betjet: The Story of Jack.......I don’t quite know where to begin our journey so bear with me. Before meeting DH I had been involved in an emotionally abusive relationship for almost 5 years. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on and my self-esteem was near zero coming out of that nightmare. Then along comes the true love of my life. DH and I met at work in 1993. I traveled 75% of the time with my job installing property management systems in hotels around the country. DH was my support in the office for when things were not going as planned with the hardware or software I worked with (which was quite often!) For me it was definitely love at first sight. DH had no idea how I felt about him. We went out a few times as “friends” but I never let on how I felt. My sister and I were living with my Mom at the time and wanted to move out to our own place. It just so happened that DH’s roommate was getting married and he needed to move as well. Don’t ask me what I was thinking but I asked him if he was interested in sharing a place with us. He jumped at the chance…again having no idea how I felt. We continued doing things as friends when we had the chance. When the time came to sign the lease on our townhouse….I will never forget this moment…..we were driving to the townhouse (for those that live in NJ we were driving over the Driscoll Bridge)…and DH said to me “I can’t do this”. I freaked out ….we had everything in place and my sister and I were ready to move. I asked him why. He replies (I remember these words like it was yesterday!) “I can’t live with someone that I want to date”. Oh did my heart melt. I can remember that night so clearly. We signed the lease and then went down the shore and stayed out all night. It was wonderful. We kept our romance a secret at work for a while which made it very exciting. In hindsight this could have been such a disaster. I had never met my now DSD and DSS before we made this decision. We never really “officially” dated since I traveled so much…we just kind of moved in together and took it from there. Though we’ve had our bumps along the way our relationship, all of our relationships (kids included) just kind of bonded. We were married in 1995 and always assumed a child of our own was in our future. In June of 1998 I threw away my birth control pills. We had just bought a house..the future was bright…we were going to have a baby!!!!! We got pg the very first month! Wow – this is easy!! For one week we were in heaven..talking about baby names, the future, etc. Then one morning I woke up bleeding and m/c’d at about 6 weeks. OK, we thought, this happens, we will just keep trying. Lo and behold we got pg the next month too!!! How lucky we are! And yet again I m/c’d very early. But I had gotten to my doctor just as I started bleeding so she ran some tests. I had just started seeing this doctor and that relationship ended when her advice to me was “Don’t take an HPT so early next time”. So we just kept trying. I had one more chemical pregnancy in December of 1998 and started bleeding on New Year’s Day. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of our IF journey. I went back to my old OB/GYN and he ran a battery of tests on DH and myself. I also had an HSG done at that time. All results came back normal. OK…so maybe we just have bad luck. We kept on trying unassisted for 8 more months. No pregnancy. Now I am ready to go to a RE. The first RE we went to took my history, did a 7-day progesterone test (borderline OK), did a post coital (no problems there) and gave me a 4-month prescription for Clomid. I was on Clomid for 4 months (unmonitored mind you) and still no pg. I was not very happy with this doctor either so we switched to IVFNJ. This was in March of 2000. More blood work and an endometrial biopsy thrown in for good measure and still nothing was found to be amiss. We started first with Clomid + IUI’s for 3 months…great response for me…great sperm count for DH but no pregnancy. OK, now it’s time for injectibles +IUI… again great response all around but no pregnancy. By now I am an emotional wreck. DH was so understanding when I look back now. I was a raving hormonal lunatic each month when AF arrived. It was HORRIBLE as I am sure each and every one of you knows. I couldn’t go to baby showers; I couldn’t be around pg friends, we argued for no reason…life generally sucked. My doctor suggested laproscopic surgery at that point. Maybe that would uncover something we could at least pinpoint as our reason for not getting pg. Of course…you guessed it. Did the lap and passed that one with flying colors also. After the lap we did one more injectible cycle and then I was ready to give up. I just couldn’t deal with the disappointment anymore. DH convinced me to make one more appointment with our doctor just to see if there were any other options open to us. We had capped out on our insurance and I just could not take the risk of investing $20K into an IVF cycle when we did not even know why we were not getting pg. So this meeting was pointless for me but I made the appointment anyway. Well Dr. Darder, my hero, my savior, had a possibility for us. Their office was taking part in a study for the new Gonal-F and we fit the criteria for case studies to a T. Would we be interested???? Our out of pocket cost would be about minimal. WOULD WE BE INTERESTED????!!!! I nearly leapt over the desk and kissed him. I was ecstatic to be offered this chance. The only drawback was that he did not know when it would start (this was in November of 2000)…just that it would be sometime in early 2001. Well to make this part of my long, long story short….the study was cancelled but IVFNJ held true to their promise and we did our one and only IVF cycle in May of 2001. We received our official “you’re pregnant” the day after Memorial Day – almost exactly 3 years after we chucked those BCP’s! I don’t think I really, truly enjoyed my pregnancy until about the 7th month or so. I was so worried that something would go wrong, plus at our first genetic ultrasound one of the markers for Down’s Syndrome had come up positive. As is the case for all of us September 11 will forever stand out in my mind. In this instance it is for a positive reason. That was the day we found out that Jack was Jack…meaning we found out we were having a boy. We live very close to NYC and debated long and hard as to whether we should keep our appointment at the hospital because of the events of that fateful day. In the end we decided to keep it just so we could have a happy memory instead of all sad ones. I am so glad that we did. My beautiful, miracle boy Jack Andrew (a.k.a Buddy Boy, Cheeseybread Head, Pumpkin among other names!) was born on February 19th, 2002 at 7:54PM. Though my pregnancy was easy his delivery was not. I ended up being induced; he was lying on his cord, had merconium poisoning at birth plus had very low blood platelet counts. He was in Intensive Care for 5 days but he was still my baby!!! MY BABY!!! MY BEAUTIFUL BABY BOY!!! I cannot believe the overwhelming feelings I have for him. I thank God everyday for him. Our IF journey still puzzles me. Why did we get pg so easily at first? Why could we not get pg after those first few months? What was our problem? I guess it doesn’t matter now. /
I know I go a little crazy posting pics sometimes but I just have to show him off to the world. I am FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY a mommy and I so enjoy and treasure EVERY SINGLE MOMENT OF MOTHERHOOD. These are his baby pic from the hospital and one I took over the weekend. My little boy is growing up! Happy 1/2 Birthday to my little Buddy Boy!! Thank you for reading this and letting me share this story. This bulletin board and everyone on it is so special to me. {{{HUGS to all}}} Bettina & Jack |