Candace’s Eight Year Journey to Motherhood
“Being a mother was in my genes and woven into my being. It was just as much a part of who I was as my eye color...It was who I was supposed to be.”
As a woman, Candace had always thought she was going to get married, have a certain number of children, buy the house with the picket fence, and set perfectly defined expectations for her life and her future. When she met her husband in 2009, it was so clear that he was the one and she was ready to start having his babies...she was ready to start living out her defined expectations.
When they first started trying to get pregnant and she started knocking on the wall of infertility, Candace just thought they needed more time. But as the year progressed, she began to ask, “What am I doing wrong.” She started tracking her cycle, altering her eating to the “right things”, and using a basal thermometer. They had preliminary tests done and learned she had tons of eggs in reserve and her husband’s sperm was perfectly fine. There was nothing wrong with them. Doctors were optimistic and said it takes some people time and they just happened to be those people.
The months went by and they don’t get pregnant. A year went by and they are still not pregnant.
The first year of trying with no success was extremely hard and Candace felt depression creep in. But when a year became plural it was a whole new type of depression. She was fatigued and exhausted. She was frustrated, and she was bitter. She felt alone.
THE FIRST STEPS ON THEIR INFERTILITY JOURNEY
At the beginning, Candace and her husband were so excited to start trying to conceive and they shared that hope and excitement with everyone. With each month, everyone kept asking how it was going but when another month passed with no success to share, Candace started to shut down. She stopped talking about it and family and friends stopped asking about it. She retreated.
After two years of trying to get pregnant naturally, Candace and her husband made the decision to see a fertility specialist. They first tried an IUI and that proved to be unsuccessful. Feeling confused, Candace remembers questioning why would an IUI work for them if they had already spent two years trying to get pregnant naturally? Combine their confusion with the cost of the IUI and they made the decision not to move forward with a second IUI. At the time it was $1200 and prior to diving fully into IVF treatments, for Candace and her husband, that was VERY expensive. They would later learn that $1200 was a simple pharmacy run with IVF treatment.
Candace and her husband were initially scared of fertility treatments and questioned if they really needed them. So, they made the decision to go back to trying naturally and ultimately got pregnant without realizing it right away. It wasn’t until they were on a trip to London when Candance woke up with terrible abdominal pain that was so crippling she thought for sure her appendix had burst. A trip to the hospital revealed she was in fact pregnant, but the pain ultimately revealed that it was an ectopic pregnancy. In a matter of two days, they had gone from the ultimate high of excitement, sharing with family that they were pregnant, to the ultimate low of sharing that they lost their first baby. It was at this point that Candace imploded.
WE’RE HERE FOR IVF, PLEASE…
Five years into their infertility journey, another miscarriage, and Candace and her husband found themselves sitting across from a fertility specialist again. This time, they walked through the doors of the clinic knowing they were there for IVF and IVF only...no medicated cycles or another IUI. They wanted to do something they knew would give them a child. Everyone Candace knew who did IVF had walked away from the experience with a baby so, why would her and her husband be any different? They thought IVF and that equated to guaranteed baby.
Sitting with their first fertility doctor, ‘Best Fertility Specialists’ awards lined the walls of the office and they immediately felt like they were in the best hands, at the right place. Candace had recently gone back to school and was working on a bachelor’s in psychology and the doctor was speaking her language, referring to research-based evidence and scholarly articles. She felt connected and she felt excited about the process...the process of making their baby!
Candace was prepared for the physical aspect of IVF treatments. She could give herself shots, no problem, and after having dealt with painful periods her whole life she was tough enough for what was to come. What she was not prepared for at all: the emotional IVF treatment roller coaster. She immediately asked her fertility specialist for counselors and someone to reach out to for emotional support, but they had no one for her to connect with. She would be in the waiting room of her fertility clinic, sitting next to other women likely walking the same painful path as her, but she couldn’t find conversation or even comfort with other women there. Instead, she felt embarrassed for having to be in the waiting room and lonely with no one to talk to.
After the first round of IVF, they had three embryos and in a blink of an eye, they also lost all three embryos. The initial egg retrieval was in June 2017 and by March 2018, Candace and her husband had gone through three cycles, all unsuccessful. After each completed cycle, they would meet with the doctor for what they eventually called “WTF appointments”: the transfer wouldn’t work, and they would meet with the doctor saying “WTF”. With no explanation, the doctor would say this and that, talk in circles, and ultimately suggest trying the same process again with no changes. Candace would ask every single time if she could have endometriosis, given all the symptoms she experienced and every time her question was ignored.
