Shining Light into the Darkness of Miscarriage, Loss, and Infertility: Jelissa’s Infertility Journey
Jelissa’s infertility journey started seven years ago. When her and her husband first started to try and conceive, there were no concerns about infertility. It was after trying for a while with no success, that Jelissa and her husband went to a well-known IVF clinic in their area, and they started by running a handful of tests on Jelissa and completed a semen analysis for her husband. The result: Jelissa was diagnosed with unexplained infertility. The clinic gave them the option to do IVF as a next step but because Jelissa felt so uneducated on the entire process, she and her husband decided to wait and continue trying on their own. Jelissa was in her early 20’s at the time and wasn’t to the point of being extremely worried but unfortunately this was just the start of a long and hard journey with loss, grief, and infertility leading the way.
“I don’t think I will ever be mentally ready to try to get pregnant again…But [IVF] also gives me the opportunity to try to get pregnant again and for that reason, I’ll do it.”
READY TO BECOME A MOTHER BUT INFERTILITY GETS IN THE WAY
“Our families pressured us to start having kids immediately after we got married. I felt like, to our families, we represented the perfect couple with a great marriage built on a solid relationship. We had built a comfortable life for ourselves at a young age and there was a lot of pressure to have kids at a point where I wasn’t quite ready. I hadn’t grown up dreaming of becoming a mother and I really enjoyed what felt like the chance to live my best life. My goal was to have kids by the age of 28 and until that point, I wanted to do whatever I wanted.
When I was ready to start trying to have a child, a few years went by of trying naturally with no success. We moved to Florida, and I decided to go for a second opinion with a new infertility clinic. They did a semen analysis for my husband and added antibodies to the analysis, which we didn’t do the first time. We learned from the analysis that my husband’s sperm had 99% antisperm antibodies present, and the clinic gave us a 1% chance of conceiving naturally. We finally had an answer to why we couldn’t get pregnant after years of trying and the clinic sold us on IVF being our only answer to having a child.”
A COMPLICATED PREGNANCY THAT LED TO A LATE LOSS
“After going through IVF, we got pregnant in January 2021, and it was a very complicated pregnancy that resulted in miscarrying our baby girl, Yvette in May 2021. During my pregnancy, I had a sub chorionic hematoma and uterine fibroids and every doctor I now see picks and chooses a different cause for my late miscarriage. One doctor has said it was for sure the uterine fibroids and then another said it was a blood disorder. The doctor I did IVF with tested me after the miscarriage for a blood disorder, antiphospholipid syndrome, and it came back positive and despite never having a history of blood clotting issues, he’s certain that was the reason for my miscarriage. Regarding our daughter, Yvette, she had no genetic abnormalities or any other issues that would have indicated a reason for miscarrying.”
NEVER FEELING READY TO TRY AGAIN AFTER MISCARRIAGE
“My husband and I never truly got out of the place where we felt truly ready to take a step forward on our infertility journey. We’re older now than we were when we started, and time now feels like it’s ticking away. It’s more about asking if my body is ready to try again and I gave myself two years after my miscarriage to work on my mental and physical health.
If I’m honest, I don’t think I will ever be mentally ready to try to get pregnant again. There’s never a thought of ‘Yes, you got this!’ or ‘This is going to be amazing!’ but that doesn’t mean I can’t try again. Every time I do IVF, it’s physically very demanding and knocks me off my feet. I tell everyone that I hate IVF so much with a passion and wish I never had to do it. But it also gives me the opportunity to try to get pregnant again and for that reason, I’ll do it.”
BECOMING MY OWN ADVOCATE DURING INFERTILITY
“After losing Yvette, we did two more transfers, but both were unsuccessful. I’m now on a well-needed break from IVF. But when I’m ready, we’re going to shop around for a new doctor. With the experience and knowledge that I now have, I know the questions to ask.
I wish I had someone, even in the doctor’s office, who could have acted as a liaison for me to turn to with all my questions related to IVF. I needed a resource for information, so I didn’t have to take my doctor’s words as absolute truth and follow their rules as my only option. I would receive information about how IVF and IVF with ICSI works but when it came to something like testing our embryos, I was given no information and instead the doctor would tell me I was young and healthy and there was no point in testing. His words alone were supposed to be all we needed to make a decision.
I have lost trust in the medical industry over the past few years and I now research everything. I now advocate for myself constantly and while essential, it can be exhausting.”
FINDING COMMUNITY THROUGH LOSS
“I wasn’t being given the time and space to be a grieving mother.”
