Infertility Awareness Week - What Our Experience Has Been Like

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week. Having secondary infertility has affected my life very deeply, and to spread awareness and understanding I decided to put together this post about what secondary infertility has really been like. It's one of the hardest things I've been faced with. It’s important to note that everybody’s experience with infertility is unique and personal, so while I am sure there are commonalities with my experience, I also don’t speak for everyone who has been here.

What is it like to have secondary infertility and be unable to have more children?

It’s buying so many ovulation tests that never seem to help enough to get pregnant on our own.
It’s buying so many pregnancy tests that always turn up negative.
It’s getting your hopes up every time your period is even a little bit late, only to be crushed when it shows up month after month.
It’s trying to get pregnant for years while watching friends and family continue adding kids to their families.
It’s remembering how much you loved feeling the movements inside the womb, and never getting to feel that again.
It’s anticipating the excitement of pregnancy when you are getting ready to add to your family, only to be more and more heartbroken that that never comes.
It’s waiting to see how your family dynamics will change when you add more children, only for things to never change.
It’s talking about the fun ways you and your spouse might want to announce a pregnancy, and never getting to use any of them.
It’s imagining the bond that your current children will create as they meet and get to know their baby brother(s) or sister(s), and never being able to experience it.
It’s hearing your kids talk about how they want to have more siblings that they can play with, and wishing you could have given that to them years ago.
It’s keeping all of your baby clothes for years for your future children only to have to get rid of them without ever using them again.
It’s giving yourself so many shots and feeling a bigger emotional toll from it than you expected.
It’s having all the fun taken out of sex as it becomes more of a chore for both of you because of the pressure and timing.
It's all the testing and procedures and never determining a cause for your infertility.
It’s the mood swings of hormones from medications.
It’s bruising and puncture marks all over your belly from injections.
It’s getting your hopes up with every IUI cycle, only for it to fail time after time.
It’s getting your hopes even higher when you try IVF, only to be crushed when even that doesn’t work.
It’s crying at the doctor or on the phone because once again you received bad news.
It’s paying thousands of dollars for fertility treatments and coming up with nothing.
It’s imagining for years the complete family you want to have someday, only to ultimately learn that you can’t have any more kids.

(Pictured: all the syringes from my self-injections)

It’s loving your little family with all of your heart, and also feeling like it will never feel complete.
It’s feeling jealous and bitter about friends and family having babies while you can’t, and feeling guilty that you feel that way because you also love them, are genuinely happy for them, and would never blame them for having more kids and would never want them to not be able to.
It’s looking forward to trying again to breastfeed because having twins as your first was too overwhelming to keep it up, only to never get to try again.
It’s hoping that maybe next you will have one baby because you never got to feel the magic of devoting yourself to one tiny infant without worrying about another infant, and never getting to experience that.
It’s people telling you that maybe when you take a break it will happen, and that never being the case.
It’s having random meltdowns because something (big or small) triggered your grief.
It’s picturing your kids in your old baby swings and bouncers as you assemble them to sell and aching to see babies in them again.
It’s not bothering to go through any of your baby clothes as you sell them because when you tried to you ended up cradling them like a baby and crying.
It’s not pursuing more extensive options to grow your family because it’s too much financially and emotionally, but having to navigate the deep emotional impact of being done.
It’s having a list of baby names you and your spouse want to use and never getting to use them.

It's planning on things like walking with a baby to the bus stop to greet their older siblings home from school, only for those plans to never be realized.  
It’s dealing with the normal emotions of having had your last children, without getting to cherish any “lasts” because you never thought you wouldn’t be able to have more.
It’s feeling overwhelming loneliness even though you have a great support system, because infertility has a way of just always feeling lonely and isolating.
It’s not fully relating to those who have primary infertility because at least you had some kids before being infertile, while also not relating to those who haven’t had any infertility problems.
It’s feeling so grateful for the family that you have, while simultaneously being so heartbroken over not being able to have any more.
It’s holding on to the hope that eventually it will work out, and it never does.
It’s never being able to see your kids be helpers for a new baby.
It’s having to unfollow people you love because seeing all the pregnancy and baby announcements and pictures hurts too much.
It’s crying in the shower, crying when you go shopping, crying any time that the grief hits.
It’s trying for years and years to have more children and never having them.
It’s being absolutely certain that there are more children waiting to join your family, and then being just as certain that it’s okay to be done, and not knowing how to reconcile that.

