I’m so thrilled to honor Lauren as another beautiful woman embracing motherhood and all that comes with it.  As all women that are a part of the Mothers of the Heart project, I welcome her with warm love and gracious hugs.  To read more about the Mothers of the Heart project, go here.

In June of 2011, after 2 years of marriage, my husband and I decided we were ready to start a family.  Not really knowing any differently, I pretty much assumed it would just happen without a problem and I was right – I got pregnant immediately.  We were so excited to share the news with our families and then with our friends (and pretty much anyone else who would listen) once I’d made it through the first trimester because when you’ve made it past 12 weeks nothing can go wrong, right?  That announcement would later come back to haunt me when we lost our first baby at 19 weeks.  We were devastated.

We wanted that baby SO badly and I thought the only way I could even begin to heal was to get pregnant again.  I assumed we’d get pregnant quickly again with no problem but that didn’t seem to be the case.  Month after month we were disappointed, while it seemed like everyone around us was announcing pregnancies.  It was heartbreaking.  After almost a year with no luck we went to see a fertility doctor and while going through all the preliminary tests, I got pregnant naturally.

After the loss of our first baby, pregnancy was forever changed for me.  I knew all too well that pregnancy doesn’t necessarily equal a baby and every appointment and ultrasound (and there were many – I was considered high risk at this point) was accompanied by debilitating anxiety. I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop and unfortunately, it did.  We lost our second baby at 12 weeks.

Once we were ready to try again, we went right back to the fertility doctor.  Again, they ran all the tests and again, I got pregnant naturally.  I spent the next 9 months waiting for something to go wrong – but this time, it didn’t.  On December 31, 2013, we welcomed our sweet boy and my heart finally began to heal.

My husband has several siblings and I have an older sister so we always knew we wanted more than one child.  Around our son’s first birthday we decided to start trying again,  A year passed with no luck so we went back to the fertility doctor.  Since it had been a while they re-did all the tests and once again, I got pregnant naturally.  After everything we’ve been through I’ve never really felt comfortable making any sort of big pregnancy announcement, but I told myself I was going to try and let go of all the anxiety and actually enjoy the pregnancy so we announced to our families on Thanksgiving.  Sadly (but not unexpectedly for me, by this point), we lost our fourth baby at 8 weeks, right around Christmas.

Back to the fertility doctor we went.  We did one IUI without success and then in early 2016, we started our IVF journey.  IVF is hard.  It’s painful (both emotionally and physically), and it’s exhausting, and it’s all-consuming.  We had two unsuccessful frozen embryo transfers, and after each one I really questioned whether I could put myself through another.  And then, after our third FET (frozen embryo transfer), it finally worked and I was pregnant.  I only made it to about 6 weeks this time and just last month we lost our fifth baby.

I never could have imagined that I’d struggle with infertility, or that at 34 years old I’d have been pregnant 5 times with only one living child to show for it.

I cannot even begin to put into words how much I love my son, but that doesn’t dull the pain of so desperately wanting to have another child and not being able to.  It’s been a tough few years so for now, we’re going to take a little break and enjoy some time as a family of three.