A Miracle of A Different Kind

People always comment on what a miracle Will is.

Indeed, he is a miracle. My sweet little boy is a miracle, a gift from God, and I am down-on-my-knees-grateful for him each and single every day (yes, even when is being all toddlerish).

I am equally grateful for the little girl that at this very second is pummeling my kidney. She is every bit as much of a miracle as her older brother, even if her conception took decidedly less medical routes to be achieved. She is simply a miracle of a different kind.

I get comments all the time about how getting pregnant this time was so "easy" (it was) and how we got so "lucky" (we did). People seriously love to tell me, "Oh, I just knew you didn't have any real problems." Or, "Well, look what happens when you 'just relaxed'." Now, to be honest, I would rather put up with these comments and not have to do IVF/FET again, even though these comments kind of grate a little.

Our problem was never identified, but that doesn't mean that we didn't have a problem. We lost a lot of babies, so we had some issue. Even after having Will, I had another chemical pregnancy, so a RLB didn't "fix" me as some other folks have enjoyed pointing out. I am thankful for this unassisted conception and the true miracle that it is, but I just wish that people would stop making comments about how if we'd just been "more patient," we would never have needed IVF in the first place.

To those people, I want to ask how many chemical pregnancies and miscarriages I was supposed to have? Most of these people haven't had one miscarriage, let alone suffered the agony of recurrent loss, so they have no idea how hard it is to keep losing babies. I want to ask those who said I should have been more patient or relaxed how many babies were supposed to die before intervention would have made sense? I wouldn't change a thing about how proactive I was in TTC with Will. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Trust me, he was so worth it.

And even with the thoughtless comments that get tossed my way today, I take them all with a grin and bear it attitude (though I do have sassy comments in my head). Because she is worth it, too!

What are some of your favorite "well-meaning" comments? What responses do you wish you could give (or even better, do you actually give)?

Edited: PamalaLauren asked if it was possible that my body has simply "reset" itself with the birth of Will. That certainly is a possibility. I did have one chemical pregnancy in May 2009 (after his birth), but chemical pregnancies are common, so that's not to say that I still had whatever problem was plaguing us as we attempting to conceive Will.

My RE did have a couple of theories for us. The first we discovered during my IVF cycle with Will. Even though I was on a pretty routine stim cycle and had good sized follicles at the time of retrieval, my egg maturity rate was extremely low (less than 50%). Now, this can be affected by many things, but she was surprised that for the size of the follicles, I had so few mature eggs. She said that could be why I miscarried so many times. My eggs were of fine quality (and why nothing would show up on a FSH screen as abnormal) but were being released too soon, when they were "immature" and therefore, even if they fertilized, they were doomed from the start. This would explain why conception was not an issue for us and why my losses were of the mostly very early nature.

Because there was always the possibility that a mature egg could make it down the chute, there was always the possibility that if that happened and that egg was fertilized, we'd be good to go. This is just a theory and she said it would be difficult to prove or disprove, since an IVF cycle is not necessarily a fair replication of what the body would naturally do. However, I have always kind of liked that theory, as it explains both the miscarriages and why we were finally able to conceive a healthy pregnancy on our own. I did ovulate later in our conception cycle than usual, so it also lends a bit of credibility to this theory.

Her second theory had to do with blood flow to the uterus, which is why she had me take Lovenox into the second trimester (when the placenta would compensate for lack of blood flow). Now, I did have tests done that showed a normal blood flow to the uterus while I was not pregnant, but she said that pregnancy can change blood flow, and I was never tested while pregnant. I have circulation issues (vericose veins and spider veins, as well as edema in my legs) so this would make sense. With Emma, I did not take any blood thinners, so that would kind of throw that theory out the window.

So, really, we just don't know. So this baby girl really is a different kind of miracle!