It’s feeling not okay and not knowing how to be okay.

Infertility sucks.  



Love,
Ashley

Our Infertility Journey: A Different Path

Our infertility journey has turned out to be a really complicated one. Many of you know some of our recent updates either from GoFundMe or from me posting on Facebook, but to bring it all together this is what we had shared at that time:

"Our first round of IVF didn’t go like we hoped. I went through the daily injections for almost the whole round of meds, leading up to the egg retrieval, only for my body to decide to ovulate on its own (despite the medication that was supposed to prevent that). Without being able to fully prep for and time ovulation for egg retrieval, we were not able to do the retrieval at all and instead tried to salvage it with another IUI. You never know, right? Unfortunately that still didn’t work, so we ended up back at square one, just with a bunch less money spent on the medications I had been taking.

Saying that it was devastating is an understatement.

We’ve had some appointments between then and now, and are starting another attempt at IVF. This has not been an easy road but we continue to have faith. We ask for continued prayers and well-wishes as we move forward with this again. We appreciate everyone so much for their love and support, and are beyond grateful for the incredible generosity we have felt!!"

That brings us to our follow-up attempt at IVF. One of the things we discovered through the various testing we had done between cycles was that I have extremely low AMH. Like, absurdly low. Especially for someone my age. What this indicates is basically that I have very low ovarian reserves, a.k.a. not a lot of eggs left to work with. Based on this and my body's response to the last round of meds, my doctor put me on an almost entirely different round of medications for my new IVF cycle (what is referred to as a "min stim" cycle), that tends to have better results than the typical meds I was on for the previous IVF cycle. All of this information was very scary to me and what it might mean moving forward, but we were also hopeful that now that we knew about an issue we could work with it better.

So I started with my new IVF cycle, and as I took my daily meds (which included way less shots than previously, so that was a bright spot) and as I had my regular appointments of ultrasounds and blood tests to track my progress, we still ran into problems. Ultimately we discovered that my ovaries weren't very responsive to the medications, similar to the previous cycle. With the various meds and dosages that we had tried up to this point and based on what we continued to see at my appointments, my body just wasn't responsive to the meds and IVF was no longer a viable option for us.

This was heartbreaking news. We felt so hopeful about this path, and knowing it was another dead end was so hard to learn. At this point we were told that if we wanted to continue, our best options now were using an egg donor or doing embryo adoption. They both have their own high expenses and complicated paths, but they could be viable options for us.

However, after lots of discussion, pondering, prayer, etc., we agreed that we were both ready to be done. The toll that the highs and lows from fertility treatments has been heavy, financially and especially emotionally, and we can only keep it up for so long. We both feel at peace with this decision, though there is still *a lot* of heartbreak that comes with it.

This decision and our new journey brings a new mountain of grief that we will learn to navigate together. There is a lot to grieve when we hoped for so many years to bring more children into our family, and we will probably carry that grief with us for a long time.

But there is also gratitude wrapped up in this journey. We are so thankful to everyone in our lives who has been so loving and supportive to us in every way. None of it has gone unnoticed or unappreciated. And I thank God every day that he sent us the twins, because I couldn't imagine coming to this point and them not having each other. We will grieve, yes, but we are also so grateful for the little family that we have now. ♥



Love,
Ashley

Roth Family Christmas Card & Letter 2020

We sent out our Christmas cards only digitally this year to save on money, but wanted to share here too. If you're reading this, we love you and wish all the best. Here is our Christmas card and letter for 2020:

What a year this has been, right?? All around us there has been political strife, social unrest, economic hardship, and of course the global pandemic. That’s enough to make anyone’s year a challenging one.

For us personally, even with all of that aside this was one of our hardest years to date. Among other challenges, some of the harder things that we’ve been open about include a suicide attempt followed by hospitalization and another year of no successful pregnancy, including miscarriage and failed IUI cycles.

