More Than Miscarriage

There is something no one really prepares you for when you walk into an IVF clinic for the first time.

You know there will be appointments. You know there will be needles. You know there will be tests.

But I don’t think you fully understand how quickly trying to have a baby goes from something intimate between you and the person you love to something involving blood draws, test tubes, doctors, nurses, medications, transvaginal ultrasounds, procedures, surgeries, and more appointments than you ever imagined.

We grow up being taught that making a baby happens the fun way.

It is supposed to be about intimacy. Love. Maybe a bottle of wine. A positive pregnancy test that catches you completely by surprise.

For some of us, it doesn’t happen that way.

We get to make our babies with science.

And at the beginning, I don’t think I understood just how much science was going to become part of my life.

The Testing Before the Testing Before the Testing

When you first start at a fertility clinic, you think, Okay, they’re going to run some tests and figure out what’s wrong.

And then you realize just how many tests there are.

Bloodwork.

Hormone testing.

Genetic testing.

Ultrasounds.

Testing to look at your uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, egg reserve, and everything else that could possibly give your doctor another piece of the puzzle.

And then there’s the HSG.

The procedure no one really prepared me for.

You know it’s necessary. You know they need to evaluate your uterus and fallopian tubes. You know it’s another piece of this giant puzzle you’re desperately trying to solve.

But what I wasn’t prepared for was lying there, completely awake, thinking, how in the world are we just casually doing this in an office?

For me, it felt like a form of torture I never imagined I would voluntarily sign up for just because I wanted to have a baby.

And then it’s over.

You get dressed. You walk back through the waiting room. You get in your car. And somehow you’re expected to continue with your day go back to work like something completely normal just happened.

Infertility has a strange way of making the unimaginable become routine.

And the HSG is only one test.

Then your husband or partner gets their turn.

More testing. More labs. Semen analysis. Genetic testing. More questions about family history and medical history.

Suddenly both of you are being examined in ways you probably never expected when you decided you wanted to have a baby together.

And through all of it, there is this strange anticipation waiting for the results.

You refresh the portal.

You see the notification that new lab results have been posted.

Your heart drops every single time.

And there was a part of me that wanted them to find something.

I know that sounds strange.

But when you’ve spent so long wondering why this isn’t happening for you, you almost want something to be wrong.

Not something terrible.

Just something fixable.

You want someone to look at a lab result and say:

“There it is.”

There’s the reason.

Here’s what we do.

We fix this, and then you get your baby.

Because somehow having an answer feels easier than living inside the unknown.

But that isn’t what happens for so many of us.

Sometimes there isn’t one abnormal lab value.

There isn’t one diagnosis.

There isn’t one thing you can point to and blame.

Instead, there are unknowns.

And there are proven steps forward. Treatments that work for a lot of people. Protocols that statistically give you a better chance.

But a treatment working for the masses doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you.

And that is one of the hardest parts of infertility.

You Become a Human Pincushion

At first, the appointments aren’t terrible.

You go here and there.

You get your feet wet.

You learn the terminology.

You start understanding what all the acronyms mean. You learn what numbers you’re supposed to hope go up and which ones you hope stay low.

And then you get to an egg retrieval cycle.

Suddenly, your calendar belongs to your fertility clinic.

Appointments every couple of days.

Blood draw.

Ultrasound.

Another blood draw.

Another ultrasound.

“Come back in two days.”

Then again.

And again.

Your veins become harder to find. You know which arm is the “good arm.” You know exactly where to put your belongings before climbing onto an ultrasound table. You stop questioning whether you need to undress from the waist down because, of course, you do.

Things that once would have felt incredibly invasive somehow become another Tuesday morning.

From October 2024 through September 2026, my own fertility journey has included:

• 43 ultrasound appointments
• 50 bloodwork appointments
• 5 procedures
• 8 doctor consultations
• 4 surgeries
• 4 frozen embryo transfers
• 3 pregnancies
• 0 live births

And those are just the things I can count.

Those numbers don’t capture the medications.

The injections.

The phone calls.

The insurance conversations.

The portal messages.

The hours spent researching something your doctor mentioned for 30 seconds.

The rearranging your work schedule.

The canceled plans.

And they definitely don’t capture the waiting.

the waiting…

Waiting for lab results.

Waiting for follicles to grow.

Waiting for retrieval numbers.

Waiting to find out how many eggs fertilized.

Waiting for embryos to grow.

Waiting for genetic testing results.

Waiting for transfer day.

And then the longest wait of all.

Waiting to find out if it worked.

