk about those things.

I want this to be a place where I can share what I’ve learned, what I’ve experienced, what has helped me, what hasn’t, and the things I wish someone had told me before I started.

Most importantly, I want someone going through this at 2 a.m., searching the internet for someone whose story looks like theirs, to find this page and feel a little less alone.

I don’t know exactly how our story ends yet.

That’s scary to admit.

But maybe I don’t need to wait for the ending to start telling it.

So this is my story.

The messy parts. The hopeful parts. The heartbreaking parts.

And everything that comes next.