An inspirational story

When things go wrong in this ridiculously long, difficult, full of unwanted twists and turns journey of ours, I like to think of my good friend Patricia.  Her story, however, was not always a source of peace and inspiration to me...

Last year it actually became one of my worst nightmares when her twins were born at 26 weeks.  I was in Denver at the time and I saw the babies in the hospital surrounded by tubes, IV's, etc.  so little, so fragile and undergoing delicate surgeries at an extremely young age.  I wrote a post then, wondering if I was pushing my luck.  I wondered if all these doors closing were signs that babies were not meant to be for us; maybe it was a higher power protecting us from the enormous pain of seeing your child in such fragile state, not knowing what could go wrong next.

Patricia worked with CC.RM and started trying to conceive 6 years ago and after several failed IUI's, 6 failed IVF's cycles (fresh and frozen), miscarriage after miscarriage (4 total) and 4 failed donor egg cycles (2 fresh, 2 frozen), she was still unable to conceive and start a family.  Even after donor egg cycles she was still losing the babies or not getting pregnant at all.  At that point, they were left with 3 donor egg embryos and she was convinced that something else was up with her body.  She was convinced there was something wrong with her uterus.

After much research and working with a reproductive immunologist in Chicago, Patricia found out she had elevated natural killer cells and decided to go the surrogate route.   After several twists and turns they found the perfect woman and transferred all 3 embryos.  To her good/bad luck, all three took and 1 of them split - it was a quad pregnancy!  There were 4 babies in there!

After a lot of deliberation, research, and difficult conversations with the doctors, and since the mortality rate of a quad pregnancy is very high (specially with identical twins in the same sac), to be able to increase the survival rate of the other two babies, the decision was made to reduce.  After years of suffering through infertility, this was the worse and most painful decision she ever had to make, but the truth was, she had really no choice.

After that, everything seemed to go smoothly and on track... but a few days away from leaving for a well deserved babymoon trip to Europe, the surrogate started to bleed and was hospitalized for a uterine "abruption" (beginning of the placenta detaching from the uterus).   A few days later she started to go into premature labor and she delivered the twins at 26 weeks.  The babies were in the hospital for 3 months, until what would have been their original delivery date.  Patricia would leave work and go straight to the hospital to spend time with her babies every night, sometimes until midnight.  Day in and day out.

Today Patricia is in Argentina visiting her family, with both babies, and her husband, enjoying a beautiful vacation.  The twins are PERFECT.  Healthy, grown, beautiful!   Patricia had her moments, but she managed to stayed positive, strong, enthusiastic, and never lost faith that one day she would have a baby; she still says to me that something in her gut and in her soul told her to never give up and keep fighting... so she did!

On days like these, when things go wrong, I think of her.

 And here are her twins!  Absolutely perfect and so loved!

Patricia is very sweet and loves helping other women in their journey.  If you ever want to contact her, let me know, I'll give you her email.