I haven't written here in a long time. Life tends to get overwhelming and busy, but I felt a pull to come back. If you follow me on Tik Tok or Facebook you know all the things. We had our twins via a surrogate in 2019. Exactly two months and one day later I lost my daddy. Wait a minute, let me back up..
We prepared to start our first round of IVF in 2018. We were ready! We had our spot reserved, money paid, signed the contract, and then our intended surrogate got pregnant. We decided to keep going and freeze the embryos until we found someone else to carry our baby. This sounds simple, but was insanely complicated and scary. Surrogacy is very expensive and we had no way to pay for it. Thankfully the first surrogate didn't want to be paid. I didn't think there was anyway possible to find another like that, but the Lord is full of surprises. We had a very special person reach out and offer to do it. We were back on schedule. Toward the end of stims they realized my ovaries were very high, they were under my ribs, and sitting on top of my liver. My doctor was scared he would hit an organ going in blindly, so we moved the retrieval to a surgery center a few miles down the road. Everything was going smoothly until I woke up from the surgery. I looked at the doctor and said "what's wrong?" He patted my arm, told me I did great, and everything would be ok. I argued. If you know me you know that's normal. I knew as soon as my eyes opened it was wrong. It was all wrong. My family came in and I repeatedly asked them what happened and what was wrong. They couldn't understand why I was asking and assumed it was the medication. We left the surgery center and went home. That evening the doctor called to tell me they didn't get as many as they thought. My ovaries had flipped. He couldn't see where he was going and did the best he could, but he was never able to retrieve from my left ovary, only my right. On the way back to the clinic they were exposed to carbon dioxide and started to deteriorate. He asked permission to immediately start fertilizing to try to freeze them quicker and save them. He did his best, but we can't control life. I knew when my phone rang the next day from his personal number it was over. But..
He had a plan. It had never been done before and they weren't sure it would be possible. I told him I would do anything. Just lay me on the table and get it done. Less than a week after my egg retrieval I was sitting in an oncologists office. They have a procedure for cancer patients where you move their ovaries up under the ribs to protect them from radiation and chemo. Both doctors wanted to open me up and see if they could reverse the way I was born, but there were many things that needed to work for it to be possible. The arteries attached to my ovaries had to be long enough and they weren't sure of the length. It was 8 pm, we were the last three people in the office. He looked at me and said "when do you want to try this?'' I said "you can do it right here, right now." Low and behold he'd had a cancellation for the following day. I could take the appointment with no preauthorization from my insurance company or wait for it then do it in a few months. It was going to be an insanely expensive experiment that needed to be planned out well. He was worried about the insurance not paying and we were to, but I said "I'll see you in the morning." Everything went perfect. My arteries were long enough, the robot could reach my ovaries, so they stretched them out and sowed them down to my pelvis. Less than two weeks after one surgery I did another, a couple of weeks later I went straight back into another round of IVF. This time he got twenty two eggs, seventeen fertilized, and three made it to the freezing stage. They prepared our surrogate and in another month we implanted two embryos. We were on strict orders to not try a pregnancy test. Did we listen? Duh, no. Blood tests went great and at six weeks we did the first ultrasound. We had two sweet little heartbeats. The pregnancy went well, but she was forced to deliver at 33 weeks. They spent a little shy of a month in the NICU and came home right before Thanksgiving. They are the best parts of myself and my husband. It's pure joy to love them and a joy to be loved by them. I'll never forger after my high school graduation someone said to my daddy "she's grown up and headed off to college and life now. That's going to be real hard for you and her mama." I looked at my daddy and said "but I'm not going anywhere, I'll still be right here with y'all." With the most love and a little sadness in his eyes he said "I know and that makes it ok." I never understood why mama and daddy were sad when I graduated high school and college, but I do now. It's amazement, sadness, excitement, joy, pride, and a little sadness to see your babies grow.
Shortly after my successful retrieval and implant into the surrogate it became extremely painful to stand, sit, or walk. I did my best to push through it, but finally broke down and called my fertility doctor. He had a full day of patients, but he knew something was wrong and told me to come immediately. They checked for torsion and all to see if I still had eggs in me, but everything was normal. He called the surgeon and told him to see my right then. He offered to have an MRI done, back at home, and look at it. We went back home, set up the MRI, and then drove an hour and a half back in a couple weeks to get the results. I was standing in the waiting room when he called me and said "there's no need to come back, you're fine". I said "no. I'm in your waiting room and you will keep my appointment because something is wrong. It didn't go well from there. He didn't want to change anything, but finally agreed to doing an exploratory surgery. I asked him to just cut my ovaries loose and let them float back up. He refused because he was worried the arteries would get tangled. I pushed and he finally agreed to remove both or one if possible. I woke up from my surgery only to be told he had accidentally sown my ovaries to my hip ligaments. I said "oh, so he took them out?'' The nurse said "no. He put them back." I was livid. I went home and in a few days they called to schedule up my follow up. I told them I wouldn't be coming back. They demanded I return and I said "well, unless he drives up here to get me I'm not going. He didn't do anything we agreed on so neither am I".
A few months later I was at my gynecologist, who's absolutely wonderful, and he asked what was wrong. I told him the story and he said "absolutely not. I'll remove them or do whatever I can to fix it, but there's a good chance I can only do so much. You'll probably have to be sent to a couple more specialist for the damage." Three days before the twins first birthday I went back into surgery. He was able to remove them. Surgical menopause is like walking through hell, but at least I can fight the devil and walk in less pain.
I destroyed my body and fought so hard physically, mentally, and emotionally. I'll never recover from some things, but we have the two sweetest babies you will ever meet. I saw God. I saw him move mountains for me. I watched him show me mercy and kindness. I saw his miracles, and I get to watch those miracles grow and see Him over and over again every time I look into their eyes. We have one embryo left. It seems even more impossible than the first time to make it work again, but if the Lord will do it once, He will do it again.
Never lose hope. When it's to dark, and it seems like all is lost, it will be there, quietly waiting for you.
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