If you’ve rolled your eyes when someone said “You’re doing IVF?! How exciting!” …Yeah, me too.
It Starts With the Egg…
Well, for me it started when I was 2 years old loving on my baby brother.
I dressed up as a mom or babysitter for Halloween many years, started babysitting the week I turned 12, and my favorite show was TLC: A Baby Story.
I always just knew; I wanted to be a mom when I grew up.
The Best & Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done.
My husband and I started trying for a baby in 2017. Two years in and no positive pregnancy tests, but also no money for fertility treatments led us to foster care.
I became a mama for the first time with about 30 minutes notice in August 2019 when I picked up the cutest 3-day-old baby girl from the hospital.
For 15 months my world revolved around her until she was reunited with her birth parents. Now I love her from afar. We fostered 3 other children over the next year or so.
4 IUIs, Too Many💉Shots, 100,001 Wanda Dates, and 8 ❄ Later…
In 2021 a move to California put an end to our foster care journey and gave us the means to pursue fertility treatments.
I did 4 medicated IUIs in 2022 and never saw a positive pregnancy test so we moved on to IVF.
My egg retrieval in October 2022 resulted in 8 euploid embryos and we started preparing for transfer!
Peeing on a Stick Addict.
In January 2023 we transferred one embryo and I saw those precious two pink lines for the very first time, and the second, third, twentieth…I took a lot of pregnancy tests!
We saw and heard our precious boy’s heartbeat February 21st and it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard.
In March 2023 we were discharged from our fertility clinic and I was registered with the local birth center.
Too Good To Be True?
Just three days later my world fell apart, the bleeding started, a trip to the ER confirmed there was no longer a heartbeat, and I miscarried naturally at home that night.
Losing my son Ethan was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through.
More Trauma Plot Twists…
I jest…sorta…As we prepared for a second transfer life threw another plot twist and my husband and I decided that our marriage was not the right thing for either of us.
I have not given up on my dream of holding my own baby in my arms, but through grief and heartache, a new dream was born.
I found my calling as a doula. Supporting moms on their journeys through infertility, pregnancy, birth, and those early days postpartum brings me so much joy and fills my life with love and purpose.
Founding (in)Fertility Footsteps has allowed me to reach more women in need and transform all these “plot twists” into more light and love in the world.
Alex