But there is good too! Josh got a new mental health diagnosis (Borderline Personality Disorder) along with new doctors, therapies, medications, and even a few workplace accommodations. As always it’s a long road, but we’ve seen a lot of good there too. And with my secondary infertility, we have decided to move on to IVF - a very big deal! Granted, it felt like a big deal to start any fertility treatments, but going from IUI to IVF there is a lot more to it. It’s not cheap and it sucks to anticipate that when we’ve been working to save for a bigger car and a house, but it’s also much more likely to result in a pregnancy so we’re hopeful. We are also so grateful to continue to have steady incomes this past year, even if there were some hits to our income. We’ve been able to provide for our needs, and we are so grateful for that.

Josh has gotten more crafty this year - he’s been making trinkets for his Dungeons and Dragons group in his spare time that involves woodworking, woodburning, using epoxy resin, and other exciting stuff. He also still streams on Twitch pretty regularly and loves unwinding by playing games with his friends and family. He is still working at Visa, and has had a mix of working from home and working at the office.

This year Ashley became a moderator for a chapter of the organization ‘Mormon Women for Ethical Government’ - a non-partisan group for Latter-day Saint women that focuses on advocacy, peacemaking, media literacy, and ethical government. Ashley has been very active in a lot of political scenes as well as loving her church calling in coordinating service and meals for others who are in need. She also still works from home as a virtual assistant, doing a bunch of computer and social media stuff.

The twins haven’t stopped growing up, despite our pleas. They have a lot of shared interests, including stickers, video games, riding their balance bikes or scooters outside, and playing pretend together.

Lauren has been conditioned since birth to like the color pink, and she has embraced that in full force. She loves everything pink, as well as all things unicorn. She loves imaginative play, is more or less content to do her own thing, loves to sing to herself, is obsessed with taking pictures, and wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s a total Daddy’s girl and reminds me of that regularly. ;)

Jacob loves anything rainbow. He has laser-sharp focus on whatever interests him, often not noticing anything else when he’s doing something he loves. He has big emotions that we are still learning how to manage, is growing more determined at trying things he’s afraid of, and prefers to play with others over doing anything alone. He is super attached to Mama, and I’m soaking it up.

We’ve felt so much love and support in our lives this year. We are especially grateful for the love and comfort we find in Christ. We love you all dearly, and wish you the best holiday available to you. ♥

Infertility Journey Update: Hope and Loss

So we were able to start fertility treatments up again this summer, and got started with the IUI process. I will spare you all the details of how each cycle works, but I just have to say that giving myself shots is 100% terrifying. I've been able to do it, but only out of sheer force of love for our future kid(s).

So we've been doing IUI cycles, and each time we do I think, maybe this is finally it. With this help, maybe this month won't be yet another in the long line of disappointing months of the years. And we've had negative results, which are always heartbreaking in their own right. Because *infertility sucks*.

Last week, however, we found out that our most recent IUI cycle ended with a positive pregnancy test - we were shocked, and thrilled! And the timing couldn't have been better - my mom and dad were visiting the day after I got the news, plus the day I found out was her birthday (September 1st), and all of it lined up in a very fun and exciting way. The catch was that the hCG level, while definitely in the positive range, was lower than the clinic would like it to be, so they were going to test again in two days. If it doubled after two days, that was indicative of a growing pregnancy; if it stayed the same or lowered, it could be a sign of a miscarriage.

With that knowledge, I knew that we weren't technically in the clear yet, but I also didn't think that there would end up being a problem. With my last two pregnancies, I wasn't able to detect them with home pregnancy tests until later than most people are able to, which is especially surprising with twins. So as far as I can tell, I have a history of starting my pregnancies with lower hCG without it meaning anything is wrong. So, I reasoned, that's what was likely to be the case here.

I made "big brother" and "big sister" T-shirts for the twins to wear to surprise my parents, I downloaded a pregnancy app, I calculated about when I'd be due - in May, the same month Matthew was due. I realized I'd be able to wear the "due in May" shirt I bought when I was pregnant with him, and that brought comfort to me after keeping it for all those years since losing him.