The Guilt No One Talks About Enough

There is another side of IVF that I don’t think we talk about enough.

The guilt.

When you are the person whose body is going through most of the treatment, it’s easy to think that IVF is happening to you.

But infertility happens to your relationship, too.

There have been times when I’ve felt guilty for what I was putting my husband through.

Not because he made me feel that way.

Because I made myself feel that way.

The appointments.

The disappointments.

The financial decisions.

The canceled plans.

The medications and hormones.

The procedures.

The surgeries.

The waiting.

And maybe hardest of all, watching someone you love watch you hurt and knowing there is absolutely nothing they can do to make it better.

You’re both trying to get to this tiny little miracle.

A baby that doesn’t even exist yet can somehow already occupy so much space in your marriage, your conversations, your finances, your calendar, and your heart.

And sometimes I think back to how we were taught babies were made.

With intimacy.

With love.

With two people.

Nobody tells you that sometimes making your baby will involve a reproductive endocrinologist, an embryologist, nurses, phlebotomists, anesthesiologists, pharmacists, ultrasound technicians, surgeons, needles, medications, test tubes, laboratories, and an entire medical team.

That isn’t exactly the romantic version we were sold.

But maybe that doesn’t make the love behind it any less real.

Maybe it shows just how far you’re willing to go for someone you haven’t even met yet.

When Science Becomes Your Friend and Your Enemy

When I first walked into the fertility clinic, I was full of hope.

I wondered what our baby would look like.

Would they have my eyes?

My husband’s smile?

Whose personality would they get?

Instead of making our baby the old-fashioned way, we were going to make our baby with science.

And honestly, in the beginning, there was something kind of incredible about that.

I genuinely believed science would give us answers. We would do the testing, figure out the problem, follow the steps, and eventually reach the finish line.

I didn’t understand yet that infertility doesn’t always work that way.

Now that I’ve lived on this side of IVF for almost two years, my relationship with science is a lot more complicated.

Science has given me hope I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Science has created embryos.

Science has allowed us to keep trying.

Science has given doctors ways to look inside my body, investigate problems, change protocols, perform procedures, and give us another chance when the last one didn’t work.

Science has become my friend.

But science has also shown me things I never wanted to know.

It has given me numbers I couldn’t stop thinking about.

It has turned something that should have been intimate into something incredibly clinical.

It has taught me that you can do everything right and still get the wrong result.

And maybe most painfully, it has taught me that sometimes there simply isn’t an answer.

Sometimes there isn’t a test result that explains everything.

Sometimes you don’t get the magical moment where the doctor says, “We found it. Here’s the problem. We’ll fix this and everything will work.”

Sometimes the answer is simply:

“We try again.”

Science has become my enemy, too.

And that’s the strange relationship I have with IVF now.

I am incredibly grateful that it exists.

And I desperately wish I had never needed it.

If You’re Just Starting

If you’re standing where I stood in October 2024, walking into a fertility clinic for the first time, I want you to know something.

You do not have to understand everything on day one.

You are going to hear words you’ve never heard before.

You’re going to learn an entirely new language full of abbreviations you never wanted to know.

You’re going to Google things from the parking lot after appointments.

You’re going to stare at lab results wondering whether a number is good or bad.

You’re going to read success stories and convince yourself you’ll be one of them.

Then you’ll read someone else’s story and completely terrify yourself.

Take a breath.

Ask questions.

Write things down.

Do your research.

Find someone who has been through it.

And please remember that someone else’s IVF story does not determine yours.

There are proven paths forward, but every person walking them carries a different body, a different diagnosis, a different medical history, and a different story.

I wish I could go back and talk to the woman who walked through those clinic doors in October 2024.

I wish I could tell her exactly what was ahead of her.

But maybe I wouldn’t.

Because I don’t know if she needed to know yet about the 43 ultrasounds, 50 blood draws, 5 procedures, 8 doctor consultations, 4 surgeries, and 4 frozen embryo transfers.

Maybe that version of me didn’t need to see the entire road.

Maybe all she needed to know was:

Walk through the door.

Ask the questions.

Take the next step.

Because IVF isn’t always about being strong enough to see the entire staircase.

Sometimes it’s just about having enough hope left to take the next step.

And then the next.

And then the next.

Until hopefully, somehow, science helps you make the tiny little miracle you’ve been fighting for all along.

We didn’t get to make our baby the way we were told we would. We’re making ours with hope, heartbreak, needles, science, a whole lot of love, and the stubborn decision to keep trying.