“While I was pregnant with Yvette, my family and friends were obsessed and checking in on me all the time while I was on bed rest for most of my pregnancy. After Yvette passed away, my family came to stay with me for a few days, but it was such a toxic environment, I didn’t even want to be in my own home with them. After learning about grief, my family seems uncomfortable with feelings, and I grew up not being able to have feelings or being able to express my feelings. I was coming out of the hospital after losing Yvette and my family was telling me to stop crying because people have miscarriages all the time. I was being told all the things you don’t want to and shouldn’t have to hear after having a miscarriage.
I pushed my family away immediately after losing Yvette and asked them to leave. I needed time to myself to grieve on my own because they weren’t allowing me to grieve and mourn. I wasn’t being given the time and space to be a grieving mother. My father especially said some horrible things to me in those immediate days and it diminished our relationship.
Everyone who was contacting me while I was pregnant disappeared after my miscarriage and that was when I turned to Instagram. I started with a personal account where I documented my IVF journey for myself only so I could always go back and remember. Eventually, this turned into a blog and that was a better outlet for me to share my story and express what I was going through.”
MARRIAGE AFTER LOSS
“When it comes to marriage and infertility, I’ve noticed the community doesn’t often talk about marriage after loss. I saw a movie about loss shortly after my miscarriage and it talked about the divorce rate being high after losing and grieving a child. It scared me and I couldn’t help my thoughts from immediately assuming we’d be getting a divorce eventually.
However, our experience has been the opposite of the statistics. During the first year after losing Yvette, my husband was amazing in the ways that he was able to support me, and we were so dependent on each other. I was struggling with so much trauma and couldn’t go a moment without knowing he was alive. It felt like we were trauma bonded.
However, after a year, it became hard for my husband to be my support system because it was constant and exhausting. I had severe depression, severe anxiety, and massive panic attacks all the time. I felt like I was abusing alcohol during that time, too because it was the only way I felt I could cope with the pain. It all just became too much for my husband and he would tell me I needed to work on myself, and I would respond by saying he needed to help me work on myself.
We eventually started couples counseling and that was what helped us become a unit again. We started to help each other grieve and we grew with each other throughout the following months.”
EMOTIONAL STRUGGLES OF MISCARRIAGE
“I’ll be the first to admit that I self-sabotaged after losing Yvette. I struggled with anger and pushed people away. I expected everyone to be there for me after my miscarriage and to check-in on me and when those expectations were not met, I learned who my true friends were. In the process, I lost a lot of close relationships with family members and friends. I reached a point where I did apologize to those who I blamed but I also asked if they could continue to check in and they never did. I finally came to terms with the idea that rather than expecting others to be there for me, I could be there for myself.
“After being depressed for such a long time and becoming self-aware of how depressed I truly was, I decided I didn’t want to feel like that for the rest of my life.”
POURING BACK INTO YOURSELF AFTER LOSS & GREIF
“Self-care for me looks like finding the fun in life again. After being depressed for such a long time and becoming self-aware of how depressed I truly was, I decided I didn’t want to feel like that for the rest of my life. It was becoming toxic and exhausting, and I’ve decided that this year I am focused on myself.
Immediately after Yvette died, I put all my grief for her loss into helping others and being there for others. It was a way for me to tap into my motherly instincts since I didn’t have my daughter in real life to mother. I didn’t start to learn how to grieve or learn how to heal until a year and half after losing Yvette and now it’s time for me to get out in the world again and do more things for myself.
I don’t want to go back to who I was before Yvette because I like this new version of myself. But I used to have so much fun until grief took over and took me to a very dark place. I want to shine light into my darkness, so I no longer feel so heavy and down all the time.”
MOST SHOCKING MOMENTS OF MY INFERTILITY JOURNEY
“I was shocked my IVF doctor implanted my embryo while I had uterine fibroids instead of removing them. It makes me angry thinking about it now after going through the loss of Yvette and knowing it’s recommended to have fibroids removed before trying to get pregnant. I remember my doctor mentioning I had fibroids without many details, and I had no idea what they were or if I should be concerned. It’s shocking and painful to now know they could have been a reason why I had a miscarriage.
It was also shocking to have gone to my OB appointment six weeks after my miscarriage and found out they had a mental health therapist on staff to help deal with perinatal mental health who was never offered to me when I was struggling. When I went in for the appointment, my doctor said I didn’t look okay, and she wanted me to work on my mental health. But what did she expect? I was in the same place where I found out that my daughter died just six weeks ago, I parked in the same parking spot, walked up and down the same steps reliving one of the worst days of my life. I went through such an incredible loss and it’s shocking that no mental health service was offered to me.”