We didn't tell many other people in the meantime, just in case, and would wait until after my next appointment when we would test my hCG again. But it was fun talking with my parents about how we might set up a new baby logistically in our apartment and fun ways we might announce the pregnancy.

You can guess where this is going.

I had my follow-up blood test, and the result was that my hCG hadn't changed. It wasn't a growing pregnancy. It was a biochemical pregnancy - basically, a very early miscarriage. The egg was fertilized, but either didn't quite implant or didn't grow properly, and didn't stick around.

To say we were heartbroken is an understatement. The tears came quicker and and fell harder than they have in a while. Josh held me while I cried (sobbed) into him, but I know it cut him just as deeply as it cut me.

I wished I had never gotten a positive in the first place, even though that would've been a hard result in its own right. But now I had let myself get excited, I had begun to imagine and talk about a future for our family with this new baby. And just as quickly, it was gone. The hole in my heart felt bigger and emptier than it has in a long time.

If I felt broken from my secondary infertility in the first place - and I did - I now felt like all those cracks just fell apart.

(Illustration by Conrad Roset for Marie Claire magazine)

We will find healing as we grieve. We know that from experience. And we will move forward with our fertility treatments. We will have hope, and we will not give up.

But man...


Infertility is a b****.

Miscarriage is a b****.


Love,
Ashley

Feel What You Feel

Coronavirus news is everywhere. We all know that's the big thing right now, worldwide. It's scary, overwhelming, and who truly knows what all the effects of this pandemic will be, short- and long-term?

I think it's important to find gratitude in our lives, no matter how big or small, and I believe that a lot of good can come from that. But I also am a big believer in allowing yourself to feel what you feel. If you're mad, be mad. If you're grieving, let yourself grieve. Whatever the circumstance is, giving ourselves space to feel what we need to is important.

So here I am.

Don't get me wrong, we're doing fine, we're able to provide for our needs, and the twins don't really know any better. Life as we know it is okay.

But.

Here is some of the not-so-fun stuff that I've been feeling.

I'm anxious. Just this underlying anxiety that never really seems to go away. We have some stability in our home and our lives, but who knows if that could change? Or what about our families? Our friends? Who knows who will be affected, or by how much? How many people might I know who will get sick, or maybe even die, by the end of all this? Or if any of us get sick, what could be the impact on our family? What will the financial future of our families look like? What about that of our country? And what will it mean for all of us moving forward?

And what if the effects are far-reaching enough that food and essential supplies become scarce? More-so than what is happening with panic-buying and stocking up. What if it becomes legitimately hard to find what we need to survive? Is that even a possibility? Because thinking about that scares me.

I miss my family. I live far away from most of them anyway, and there are lots of ways that we stay connected thanks to technology, but knowing that you have to be isolated while there is so much going on in the world, it feels like it just brings out how much I miss them even more. I wish I could be with them.

I'm also worried about Josh's mental health. We've mostly adjusted to him working from home, but I know it wears on him to never go out. And I know a lot of this is hard on him in other ways. What if everything compounds and his depression and anxiety take a turn for the worse? His mental illnesses have taken us down some very dark roads, and I'm terrified of that happening here and now.

And I wish I had a little baby. It feels like I'm grieving a baby I don't have yet (which feels both similar and different compared to the grief I have about Matthew). I never thought when we started trying to get pregnant again back at the end of 2017 that we'd still be waiting. I know it's not an easy time to be pregnant or be giving birth, but it still hurts. And having fertility treatments cancelled doesn't help. I just wish I had a baby to be holed up with, to snuggle, to spend my energy taking care of, to shower with love. I'm emotionally tired and I hate that aching in my arms and my heart.

I believe that things will be okay, one way or another. But there is a lot of hard in the meantime.

Whatever you are feeling is valid. Hang in there, you're not alone. ♥



Love,
Ashley

Life Updates

Wow. It's been 1.5+ years since my last blog post. I guess that's what happens when you share stuff mostly on social media, right?

One of the big things going on right now is that Josh applied for a promotion at work. This position feels like it would be such a good fit for Josh, better for his mental health (arguably the most important feature, especially for us), and of course, better pay. ;) It's been a slow process and we've heard that the positions may have been filled at this point, though we haven't confirmed that. So, even if he doesn't get it this time around, he'll apply again when it becomes available again, because they apparently regularly have openings as the company takes on more clients. So though we'd obviously love for him to get the position now, we're still optimistic about him getting it sometime in the future.

