Hey all! My name is Cameryn. I have been married to my best friend Mark since December 5, 2015. We are from sunny Southern California.
Like many of you reading this, I have dreamed about being a wife and mother for my entire life. When my husband and I dream of our future, children are ALWAYS a part of it. Whether it was 2 months or 5 years after we got married, we knew that we wanted a family beyond just the two of us. Little did we know the journey that was lying ahead of us to create this family. Even still, we know very little about what this might entail. When we got married we decided we wanted to start our family in 3 to 5 years. Well, me being me; I quickly changed my mind and decided we needed to have a family much sooner. I was thinking about six months after we got married. I can be impatient like that. We talked, though, and knew we weren't ready emotionally or financially so we planned to wait a little longer. We had a special trip to Europe planned in Autumn 2017. We decided that after our trip we would officially start our family. In the meantime, I was going to do everything I could prior to our Autumn trip to get ready! I am overall pretty healthy, but I had some health "challenges" that made me think it might be a good idea to check in with a doctor before we started trying. I also have a family history of fertility issues so we scheduled an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist (RE) just to make sure everything looked good. I felt like a fool making the appointment. I may be a planner, but I thought this was going overboard. I genuinely believed there wasn't anything wrong and so I went to the appointment by myself. I seriously thought the doctor would laugh me out of the office thinking I was a control freak! Well, he didn't laugh at me. Instead he told me that he believed I have endometriosis. Um excuse me? Endo-what? I stared at him in teary disbelief and confusion. I didn’t understand half the things he was saying and let me remind you, I was by myself! Afterward my google research didn't help either. I was so discouraged and I just couldn't believe it. The symptoms online didn't match what I was experiencing. I felt like my dreams of having children were being taken away. We decided to get a second opinion. This time my husband obviously came with me. The physician at this appointment confirmed that I do, in fact, have endometriosis. My new doctor explained that the reason I am “symptom” free is because I have a more severe case. Sometimes the more severe the case the less obvious symptoms you experience. Yay! So, basically, we may need minimal intervention to get pregnant if we are lucky, but we could need a lot more.
Since we were facing less than ideal odds, we decided we would start trying earlier than we had originally talked about, but we wanted to start as least invasive as possible. We started with a medicated cycle aka ovulation induction. Our first cycle failed, but then on December 14, 2017, we found out we were pregnant with our miracle baby. We were only on our second medicated cycle. I didn’t even think it was possible, but the two pink lines stared back at me. There it was every prayer, every hard day, every injection, every doctor’s appointment, every side effect, worth it. We had our miracle.
I called the doctor and scheduled a blood test. They confirmed I was pregnant. Now its it's time to celebrate!!
Because we see a specialist, we did our first ultrasound at 6 weeks. Mark and I went to our appointment a little anxious. We weren’t really sure what to expect. But, there was our perfect little baby, a picture of our miracle. We could see our baby.
We decided that since we were just a few weeks from Christmas we would keep our secret and give out some extra special Christmas presents to our family. We planned and schemed different ways to tell our family and friends. We recorded each of those announcements so we could always look back and remember this season and moment. Someday we could show our little one all the fun we had celebrating God’s goodness and provision.
Mark went out of town in late January for a work trip and my sister was planning to visit during the time he was gone. I had lots of plans of hanging out with my mom and sister and dreaming of all the fun baby things. I was just getting to the point where my normal clothes were a little too snug, so of course, we were going to go shopping for cute maternity clothes!
I had another ultrasound the day before I hit 10 weeks. My sister would be here the next day. Mark had left a couple days prior. This was supposed to be our last appointment with our specialist and he was planning on graduating us to a normal OB. I had already called around and picked out our doctor after much research. It was just supposed to be a quick appointment so I decided I'd just go by myself (I really have to stop doing that). The PA came in and showed me all the fun things she saw in the ultrasound like the umbilical cord, baby’s arms and head, etc. Then it was time to check the heartbeat.
She looked around a bit and we didn’t hear it. She said she was having trouble finding it and she was going to get the doctor. My stomach dropped. I started crying...I couldn’t help it. I was so scared. He came in and asked if I still felt pregnant. I did. He also tried...nothing...silence. I couldn't breathe. My worst nightmare was happening. There was no heartbeat, we lost our baby.
They took me into my doctor’s office and gave me options for the next step. I only remember the feeling of wanting to escape. I got in my car and called Mark. Honestly, I am not even sure how I got home. When I did, I crawled into my couch and just cried for days. I was an empty shell. Our baby was gone.
We decided to move forward with a D&C, which also gave us the opportunity to do some testing on our baby. We found out our baby was a girl. We decided we wanted to give a name to her life. We wanted to give a name to this season. To our heartbreak. To our first baby. To this part of God’s story in our life.
We named our daughter Leia Grace. Leia means “Child of Heaven” in Hawaiian. Grace is a family name - we have two nieces with Grace as their middle name. Grace also represents that God is our provider and He sustains us - even in the hardest circumstances.
Honestly naming our daughter brought so much closure. It gave value and a voice to our situation. Her life and our loss wasn’t unknown anymore. She wasn’t a what-if. I carried that baby, I prayed for that baby. Now it's not just “that” baby. It's our daughter, Leia Grace.
It has been a little over a year since we lost our baby. We have done several more medicated cycles and various procedures with no BFP. We are currently looking into our next options, likely an IUI. I am confident I will be a mother and my husband a daddy. It may not look like we originally wanted, but it will still be good and wonderful and just right.
If you'd like to follow Cameryn on social media:
Instagram: @camerynbartschi
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