It’s been a year since my first IVF egg retrieval. Even though that cycle didn’t work, I’m lucky to be writing this with my 2 girls asleep next to me.

I remember feeling like I was never going to get pregnant. I had done 5 failed IUI’s without a break and then jumped into IVF. I had been injecting and ingesting lots of hormones. There was so much stress. Not only was there the pressure I was putting on myself, but there were so many timing variables. With IVF you are going in for monitoring almost every day, but you don’t know until 1-2 days before when your retrieval will be. I knew someone had to drive me to the retrieval, but that it was likely to fall on Rosh Hashana and possible to fall on the same day my sister in law went into labor. Somehow it ended up falling on the 2nd day of the holiday and the day before my niece was born.

Besides the timing, there was the overall stress of going into a procedure you’ve never done before. I was going to go under anesthesia. I was going to need to stay in bed rest the remainder of the day. How many eggs would I get? Would they fertilize? Would they make it to transfer and freeze?

That cycle wasn’t meant to be. There were likely a lot of factors of why it didn’t work. With hindsight, I think a big factor was all that stress. It was heartbreaking to then get the chemical pregnancy, but I do think that the resulting break I took, helped the December IVF cycle be successful.

I fee so lucky that I can write this today as the mom of two amazing, healthy babies.