I was about to leave my job of 14 years to venture into a new career and we had a huge vacation (a friend’s destination wedding) coming up, so we put going forward with treatment on hold for a bit. We knew what our next steps would be – chlomid and IUI – and had no doubt in our minds that it would work, so we were ok to pause and take our vacation and let me start my new job without adding one new thing to our plate. Then a miracle happened. We got pregnant on our own with our miracle baby girl, MA, in Sept 2006. I had a textbook perfect pregnancy, didn’t even have heartburn. MA was due May 25, 2007 and we planned and looked forward to her arrival every second of every day. On May 26, at 40 weeks and 1 day, she suffered a fetomaternal hemorrhage inside me and died almost instantly. I felt something was wrong immediately, we rushed to the hospital but were too late. We were told “sorry there’s no more heartbeat”. And “you can start trying again in only 6 weeks!”

We were crushed. I was induced and delivered my stillborn first daughter May 27, 2007. Our world changed forever, we changed forever. We cried. We grieved. We cried. We wanted a do over. We mistakenly thought that since we did get pregnant naturally, of course it would happen again for us- maybe right away now, since we knew we could. But it didn’t.

A little over two years after MA’s death, we still had not become pregnant again. Nothing. We went back to the Calgary Regional Fertility Program, ready to seek treatment. We started with IUI’s (intrauterine insemination) and month after month we tried….and failed. After 7 IUIs with no pregnancy, we knew it was time to move on to the next step. MA taught us how much we longed to be parents, and we knew we were not ready to give up yet. We turned to IVF, doing our first fresh embryo transfer in April 2010. We had no extra embryos leftover, only two fresh embryos were deemed viable for transfer. We couldn’t believe it when it took and we were pregnant. It was a wonderful rainbow-unicorn-butterfly-filled 11 weeks. And then I started spotting. I knew. I think we both knew. We went to the ER and eventually had an ultrasound to be told what we already knew in our hearts- the fetus had no more heartbeat. It hadn’t progressed in growth any farther than 7 weeks. Our second miracle baby was also dead.

We cried. We grieved. We cried. We grieved. But we didn’t give up hope. We regrouped for a year and seriously thought “do we want to keep trying? Can we emotionally keep trying?” and we missed and wanted MA back more than ever, we wanted our lil’11 weeker back. We wanted to be parents with every fibre of our being.

We decided to not give up because MA wouldn’t want us to and we did another round of IVF. This time we did “Flare IVF” to hopefully increase the number of eggs retrieved and increase the number of embryos. It worked. We ended up with 6 viable embryos. Two were used for fresh embryo transfer and four were frozen. September 2011 was our transfer – and it worked. We got pregnant again and we were terrified. Somehow, we got through it, day by day. We had a planned c section at 37 weeks (due to losing MA at full term) and another miracle baby, our first IVF baby success, our daughter, MH, was born. We were parents.

Our IVF story doesn’t end there. We had four frozen embryos waiting for us to try and roll the dice and see if file 1351-06 would be lucky for us one more time. Late 2014, when MH was 2.5 years old, we knew it was time to try for a little brother or sister. MH had big sister MA in Heaven watching over her, but it was time to try to give her a sibling on Earth. We went back to the Calgary Regional Fertility Program for a frozen embryo transfer. We had 4 embryos left, they had to thaw 3 (one at a time) to get two embryos that survived the thawing process and were still viable. One stuck. We were pregnant again. 37 weeks later, again by planned c section, our last miracle, our third daughter, MN, was born, completing our family.

We survived an unthinkable loss, we battled infertility and WON and we had two beautiful girls to love. We often tell people that our girls are fraternal twins born three years apart because…. well, they are! But also, because it opens the door to discussion, about so many important topics that aren’t talked about enough like stillbirth, infertility, IVF. It’s our way of remembering MA, of loving her and giving meaning to her brief life with us.

There are no words powerful enough to express my gratitude for the Calgary Regional Fertility Program. They do amazing work there, literally creating families every day. We would not have MH and MN if it weren’t for them. We often joke too, whenever someone comments on how cute/smart/funny/kind our girls are that “they’re so perfect, it’s like they were made in a lab! Oh wait- they were!!” Our girls have a unique story and when they get older, they will know how they came to be and why we love them so much and just how truly special they are.