When we first started talking about fertility treatments, I wanted to start with the least invasive option.
IUI felt manageable.
It felt less scary than IVF. Fewer needles. Fewer medications. Less overwhelming. And in my mind, maybe this would be all we needed.
Maybe this would be our answer.
IUI #1
Our first round of IUI actually went pretty smoothly.
I took the medications they prescribed, went to the appointments, and eventually did my trigger shot.
And then we did the IUI.
I remember thinking, This could be it.
This could be the thing that finally gives us our baby.
Then came the two-week wait.
If you’ve ever gone through fertility treatment or trying to conceive, you know those two weeks somehow feel like two months. You analyze every cramp, every feeling, every tiny change in your body. You wonder if something feels different. You try not to get your hopes up while simultaneously imagining what it will feel like to finally see those two lines.
We waited.
And waited.
And then we tested.
Nothing.
No positive test.
No baby.
So, we picked ourselves back up and decided to try again.
IUI #2
We started another round.
More medication. More appointments. More monitoring.
Except this time, my body wasn’t cooperating.
My follicles weren’t growing the way they needed to.
I wasn’t ovulating.
There was nothing to trigger. Nothing to inseminate.
We had to cancel the cycle.
And I was devastated.
I think part of what hurt so badly was that I had convinced myself IUI was supposed to be the easy fertility treatment.
Of course, no fertility treatment is actually easy. But compared to everything I had heard about IVF, IUI seemed simple.
And somehow, even that wasn’t working for my body.
I remember hearing that we were cancelling the cycle and feeling something shift inside of me.
My heart already knew what was next.
IVF.
The Word I Had Been Afraid Of
IVF scared me.
I knew there would be injections. A lot of them. I was used to injections, since I have RA. But this, this was a different ball game.
There would be medications, monitoring appointments, blood draws, ultrasounds, an egg retrieval, anesthesia, waiting for fertilization reports and then waiting to find out how many embryos made it.
It felt like so much.
But after that cancelled IUI, something changed.
I wasn’t just afraid anymore.
I was ready.
I knew I needed to do this.
And I also knew I wasn’t going to do it alone.
My sweet husband—who absolutely hates needles—was right there beside me.
He was there for the shots.
He was there through the hormones and the ups and downs of stimulation medications.
He was there for the appointments, the waiting, the worrying and the hoping.
We were doing this together.
And at that point in our story, we truly believed IVF was going to be our happily ever after.
We were going to retrieve so many eggs.
We were going to make so many embryos.
We were going to have the two children we had always dreamed about.
We just had to get through this part first.
That belief kept me going.
Every injection had a purpose.
Every appointment was getting us closer.
Every uncomfortable moment was going to be worth it because, at the end of all of this, we were going to have our family.
I didn’t know then what our IVF journey would actually look like.
I didn’t know how many times our hearts would be broken.
I didn’t know how complicated trying to have a baby could become.
At that moment, though, I had hope.
So much hope.
And sometimes I miss that version of myself—the woman standing at the beginning of IVF, terrified of what was ahead but completely convinced that her babies were waiting for her on the other side.
She didn’t know what was coming.
But she was brave enough to keep going anyway.
And I’m really proud of her for that.
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