Life By Martha

Thank you for taking the time to read our story. 

Our journey started after being married 2 years we finally became pregnant after 8 months of consistent trying. We, as most couples, were so excited to finally be pregnant and establishing our family. While Martha was with her family during a family get together (and even wearing a shirt that read "Pregnancy is totally in style") she began to have intense pains. Shortly after she began to miscarry. 

We were devastated. We had been told that miscarriages were pretty common, especially with first pregnancies, but we had been trying for so long and suddenly it was gone. It sucked. But, we picked our heads up and kept moving forward. 

After 1.5 years of trying we finally received our one and only miracle baby, Mae. We are so fortunate to have her and cheerish her every single day. We love her with every emotion we have. Receiving her is one of the greatest blessings in our lives and we're indebted to our Heavenly Father for her. Once she turned 1 we headed back to our fertility doctor to start the process again knowing we would need to start trying early with our history. After a few months we got pregnant but then quickly miscarried again. 

We kept at it, determined to figure out a solution and after a couple months on Femera without a pregnancy we did an IUI. We were 100% sure it worked!! After 11 negative pregnancy tests we were devastated when we found out it didn't work. However, when doing some pre-op bloodwork our doctors discovered that Martha was indeed pregnant!! Martha literally fell to the floor in emotion when we got that call. We immediately knew something was wrong. Our doctor assured us he thought it would be okay but 5am the next morning we received several calls and texts asking Martha to not eat or drink anything and rush to the clinic. 

We discovered it was an ectopic pregnancy pretty far along and Martha needed emergency surgery. We begged our doctor to try and save her fallopian tube, seeing how we had struggled in the past we didn't want to cut our chances in half with 1 tube. Our doctor did the procedure, removed the pregnancy and left the tube. During the surgery he also found polyps, 2 golf ball cysts, and stage 3 endometriosis. About a week after we were told there was a small piece of placenta missed during the first operation and it had continued to grow. Martha was started on a chemo injection to kill the placenta, but the chemo also killed lots of good cells in her body making her very ill for weeks, on top of recovering from her previous surgery. She had to be monitored every 48 hours, and sent to the hospital on many occasions all with our 18 month old in arms. It was a very rough month.

One morning, while still doing chemo treatments, she felt a tearing pain and was instantly in the most intense pain she had ever felt. We called our doctor and once again, we were rushed into another emergency surgery where her tube was completely removed. The chemo treatments were not working and the placenta was literally tearing through her fallopian tube. The removal of the tube now decreases our chance of pregnancy by 50%. 

December 2015 we found out we were pregnant again with the use of Femara. Once again our spirits were so high. After all the devastation this was some much needed fresh air. Things were progressing very well. We saw our baby on the ultrasound and Martha felt pregnant, we just knew this would be it! Unfortunately, during our follow up ultrasound where we were supposed to hear our babies heart beat, the ultrasound showed our baby stopped growing and there was no heart beat. Martha had a D+C at 8+ weeks. 

Since then we have done thousands of dollars in blood work to check for reasons why we would be miscarrying. Each failed pregnancy cost us thousands of dollars in medical bills plus the emotional toll. But we pushed through, worked hard, saved, and continued with Gonal F injections which would help us create a healthier mature egg in hopes of getting a healthy pregnancy. 10 Months later and $15,000+ spent we are still not pregnant. After speaking with multiple professionals we're being highly adviced to do IVF. 

For those of you who don't know what this means they will take Martha's eggs and fertilize only the healthiest eggs, grow it for 5 days and then implant the embroys that have grown and survived into her. Providing us with a healthy growing fertilized egg, and hopefully a healthy baby!! Maybe two!! 

We moved forward with IVF and signed all the paperwork, forked over $25,000 the week of Christmas and officially started the process! From the get-go the drugs made my sick, I laid in bed most of Christmas vacation overcome by pain and nausea. In the later weeks this turned to mornings spent over the toilet. Then my body finally got used to my oral pre meds and I started to feel normal again. Now for the big stuff, injections, blood work and ultrasounds every 48 hours to monitor how things were going. They were able to harvest 7 eggs, and fertilize 6. The stay and grow in the lab and by day 5 we got the call that 5 out of our 6 made it - they were all sliced open and biopsied. After being biopsied only 2 of them were viable, not the greatest results but we were still very happy we got 2. I got to take a couple weeks off before implantation day!! 

