As we have recently launched, I am sharing why I have formed Surrogacy Simplified and what brought me down this path. My road to parenthood was incredibly challenging and to make it a bit more digestible for everyone, I am going to break up our journey into a three-part series. Part one focuses on how I developed secondary infertility and why I made the difficult decision to have our children through surrogacy. Please note this post contains pregnancy loss and the image above is with my son, before my loss.

My Pregnancy

My story began in 2016 when I became pregnant with my son, Luke. As the pregnancy progressed without complications, my husband, Michael, and I booked a babymoon to Sedona and Scottsdale, Arizona over Christmas. We thought it would be the perfect time to go as I would have just had the 20-week anatomy scan. Once we got to Arizona, the trip was going as expected and we were having a great time. 

On Christmas Eve morning, I began having stomach pain that I attributed to trying different foods at our dinner the night prior. To my horror, I began bleeding, and we immediately went to the hospital. As soon as we got to the hospital, I was immediately rushed to triage and when the nurses began to examine me, we could tell from the look on their faces that something was gravely wrong. 

As it turned out, those stomach pains were not from food and I was going into labor. Initially, the goal was to stop the labor and stay on hospital bedrest until it was time to safely deliver the baby. However, my contractions were not stopping; the next decision was to have an amniocentesis. The amniocentesis was completed, but I was continuing to dilate and the nurses and doctors were unable to stop the labor from progressing. 

On Christmas morning, I delivered our son, Luke, at nearly 22 weeks gestation.

We were absolutely devastated. Not only were we grieving an unimaginable loss but all of the visions we had for our future with our baby. The next few weeks were an absolute blur but the next pivotal moment was that I was sitting on the couch with my parents and I began to hemorrhage. I immediately was sent to the OB-GYN. I will never forget going into the ultrasound room and being surrounded by pictures of newborn babies while I was waiting to be scanned to determine why I was hemorrhaging. It turned out that I had retained placenta, which is common in those with a preterm loss, and I needed an emergency D & C. 

Uncovering My Secondary Infertility

We saw a high-risk OB (known as Maternal-fetal medicine - MFM) to discuss our options if I became pregnant again. During the high-risk appointment, the MFM shared there was a very small chance that I would develop Asherman’s Syndrome. This can be caused by scarring from a procedure similar to what I had gone through (the D&C following my early delivery) and would make it nearly impossible to become pregnant on my own. She advised that I give it several months and see if I can become pregnant on my own. 

Several months went by and I was still not pregnant. I went to a gynecologist who specialized in Asherman’s Syndrome. When I saw the specialist, he said I needed to go back to the Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE) to have a hysterosalpingogram (HSG) done. Each appointment would take at minimum a month to schedule, which felt like a lifetime when wanting so badly to have a child. As time continued, more and more of my friends were pregnant. This was another layer to our grief and the thought that we would be raising our kids at the same time as our friends while receiving more and more disappointing news from the specialists.

After waiting again for the appointment, the HSG was incredibly painful because of the scar tissue. Ultimately, they were unable to do the procedure. We took these findings to the gynecologist who confirmed that I did have significant scar tissue, known as Asherman’s Syndrome. We were absolutely stunned. We thought the chance of having Asherman’s Syndrome was so slim that there was no way it would happen to me. When the scarring is removed, it has a high likelihood of recurrence and, it can cause the uterine lining to be so thin that an embryo would not be able to successfully implant, causing pregnancy to be nearly impossible. 

The gynecologist performed an advanced hysteroscopy (operative) and the scarring was removed. The surgery was painful and I had a balloon in my uterus for several weeks to clear the cavity. Once the balloon was removed, we were cleared to move forward with a fertility clinic and see if my uterine lining would thicken enough for a pregnancy. 

Back to the Fertility Clinic

After three failed IUIs, our RE advised us to begin IVF. During the IUIs, my lining remained thin which was the reason we believed that this method was not successful. I now had two major obstacles to overcome to successfully have a child on my own. 

The first obstacle would be getting pregnant (my lining being thick enough for an embryo to successfully implant) and the second obstacle is staying pregnant (given the fact that I had a 22-week loss). When weighing the pros and cons of my becoming pregnant, the doctors shared that even if the embryo was successfully implanted, there was a high likelihood that I would be in the hospital on bedrest beginning in the second trimester to try to get the baby to viability. It was at this point that my husband and I decided that it was time to pursue surrogacy as the safest option to have a baby.

Stay tuned for part two of our experience with surrogacy.