Fertility Journey Through Husbands Cancer, IVF, and Pregnancy Loss
Our IVF story starts with a cancer diagnosis that my 33 year old husband received a day after our wedding anniversary.
Fast forward through 4 rounds of chemo, abdominal surgery, and lung surgery he is now in remission, praise God. But we get the news we can’t ever, ever have children naturally. After every single thing we’ve been through, the sliver of hope we could’ve had is slashed and burned.
It’s hard to see your friends be in the stage of life you’ve waited for your whole life. So we start IVF with the intention that if we only get one perfect baby, we’ll be so happy. Egg retrieval was fairly easy for me, the quality of his pre-chemo sperm is not good at all, so we set the bar VERY LOW. So low in fact, we’re gearing up for adoption as our plan B.
We only got two embryos that are implantable. We implanted one, and it took. We saw our baby’s heartbeat, and for the first time, we felt hopeful. We told some family and friends, and we were so excited to finally have some good news to talk about. But, we miscarried at 9 weeks and 4 days. The heartbreak and grief we felt was terrible.
We had one more embryo left. We implanted again and held our breath.
10 months ago, I got to hold my beautiful precious perfect baby boy in my arms. I know what they mean when they say it’s the miracle of life. I cannot wait to tell my son about how hard his daddy fought to stay alive for him, and what our son had to overcome to be earth side. IVF is hard and painful, it’s lonely and you feel like you’re alone on an island sometimes. But when it’s the right time, holding that perfect baby makes up for all of the hurt in your life. Never give up on the hope to have a baby. Your time will come.
Macie Heingartner is a 34, invasive cardiology nurse in Texas.
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