Hope, Joy, Loss, Grief & Partnership: Our Infertility Journey

[00:00:00]We're taking pregnant again.

[00:00:02]And unfortunately, we had our ninth miscarriage.

[00:00:06]And >> [music] [music] [music] >> All right. Are you comfortable with answering some questions, or do you like have a like you kind of say [music] your story? Which one are you more comfortable with?

[00:01:12]>> A little bit of both.

[00:01:15]>> Okay. Roll this [music] so I can roll.

[00:01:17]>> Got you.

[00:01:18]>> All right. Go whenever you're ready.

[00:01:19]Yes.

[00:01:19]>> Okay. Thanks.

[00:01:20]Um can you tell us your name, please?

[00:01:22]>> Hi, I'm Nova Styles.

[00:01:24]>> Thank you [music] for being here. Um can you tell us a little bit about your journey?

[00:01:28]>> Sure. My husband and I, Remo, have been trying to expand our family for 6 years now, and we started with naturally, and [music] we ran into some issues for about a year and a half. When we were noticing that we weren't successful after a year and a half, >> [music] >> we decided to seek out medical attention. And when we did that, the doctor said, "There's nothing we don't see anything [music] that's happening besides polycystic ovarian syndrome."

[00:02:03]And with that, the doctor said that could be stopping you all, but it's not [music] the problem that is causing the issues within the things that are happening. We started with a Clomid cycle and we did four Clomid cycles and we did get one successful cycle with Clomid and unfortunately that ended with a miscarriage. We continued to do a Clomid cycle with again with that and then we were unsuccessful. One trip we went to Tulum, Mexico and we came back and to our surprise, we were pregnant naturally. We went to the first ultrasound and we saw a heartbeat and then 2 weeks [music] later we went for another ultrasound and unfortunately we had another miscarriage. Our doctors went back to the drawing table to figure out what was happening because [music] we could get pregnant, but we kept having miscarriages and there was no telling what was happening. After the deep study that they did, they did a I always forget the name of it, but [clears throat] it's the test when they [music] put the solution through your fallopian tubes.

[00:03:08]>> Yeah, it's a >> It's a mock embryo transfer usually.

[00:03:10]>> No, no, no. You have your legs up on the thing for 3 or 2 >> Yeah, I remember that.

[00:03:16]>> Really, really uncomfortable.

[00:03:18]>> So, they did that again with that for me and they found that my tubes [music] were blocked. With that, it was kind of just figuring what was going on because usually when your tubes are blocked, the [music] pregnancy lands in the wrong place or you can't get pregnant, but we were getting pregnant. They said, "It's probably going to be difficult to continue to get pregnant naturally. We should try IVF." We sat for months to think about if we really wanted to do that. And by this time, we had we had pushed our wedding back and we were deciding if we were going to do an IVF cycle. Six months before our wedding we said, [music] let's do it. Let's do it because we were going to wait after the wedding to try again and everything or we'd start IVF.

[00:04:01]Before the wedding we said, let's try it, we'll see what happens. [music] We did our first IVF cycle. At this time we weren't sharing with anyone. We said, hopefully we'll get pregnant and then at our wedding we can share with everyone.

[00:04:13]We had a cycle and two days, I think before our wedding, we found out we were pregnant.

[00:04:24]The big surprise at our wedding, we shared with everyone that we were [music] expecting and everyone was in tears and it was like a huge surprise and everybody was excited. [music] Unfortunately, we were about nine weeks [music] with that pregnancy and we had another miscarriage. They just termed it as unexplained infertility because they couldn't figure out what was going on.

[00:04:48]Our doctor said, let's try another cycle. So, [music] we did a retrieval, we did a transfer for that one. We had some embryos, we were ready to go. We waited a couple months, we tried a second cycle. When we did that second cycle we decided that we would do a retrieval again, get some more embryos so we could bank [music] because it was unpredictable what was going to happen. When we did our second cycle, we got a few more embryos. We did a transfer and unfortunately, we didn't have any implantation.

[00:05:18]>> [music] >> Doctor said, we just have to keep going.

[00:05:21]And not much changed honestly [music] in like the cycles from cycle to cycle.

[00:05:26]In between that, we had >> [music] >> two more pregnancies, more miscarriages.

[00:05:33]The doctor decided that we should do the recurrent pregnancy loss panel to determine if anything [music] else was coming out. That came back nothing. So, at this point we had almost seven [music] miscarriages.

[00:05:55]To not have any answers, it became like really difficult trying to navigate the space, trying to figure out what's happening. [music] There's nothing from my husband's side, there's nothing from my side. What is causing the issues for us? We're able to get pregnant, but we keep [music] having miscarriages. But there were no answers. We just listened to the doctors. The doctor said we [music] just have to keep trying. The next cycle after that, we didn't get any embryo, but we still had a few more left, and [music] we decided, my husband and I, to change doctors at this point.

[00:06:25]>> [music] >> And so, we changed doctors. They put us on a different protocol. They did and incorporated some new things. They decided to put [music] us on probably two more medications, which got really really expensive with all those medications. We did get some more embryos, and we did get pregnant again.

[00:06:51]And unfortunately, we had our ninth miscarriage. [music] And >> [music] >> my husband and I said, "We have to stop.

[00:07:06]We have to stop.

[00:07:09]We have to take a break. [music] We have to focus on our mental health, our physical health.

[00:07:15]And then, [music] once we do that, we can figure out what we can do next."

[00:07:20]We took a year off. We're very close with each other. We lean on each other for a lot, and we healed through that.

[00:07:26]We lost 150 lbs [laughter] cuz we gained so much weight during IVF.

[00:07:32]We did therapy. You can never fully heal from this. It's an ongoing cycle of us healing, and right now, we're just navigating [music] in space of figuring out what we're going to do next. It's always the biggest question of when to completely say that's not, we're going to [music] stop, and then maybe this is our story where it's not through IVF or it's not at all.

[00:07:54]So, we're at the point where we're just figuring out what we're going to do [music] next and how we're going to navigate the space now from a different place because we're at more of a healed place [music] that we can make the decisions about what to do next.

[00:08:07]>> Yeah, and you know, thank you very much for sharing that.

[00:08:11]>> [snorts] >> Um how did [music] you know, you talked about how your partner helped you and supported you?

[00:08:18]How did he, you know, contribute through this journey and >> [music] >> first of all, thank you so much for sharing. You know how difficult this is.

[00:08:24]>> Thank you. He was [music] there every step of the way. Every appointment, he gave me every shot. [music] He's now almost like an IVF doctor.

[00:08:33]>> [laughter] >> He knows how to make the shots, administer the shots. He's there every step of the way, emotionally, physically. [music] If he could take the shots for me, he could.

[00:08:44]>> [laughter] >> But he's there every single step of the way, and I think that makes a huge difference >> [music] >> when you have that support from your partner 100% of the way.