***TRIGGER WARNING****
The brief moment I finally became pregnant after years of IVF
In 2014, I was pregnant for three weeks.
It was my first round of IVF using donor eggs from Greece. When we found out, Michel and I were excited. Grateful. Finally, after three failed rounds of IVF in France and one failed IUI, our dream was finally coming true.
But we were also cautious.
We wanted to make sure the pregnancy was viable before telling people. Other than my family, we kept it private — the typical thing newly pregnant people do.
Almost immediately, I was exhausted. I slept constantly. My breasts felt swollen. But underneath all of it was happiness. I could not believe it had worked on the first try with donor eggs. I had convinced myself this process would take years too, just like regular IVF had.
For the first time in a very long time, I let myself imagine a future.
The ultrasound that changed everything
Then it happened.
We went for the ultrasound to hear the heartbeat. The doctor looked concerned. He told us the heartbeat was weak and that I would likely lose the pregnancy.
We were crushed.
What do you mean the heartbeat is weak? How could this happen now? No one had prepared us for this part. I had spent years worrying about implantation, fertilization, embryos, retrievals, injections — all the steps to get pregnant. I thought once we made it this far, we were safe.
The doctor told me to go home and stay in bed.
We returned a week later.
There was no heartbeat.
Even then, I still did not believe it. I thought maybe the doctor was wrong. The clinic in Greece advised us to get another scan to confirm everything. I honestly do not know why we had to do that. I have blocked parts of it out.
I just remember thinking: Why do I have to go through this twice?
Why did I have to hear silence twice?
The grief nobody talks about after IVF loss
Next came the D&C — the surgery to remove the pregnancy tissue that had stopped developing.
Michel and I were heartbroken.
People sometimes ask whether I mourned the loss as a baby. The truth is more complicated than that.
At the time, I did not fully see it as a baby yet. To me, it felt like cells that had stopped growing. What devastated me most was the emotional whiplash of infertility itself.
In three weeks, we went from overwhelming relief and joy to complete sadness.
I was grieving the loss of hope. The loss of finally being “on the other side.” The thought of having to start over again — more injections, more waiting rooms, more uncertainty, more emotional ups and downs.
That was the part that crushed me.
And yet, strangely, I still love remembering that I was pregnant.
I still think about those three weeks
I loved how it felt to say: I am pregnant.
I loved how happy Michel and I were during those weeks. Even now, years later, I still see it as a beautiful memory.
Of course, I wish I could have experienced all of it — pregnancy, childbirth, raising a child, watching that child grow up. I wish I had gotten the traditional happy ending everyone assumes will come if you just try hard enough.
But life did not unfold that way for me.
And here I am, many years later, far removed from that extreme high and that devastating low.
I accept what was.
I accept what is.
I continue to live fully, even without the ending I once believed my life needed in order to matter.
I am okay.
