Infertility: The Club We Did Not Want Membership To

On the limo ride following our wedding, we decided to skip our honeymoon, and invest in fertility treatments. As LGBTQ women, we knew that it would be the only way we could both be part of conceiving a child. Somos Latinas, our dream to have a casa full of kids was possible, and we wanted to get started. “Forget Hawaii, let's get injections, and start a family,” we thought to ourselves. 

The treatment our doctor recommended was to extract my wife Erin’s eggs from her ovaries, find a sperm donor that would represent me, and put those embryos in my body. I would carry our child. We would both be part of conceiving. All we had to do was sign on the dotted lines, and prop our legs up on stirrups. Erin went first. We needed to know if her eggs were healthy, and if they could survive outside of her body. The first curveball was finding that my wife had fibroids. Fibroids are tumors that attach to your reproductive organs, and live their best life off of your blood supply. 

“No worries, the ovaries are uncompromised, we’ll get your eggs, and remove your uterus” is essentially what the doctors told us.  Erin provided twenty-six eggs, four of which survived, and became our future. Erin would no longer be a viable candidate to carry a child - but hey - we’re gay - we still have my uterus.

My uterus is beautiful, according to my doctor. We inspected her with dye, x-rays, with tubes and blood tests . “She is young and healthy, congratulations!”

Our first embryo was on a petri-dish, a boy. I laid on the table with my legs up in the air, thinking, this is it. The procedure took twenty minutes, and just like that, I was technically pregnant. In the fertility community, we call it PUPO (Pregnant until proven otherwise). Two weeks later, it was proven otherwise. The embryo did not attach to my uterus, and I would have to try again.

I tried again, same result. We were down to our last two embryos. Two little girls. Our doctor started to suspect that maybe something was wrong with me. More tubes, more x-rays, dye, blood work. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong. 

We try again, and just like that, we’re pregnant! And possibly, with twins.

Being pregnant after one year of trying, felt like a miracle. Erin and I started to think about names, and nursery ideas -- we purchased some baby clothes! Finally, we would be parents. Joe Biden had just been elected, and it felt like things were finally starting to go right. Our next blood work was a few days before Thanksgiving, and we planned on breaking the news to our family. 

Then we got an email: “You’re having a miscarriage due to an ectopic pregnancy.”

Because ectopic pregnancies are life threatening, they needed to act right away.  It was Thanksgiving Day, and we sat at the fertility clinic, knowing that our last chance at having biological children was about to end in the most traumatic way possible. My wife gripped my hand, and we tried to keep our shit together as I was injected by shots to end our pregnancy. 

We spent the next couple of months numb to the world. I’d let hope resign. The clinic offered a diagnosis: Unexplained Infertility. It’s not your fault, it’s not our fault. 

Erin and I are infertile. That doesn't mean we have to give up, you can still get pregnant, or try a different way to build a family.  Millions of people are infertile. We’re now part of a club that nobody wants a membership to, but we are. not alone. One in eight couples are infertile. 

We are one in eight.