Secondary Unexplained Infertility, Trying to Conceive After Loss: A Pregnancy Journey Without Answers

Growing a family is typically an exciting time for most couples. When Sasha and I decided to begin our journey to motherhood, we knew we wanted to do Reciprocal IVF. We used Sasha’s eggs and I carried. We were one of the lucky few, who fell pregnant on their first transfer and I gave birth to our son.

When he was one, we decided to try for a sibling. I went for checks at the clinic and everything looked healthy. Sasha and I decided we would attempt a non-medicatedIUI protocol. Two weeks later, “Not Pregnant” flashed across the screen on our home pregnancy test. This attempt had failed. We decided to try another IUI protocol, but this time we opted for a medicated cycle. “Not pregnant” flashed across the screen again. Knowing we only had one more vial of sperm from our retired donor and that we had one more embryo from Sasha’s original egg retrieval, we decided to move forward with a frozen embryo transfer, using our final embryo. Finally, we were given the green light.

Having fertility coverage through insurance is both a blessing and a curse. Advocating for yourself and educating yourself is a must when going through fertility treatments. It’s exhausting when insurance providers are only able to read from a script. Our green light turned into a cancelled cycle. I spent months working with my benefits department at work and with our insurance provider, to help them to understand IVF and the processes one must go through. The requirements for certain processes to be covered had to be explained, because otherwise it was pointless to offer any coverage at all. We finally had the green light from insurance, for the coverage we needed to move forward with our frozen embryo transfer.

“Pregnant”,flashed across our home pregnancy test! Words we were so excited to see! It had taken us three years to get to this point. At 5 weeks I began to spot.Immediately my mind started racing and I began to think the worst. Our fertility clinic scheduled us for an early ultrasound, where we were able to see our tiny baby and their tiny heart flicker. We were released from the fertility clinic to our OBGYN for care. We decided to announce our pregnancy early, because we wanted to enjoy every moment. Fast forward to October 2020. I was 12 weeks pregnant, when I was told there was no heartbeat. We had lost our second son. My body had experienced what we would later learn to be called aMissed Miscarriage. I later give birth at home, after being prescribed what was labelled as an “abortion pill.” We had our son cremated and decided to take some time to mourn, before ultimately deciding our next steps.

We were at a crossroads. As the donor we were using was no longer donating and had no extra vials left, we needed to understand what our best chances were. We decided to move forward with IVF, this time using...