Within the three completed cycles were also many cancelled cycles, often due to Candace’s lining not being thick enough. She would pump medication into her body only to have her body not respond to the medication. The clinic would tell her to stop the medication and her hormones would plummet. It was hard on her body and after completing the third full cycle, Candace didn’t know if she could do it anymore.
Candace felt her body breaking down but also her marriage. Her husband being the eternal optimist was still holding on to the belief that IVF was going to work for them and he was ready to try again. Candace was ready to move on to adoption. Ultimately, they decided to do two more rounds of IVF back to back and get as many embryos as possible. The result was nine embryos, of which only five were chromosomally normal. They went for the fourth transfer with their original fertility doctor but when they experienced failure once again, they skipped the “WTF appointment” with him. He wasn’t listening.
ONE LAST ATTEMPT AT IVF
They decided to meet with a new fertility doctor who was younger, more open minded and brought the potential to do something different. Before the transfer with her, Candace asked for more testing and the doctor said they’d done all the testing they could do. Candace inquired again about endometriosis and the doctor said even if she had it, removing it wouldn’t solve her problems. But after they went through their fifth transfer cycle with the new doctor and it became their fifth failed cycle, Candace said: “NO. I am not doing this anymore.”
After five failed transfers and seven losses, Candace was done going through a process that felt like they were wasting their embryos. Those embryos were her DNA. Those embryos could have been her babies. The doctors had been referring to their embryos as ‘chances to get pregnant’ but for Candace and her husband they were losses not chances, as they could have been a pregnancy, and they could have been their baby. To Candace, they were pregnancies that did not proceed.
Tired of not being listened to and not being heard, Candace began to look into reproductive immunology, as she had a growing concern that there was something wrong with her immune system. She felt and believed that there was something happening in her body that was preventing her body from accepting the embryos and sustaining a pregnancy. That’s when she listened to a friend’s persistent advice to see a new doctor and their infertility journey took a turn to New York in January 2019.
LEARNING THE WHY BEHIND EIGHT YEARS OF INFERTILITY
Meeting and working with the late Dr. Braverman in New York changed Candace and her husband’s lives. Dr. Braverman had dedicated his career to rolling up his sleeves and finding the answer to WHY a woman wasn’t getting pregnant. With 25 years of doing research on infertility, he designed a new testing protocol and took a holistic approach to treating Candace’s infertility by looking at her as a full picture and not just ovaries. Candace would constantly ask other fertility specialists if there was something else in her body contributing to the poor outcomes she kept experiencing. Was there something wrong with her pituitary gland, inhibiting essential hormone release? Candace had been met with resistance every time she asked that type of question until she met with Dr. Braverman.
Candace and her husband worked with Dr. Braverman’s office remotely. She had 29 vials of blood taken, looking at different biomarkers to help determine the WHY behind her unsuccessful efforts at becoming and staying pregnant. On the initial phone consult with Dr. Braverman, he knew exactly what do with Candace and her husband. For the first time, they were told that they were like everyone else that came to him with recurrent pregnancy loss and recurrent implantation failure. They were common. They were what was most commonly missed in fertility clinics. He saw them for who they were and after becoming cynics and pessimistic about infertility treatments, suddenly Candace and her husband had renewed hope in the hands of Dr. Braverman.
Dr. Braverman could have treated Candace following the same protocols as other fertility clinics had done and operated like a pregnancy mill, with a focus on making money. Instead, he asked the questions that no one else would, performed a laparoscopy and determined Candace had Stage 2 endometriosis. After trying to conceive for over eight years, Candace and her husband got pregnant naturally with their daughter, the first cycle after her surgery to remove the endometriosis.
One of the biggest gaps within the infertility process that Candace identified early was the lack of a patient advocate. She needed someone to reach out to who could provide not only comfort but resources. She started her Instagram account (@operationbabybump) as a diary and could not believe the supportive community she found and she started her blog InfertiliTea to support this community who are in a period of hoping, praying and hurting. She now actively works to be the patient advocate to women struggling with infertility that she wished she had had on her own journey.
FOR THOSE WOMEN WALKING THE INFERTILITY PATH:
“Trust your body, trust your gut, and remain in tune with yourself. The merry-go-round that is fertility treatments are not regulated in that there is not a clear direction that everyone should go. Every clinic is different, and you are at the mercy of your doctor. You do what you are told. Should I really be doing that twice a day? Is it too much? Four estrogen patches? I almost passed out in the bath. It feels like too much and my body isn’t handling this. But you do what you are told. I should have put a stop to this a long time ago.
I could not have gone through that for nothing because we have [our daughter]. But you don’t have to go through all of that. You can find a doctor that will listen to you and help you.