Someone was definitely looking down on us!!
It all started when I was around 27 years old. We figured we were ready to start trying to have a family and like most couples, we didn't think there would be any problems. After a year of trying and no pregnancy, I decided to go to my doctor and try to figure out what was going on. They discovered I had endometriosis and that a simple laparoscopic procedure should make getting pregnant a lot easier. So after another year or so and many ovulation kits later, we still were not pregnant. I was starting to panic, now being 30 years old and had originally hoped to already have a family. At this point we decided to look into In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatment and failing this, adoption as our final option.
In September 1995 we started treatment and by mid-November (after our first attempt with 3 embryos implanted) we discovered we were pregnant with twins! How excited we were, as we never thought this day would ever come. We thought the pregnancy would be fairly normal, and it was, until 26 weeks when the amniotic sac ruptured and I was rushed to hospital. It was like a bad dream, all the information that the doctors were giving us, the survival rate was about 80%, and that if they survive at all, there would be a number of issues to deal with then. It was all so overwhelming! I managed to stay in the hospital for 12 more days, bedridden and having 2 sets of steroid shots to speed up the development of the babies' lungs. Then on May 3, 1996 our two baby girls Haley and Sydney were born via c-section, Haley weighed in at 2 lbs., 3 oz and Sydney at 2 lbs. They lived in ICU for the first few weeks, then moved to special care until they were ready to come home on July 22, 1996.
We knew in our minds that two children was a nice number and unless we decided to implant more embryos this will probably be enough in our family. To our surprise, in February 1998, I discovered that I was pregnant naturally with one baby! This pregnancy went right to term and I delivered a healthy 8 lbs, 11oz baby girl named Anna! At this point our family was definitely complete so I decided to have my tubes tied (who would have thought?)
Today, Haley and Sydney are 12 1/2 years old and Anna is 10 years old and all are healthy. We frequently look back and just think "WOW", we went through so much and felt unbelievably lucky to get pregnant on the first attempt and then, “out of the blue” have one naturally!
