The very first month in my life I ever tried to get pregnant, I got pregnant.
It felt almost surreal—like something out of someone else’s story. We told my mom, my sister, and then my grandparents over dinner for my 38th birthday, which somehow made it feel even more meaningful, more meant to be. Everyone was ecstatic for us and we all found joy in knowing that our family would soon expand. It felt shocking and surprising, like too good to be true, and it was.
I had been bleeding, but thankfully had a friend whose mom was a midwife and she told me that it was super common even in healthy pregnancies. I believed her. The very next week we went to the doctor to check on the pregnancy, and he told us “you are not pregnant.” There was nothing, no sac, absolutely nothing—what I would later learn is called a chemical pregnancy, an early loss that happens before anything can be seen on an ultrasound. We left completely devastated.
Understanding Chemical Pregnancy and Early Loss
We did one hormonal blood test the next month, and then tried again two months later, and got pregnant again. I was relieved at how easy it was for us in spite of our chemical pregnancy the first time around. We were vacationing in Jamaica at the time and took some sweet pictures of my husband kissing my stomach. While I wanted to believe that everything would be fine this time, I was not convinced it would stick. Sure enough, as soon as we got back from our trip, I started bleeding and I knew we had lost it again.
When Trying to Control Fertility Takes Over Your Life
This time instead of shock and sadness, I went into full-on “I need answers now” mode, and I spiraled into extreme anxiety, obsession, and a desperate search for answers—changing my lifestyle, seeing every type of doctor, tracking obsessively, taking supplements, trying countless protocols, reading, researching, following fertility people, and joining too many Facebook groups. Fertility had quickly and literally taken over our lives, and was putting a serious strain on my relationship with my then boyfriend, who turned fiancé and later became my husband. I was living in a total trauma response (but obviously couldn’t see it at the time), and my coping mechanism was to try to control every little thing, including everything we put in our bodies, and my husband was like “wtf.”
The Emotional Reality of Recurrent Pregnancy Loss
Sadly, the third time was not the charm for us. By this time I felt like I knew everything there was to know about pregnancy loss, why people have them and what to do about it. We started trying again and I found out I was pregnant on Christmas Eve. I didn’t bleed this time, so I took that as a positive sign. In the midst of all of this we were planning our wedding so I spent hour after hour googling maternity wedding dresses, because I was going to be 6 months pregnant at our wedding!
Finally it was time to go to hear the heartbeat, but instead we were met with “the baby is measuring a little smaller than it should and no heartbeat yet.” We were told to come back in a week—what turned out to be the longest and most miserable week ever.
Finally it was time to go back in for a second ultrasound. It was cold, quiet and my anxiety was all over the place. Then I heard the words we dreaded: “the baby is measuring two weeks behind, and there’s no heartbeat.”
Because I was on progesterone, I had to wait another week—knowing my baby had died, but still carrying it—before my body could release everything naturally at home. We decided to test the products of conception, hoping it might give us some kind of answer—something to hold onto in the middle of so many unknowns. That meant trying to collect the tissue myself. After an extremely painful night of cramping and bleeding, I assumed I had already passed it. I told myself I must have missed it, and began to accept that we might never know whether it had been chromosomally normal or not. But three days later, it happened. I went to the bathroom and recognized what I was seeing. In that moment, instinct took over. I reached in and retrieved it.
We sent it in for testing. Eventually, we got an answer: it was chromosomally abnormal. It would not have developed into a viable pregnancy. That knowledge brought some clarity—but not relief. After three losses in one year, I was not okay. What had started as anxiety had quietly shifted into something heavier.
And still, I had a wedding to plan. Around that same time, I found out that two of my closest friends would be pregnant at our wedding. The contrast felt almost impossible to hold. On the day itself, it didn’t let up. One of the caterers congratulated me—asking if I was pregnant—because of how my body looked in a silk robe. It was horrible. I couldn’t escape it. Not even on my wedding day. Not for a single moment.
But I kept talking about it. During that time, I was incredibly open about our losses. We even included photos—pregnancy tests, moments from those pregnancies—on our ancestor table at our wedding. I talked about it constantly, because not talking about it felt impossible. And still, I felt completely underwhelmed by the response, by the support.
We had three pregnancy losses in one year, and when I look back, all I can really remember is one friend sending flowers. No real check-ins, no consistency, just flowers from one person. Looking back now, I can see that I was in my own version of hell—a full trauma response—and I wasn’t myself. I was easily triggered and raw. But instead of recognizing that for what it was, it often felt like people used my reactions as a reason to keep their distance—like my grief made them uncomfortable and my pain was somehow my fault.
IVF After Multiple Miscarriages: What Comes Next
That fall, after our wedding, I had a moment of clarity. I realized I wasn’t okay and that I seriously needed to take care of myself. So I started small. I planted a garden, I made my mental health my priority in a way I never had before, and slowly, over time, I found moments of balance again—glimpses of joy I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel again.
But the reality of our situation hadn’t changed. Since then, we’ve gone through three rounds of IVF. The first two resulted in no euploid embryos, the third, we chose not to test, and now, we’re preparing for a fourth—what is supposed to be our final round.
Getting pregnant on the first and second try—and then, three years later, still not having a baby—is a mind f**k I don’t think you can fully understand unless you’ve lived it. But somewhere along the way, this experience began to shape what my life was destined to become.
Turning Pregnancy Loss Into Purpose
I’ve always been someone who turns pain into purpose. And this—this deeply painful, identity destroying, life-altering experience—was no different. With a background in social work and more than 20 years spent working in reproductive health, I found myself drawn to supporting others navigating this kind of loss—not just from a professional perspective, but from a lived one.
In April 2025, I founded Fertility Support Now, a coaching and education platform designed to support people through the practical, physical, emotional, and relational realities of this experience. I specialize in helping clients uncover and address the root causes of fertility challenges and recurrent pregnancy loss, as well as providing guidance for natural and IVF conception, especially for women over 35. I offer the kind of support I had been searching for myself. Because when you’ve lived through something like this, you don’t just understand it—you carry it.
Fertility challenges don’t just touch one part of your life—they seep into all of it. I’ve felt the grief, the confusion, the exhaustion, the frustration, the isolation, the quiet, persistent feeling of being misunderstood by the people around you.
Why don’t they get it? The truth is, most people can’t. But if you’ve been through it, you do. You feel it in your body, in your thoughts, in the way it changes you. And if you’ve lived it too, you know—this isn’t something you just understand. It’s something that stays with you forever.
