This day, exactly one year ago, was one of the absolute happiest days of my life.
It started off with a super early and nervous ride to Birmingham with Alicia to have her blood drawn for a pregnancy test. We had completed our 4th IUI at the ART Fertility Clinic two weeks prior and if this test didn’t come back positive we were going to have to move to the more expensive IVF treatment. During this last IUI cycle we hadn’t even thought or worried about the outcome until that morning because we had already accepted that we were going to have to take the next step and start IVF — but that morning the nerves kicked back in, full force.
After our trip to Birmingham, we both headed into work at our separate jobs for the day. That pregnancy test was all that I could think about all day long. I worried about it so much that I gave myself a horrible headache and felt really sick by the afternoon (that was usually when they called with the results). 5pm hit and I still hadn’t heard from Alicia. I just assumed either they hadn’t called yet or she was waiting until we got home to listen to the message in case it was bad news.
We had decided to grab food at Jefferson’s instead of cooking dinner that night. Little did I know that Alicia already knew that she was in fact pregnant and that she was planning on telling me there. Her plans got kind of messed up because we ran into my parents having dinner and ended up joining them, but after dinner we headed home to let Sophie out before we headed back to the store to pick up a few items and that’s when she dropped the news on me:
“Put prenatal vitamins on our list” and I, not even realizing what she just said, grab my phone and start to write it down and she goes “because I’m pregnant!” I was instantly flooded with so many emotions, man. I was excited, overjoyed, I laughed, and even cried…I COULD NOT believe that FINALLY we got good news!! We both had totally given up hope on the IUI and had already just had it in our minds that we HAD to do the IVF…I wasn’t prepared AT ALL for those results!
Fast forward to today and we now have almost 6-month-old beautiful twin boys. They’re everything we could have ever dreamed of and so much more!
We owe everything to the incredible doctors and staff at the A.R.T. Fertility Clinic in Birmingham, AL. Without them and what they did for us, our lives wouldn’t be complete like they are today. We will never forget what they did for us and what that experience was like, both the good and bad. It was a rough 2 years, but we every bit of that experience makes us appreciate our sweet boys even more and it strengthened our marriage as well. We learned that we can take on anything as long as we have each other for support.
Every single day that we see and spend time with those two little boys we are thankful that they are here and that this path in our lives was even a possibility. We truly are blessed beyond all measure, and we are forever grateful.
If anyone ever needs or wants to talk to either of us about our experiences because you too are going through or are about to start fertility treatment, please feel free to contact us! We can talk privately and will always keep our conversations absolutely confidential — we know the stresses that it puts on you and we completely understand that for some people (ourselves included) the fewer people in your lives that know what you’re going through, the better. We just want to be there for anyone that might need someone to talk to that understands a little more about what you’re feeling or going through.