The other big thing going on right now is that I recently officially started fertility treatments due to secondary infertility. We'd been trying for over 2 years, and finally visited Utah Fertility Clinic in Pleasant Grove. We love it there already! We started with a bunch of testing - blood tests, semen analysis, etc - and everything was good with all that stuff, so I got started on treatments that would lead up to IUI. So far this has included prescriptions, a vaginal ultrasound, a water ultrasound, and an HSG. P.S. the water ultrasound and HSG are NOT pleasant. But they're manageable. P.P.S. the twins are learning a lot by going to appointments with me, haha. ;)

When they did the water ultrasound and followed up with the HSG, they found some tissue in my uterus that shouldn't be there, probably scar tissue. It's not necessarily the cause of my secondary infertility, but taking care of it does improve our chances of getting pregnant and keeping that pregnancy as we continue with treatment. So we stopped me where I was in my current round of treatment, and I went in yesterday for a hysteroscopy (no, not a hysterectomy!). Basically they knock you out, go in with a camera, and then surgically remove anything that shouldn't be there. Now I just have to wait for my next period again to start treatments over again. Thankfully Josh's work allows him a certain amount of days paid leave for emergency-type medical whatever, and apparently this falls under that, so he was able to take yesterday and today off to get me to and from the procedure and then help at home while I recover. I'm super thankful for that. <3

That's all the big stuff right now! The twins are crazy, cuddly, opinionated, spirited 4-year-olds, and that keeps us plenty busy beyond our other obligations. And we love it.

Love,
Ashley

The Heat of Summer

Well we're in the heat of summer now. I think anything over 80 degrees is gross, so yeah, I'm ready for summer to be done haha. ;)

It's been a super busy month!

We had a family reunion of sorts in Arizona. We got to see Josh's grandpa, dad, aunt, siblings, cousins, and any other relatives I'm forgetting at the moment, and it was a lot of fun! The twins did NOT like the drive, so that part was... well, it's over now. But they LOVED staying in a hotel, seeing family so much, swimming, and getting way more interaction and stimulation than they do when we're just at home. And they even did great sleeping in the hotel, which I was pretty nervous about! So, success. We all had a great time. :)

During the drive back to Utah we made a spontaneous decision to make a stop at the Grand Canyon. It was kind of on the way, neither of us had been before, and we had never had such a great opportunity to go. It set us back quite a bit getting home, and that drive sucked, but it was totally worth it. You guys, every picture I took looked so lame compared to the view I took in in person. Seriously, every time I took a picture I'd tell Josh, "these all look so lame compared to real life!" I get it now. I totally do.

Nevertheless, I DO have a few pictures to share, so here we go. ;)

We also got to see my brother, sister-in-law, and a few of their kids. It was brief, but so fun! :)

The twins had their very first dentist appointment in June too! The office we went to was pretty great, very kid-friendly, and the hygienists even made balloon animals for them to take home! How awesome is that?

Truthfully though, I think their favorite part was seeing "Dory" in the fish tank in the waiting room. Haha!

On the Fourth of July we went to a community barbecue hosted by the LGBTQ community in Provo, which was pretty fun! We got stickers, flags, played with beach balls, and most importantly, got free food. ;) AND, that night the Stadium of Fire didn't even wake up the twins! All in all, a great Fourth of July.

Besides that, I've been cramming in play dates for the summer to enjoy the outdoors, let the twins play with their favorite friend, and to hang out with my best mom friend - I'm going to be *devastated* when they move next month, so I try not to think about it too much and we're just packing in the play time while we can.

The twins love staying busy, and it's probably good for us too. We can hardly keep up with their energy... and their emotions. Just saying. Good thing they're so cute though. ;)

And now... the heatiest heat of summer. We'll try to stay busy, but it's harder to be outside much unless there's water. I saw this meme the other day, and it's literally how it has felt, haha.

On that note, I'm out.

Love,

Ashley