 

I wore a lucky necklace, hoodie that said "my heart is full", and socks that said "stick baby stick"! We were ready. Taylor and I were so excited, even though it was a day high in emotion we were able to laugh and make some good memories together - including dancing in my silly outfit to pass the time before I went into the surgical room. Having the embryo implanted was an amazing and spiritual experience. There isn't a way I could really convey how the whole procedure made us feel. They started out by bringing in the embryologist who told us she has been babysitting our little girl for the past 6 weeks and we had some good jokes about that. They showed her to us through a giant microscope, we watch her travel up the catheter and then watched over the ultrasound as she was placed in a good spot in my uterus. Then I was off to go lay in bed at home for a few days before going on with life normally. About a week later I got a positive pregnancy test, and I continued to take about 10 more just to make sure!! But then I got a test that looked very faint after having them be dark previously. This sent me into a panic and I rushed to the clinic to get my blood checked. They called me back with the news that things didn't look good but they would confirm with another blood test next week. I spent the whole weekend as you can image absolutely heart broken at the thought that we would loose this baby girl inside of me after everything we did to get her there. Monday they confirmed I was having a miscarriage and at 5 weeks we lost her. I had already imaged a whole life with her, we thought this was it and all the hope was crushed so quickly. I honestly didn't know if I could ever have another baby since we had tried so much and kept miscarrying. 

We went back to the clinic the same week I miscarried and had my uterus biopsied, and then also got referred to an autoimmune fertility specialist. In the mean time until we had some concrete reasons why I had had 5 total miscarriages now, including our genetically perfect little girl I didn't want to try to have any more babies. 

5 weeks later I was feeling extremely exhausted, dizzy, and spent a few days in bed not able to kick the weirdest feelings. This is when I got the prompting to go find a pregnancy test that had fallen behind everything in our main level bathroom - I didn't even know I had one until that moment when I had the flash on knowledge. So I looked at a calendar and realized I was indeed late, so I ran down stairs and peed on a stick that instantly turned a dark positive. I walked out into the living room where Taylor was watching TV. He asked me why my face looked so shocked, and I said, "I'm Pregnant." 
Taylor, "Wait... how is that possible, I don't understand..."
Me, "I don't know but but... I'm pregnant!" 

 

We couldn't help but feel that rush of excitement again followed by an even bigger rush of pain, doubt, hurt, not knowing if we could possibly manage to loosing another one. We contacted my doctor to get all the test results we had previously ran and finally got some answers. My official diagnosis was:

MTHFR
Endometriosis
Chronic Endometritis 

PA1-4G5G
Factor 13

Auto Immune Imbalance

Missing fallopian tube

High percentage of chromosome abnormality in my embryos 

 

It was a long list but we finally had some answer. So I was started on 2 rounds of antibiotics to cure my uterine infections, 3 doses of blood thinners a day, a special vitamin, and plasma infusions. Along with being monitored every 48 hours. Everyday I didn't wake up in blood I was happy. I jumped every time my phone rang knowing it could be my doctor with my latest results that would show if the baby was growing or if we should expect to miscarry soon. Between all the drugs I was very tender, bruised and exhausted. My anxiety was at an all time high, I coudln't sleep at night and when I did I usually had nightmares of loosing the baby. I finally started seeing a therapist after being diagnosed with PTSD from all the trauma of medical treatments and miscarriages. 

I always thought once I stayed pregnant it would be smooth sailing but I was wrong! Between all the meds, and weekly ultrasounds I found myself crying way too often and living in fear. Not to mention the insane medical bills that averaged $3,000-$4,000 monthly to keep the baby healthy. But holy smokes it was totally worth it, I was so relieved once a made it past my 12 week mark, and then the 20 week mark, and then the 30 week mark. Each one provided me with an extra level of comfort and relaxation. 

When we found out it was a boy I literally crumbled to the floor and bawled knowing that I would finally get to hold my little baby boy one day.

 

Such a long, expensive, heart wrenching emotional journey. But I also wouldn't trade it for anything - it changed who we were as individuals, parents, husband/wife, friends.
I am a better mother because of it, and my husband and I have had to cling to each other and learn to be happy with where we are in life even when it got hard. It gave us an immense dream and vision for starting a non-profit one day. Something we have written on our fridge and we talk about often. One day we will be able to help couples every year so they can grow their family without the immense financial burden to bare alone. We were blessed by some generous donations and each penny helped take a weight off our hearts. We cannot wait to do this for others!! We roughly added things up to costing around $50,000 without the cost of actually delivering the baby which will add another $6,000. Crazy to even think about that!!

Is our journey over!?? Not at all. 
Baby boy still has to get here! And we are already hoping that our other little frozen girl embryo can join our family in the years to come. Then we will still have hundreds of couples to help. This will be a life long journey, and almost a calling for our family.

 We believe adversity and loss has pushed us towards a life changing journey we wouldn't have without those 5 babies we lost.

Love,

The Phillips Family.