Benjamin's Birth Story, part 1

Over the last several months I've stumbled upon lots of mommy blogs relating the birth stories of their children. I love the idea and want to share Benjamin's birth story with you all. Actually, this might be more a story of the long road to his conception and birth.

I mentioned last year that Dave and I had been struggling to get pregnant. We went through three clinics, several doctors, acupuncture, medicines that made me go into menopause, our names on the First Presidency prayer roll, homeopathic imagery, and even a trip to the psychologist. Finally, after our fourth round of IVF, we were thrilled to learn in September that we were pregnant!!!

Within a week or two, I started spotting. Let me tell you how devastating it is to see even the smallest amount of blood when we had worked so hard to get to this point. I called the nurse at the fertility clinic and she had me come in right away for a checkup. She did an ultrasound and everything looked good. In fact, she discovered that both embryos had implanted and we were expecting twins! One of the twins was about two days behind the other but she didn't seem worried and assured us it would catch up.

However, by the time our next appointment rolled around at the end of the month, that second baby was a week behind. This time the nurse told us there is no way it would catch up and it would eventually reabsorb into the uterine lining. Then she proceeded to find the heartbeat on both babies. That made me all the more upset knowing that Baby B wasn't going to make it but still seeing it's heartbeat.

Over the next few weeks we transitioned over to our OB/GYN. Just a few days after my first appointment with him I woke up in a pool of blood at 2:00am. Dave called the emergency number and got the doctor out of bed. He said that we could go to the emergency room or wait and see him at 8am. Basically, whatever happened had happened and there wasn't anything we could do about it. In the doctor's office later that morning we had another ultrasound and thankfully all was well with the fetus. What a relief! We still don't exactly know why I bled so much but it is possible that Baby B was exiting the womb.

I mysteriously spotted one more time about a month later then finally, after a rocky start to a much-anticipated pregnancy, we were on our way to parenthood.