“The IVF experience is not the same for everyone and instead of putting us all in a box, we should be seen as individuals with individual experiences”
INFERTILITY TAKES AN EMOTIONAL TOLL
“People love to offer their advice or opinion on IVF even though they’ve never walked this path before. It blows my mind when I tell others I only receive advice from people who have walked this path and then people view me as the problem when I’m just trying to advocate for myself. I have established boundaries for who I take advice from because if you haven’t experienced infertility, you have absolutely no idea how it feels to go through the pain and loss.
People will tell me to “just do another round of IVF” when a cycle fails. But I need money for another round and, this is my body. I have no idea how all the medications are going to impact my body in years to come and even now, it sometimes feels like my body is starting to shut down. I’m constantly finding out more things that are wrong with me and that takes a toll on me emotionally. I went from being a healthy human being at the beginning of this journey to now have one thing after another wrong with me.
I’ve had to switch to three different birth controls since I started infertility treatment because some made me suicidal, and some gave me horrible anxiety. And at this point in the process, I wasn’t even doing IVF yet and that’s just the 30 days leading up to the start of cycle. Everyone reacts differently to every medication, and it even varies with each cycle. My first cycle was amazing, and I had no complaints, but I also didn’t have the trauma I now hold. After my miscarriage, my brain processes things differently and I went into my second and third IVF cycles with 10% hope. My positivity is low, and my stress is incredibly high and while we all are grieving on this infertility path, we’re grieving differently. The IVF experience is not the same for everyone and instead of putting us all in a box, we should be seen as individuals with individual experiences.”
LACK OF RESEARCH ON INFERTILITY TREATMENT
“It’s concerning to me that there is a lack of research that speaks to whether IVF medications cause long term harm to our bodies. I feel like it’s something I need to be concerned about, as I try to take a holistic approach to my health and wellbeing. When people keep telling me to keep doing IVF and I see my hormones go completely off the charts, I know my body needs a break to go back to homeostasis. I know when my body needs a break from being in a constant fight or flight mode for many months.
I don’t think our body is meant to endure this treatment long term. When you’re doing IVF, you’re pumping so much into your body, and you don’t know what the repercussions are going to be after going through the treatment.”
“During the first year after losing Yvette, my husband was amazing in the ways that he was able to support me, and we were so dependent on each other.”
TAKING A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALTH
“I met a naturopathic doctor here in Florida and it feels like she has saved my life from so many things. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism a month after I was pregnant with Yvette and this doctor helped me get back to normal levels and decrease my symptoms. She has educated me so well on everything as it relates to my hormones and does such comprehensive testing without putting me on the handful of medications you are typically prescribed.
When I go back to start another round of IVF, I’m looking for a reproductive endocrinologist and an immunologist to evaluate whether I am struggling with secondary infertility. My current doctor who helped with my previous IVF cycles doesn’t want to change the protocol and doesn’t want to test me for anything to figure out why the previous cycles didn’t work. That doesn’t make sense to me because there is obviously something going wrong that is preventing the transfers from working.
I think it’s easy to get comfortable at your first IVF clinic, making it hard to leave the clinic and move forward with a new one. You establish relationships with everyone at the clinic and for me, my clinic here in Florida is across the street from me and I can walk over easily whenever they need to see me. But just as we get comfortable at a clinic, they can get comfortable with us and just following a general protocol rather than looking at what will work specifically for you and your body.
Once you learn to advocate for yourself, you can start to ask the questions that need to be asked to determine if the doctor is here to help YOU or if they’re here for another check in their bank account.”
“We offer our stories to someone else going through exactly what we went through because we know how hard this journey is and we also know how lonely infertility is. ”
FOR THOSE STILL WALKING THE PATH OF INFERTILITY
“I really don’t have many words of wisdom for those still walking their own path of infertility because I am still trying to figure it all out for myself.
For me, what has been important is to listen to when I feel like I need to take a break and then to take an actual break from treatment. Someone once told me that taking a break is like giving up and I don’t find it to be that way at all…it’s just a break. In that break, you’re getting yourself back on track so you can give your everything to the next IVF cycle.
I feel like we all start our infertility journey at 100% and with every cycle we go through, that percentage decreases a little bit. With a break, I’m able to fill myself back up and replenish some of what I lost in the last cycle.
If you find yourself overwhelmed or tired, if you’re happy taking a break and it feels right to you, you should take that break.
I want to give back to this community that has helped me so much and it’s the purpose behind the start of my new baby loss coaching business (Rainbow Manifestations). I want to provide emotional support services and the resources that I didn’t have but needed when I was going through our loss. That is what this community is all about. We offer our stories to someone else going through exactly what we went through because we know how hard this journey is and we also know how lonely infertility is.
You can continue to follow Jelissa’s journey and see how she continues to uplift and support others battling infertility on Instagram @rainbowmanifestations.