Living in the One Percentile: The Story of Three Miracles

By ZMP

I grew up in a pretty strict Catholic household where religion was always really important. My parents always taught me that I could do anything I put my mind to if I worked hard enough for it and that I should always be good and kind because what goes around comes around. I brought all these ideals with me into adulthood, and it seemed to be working well for me?until my husband and I decided to try to start a family. After a year of trying to get pregnant, my faith was shaken. Why didn't God want me to have a baby? Am I really that bad of a person that God doesnt think I should have such a gift? Finally, my pregnancy test came back positive, and I thought my tests and trials were over. Oh, I knew there would be small hurdles to get over; all young families experience that?I was just glad the worst was over. I missed feeling like I could depend on God. Little did I know my fertility issues were just a small blip compared to the trials we would experience after becoming pregnant.
I originally wrote this book for my babies as they approach their first birthday. I wanted them to know how much they were loved and wanted from the beginning and for them to know their story. After having a few family members read the book, they agreed that I should publish it, as it has the potential to touch many lives. I hope it does.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499036589

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by ZMP.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2014910579

ISBN:                  Hardcover                          978-1-4990-3659-6

                            Softcover                            978-1-4990-3660-2

                            eBook                                 978-1-4990-3658-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/10/2014

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Contents

The Beginning of the Beginning…

Part 1   Pregnancy Journal

Part 2   The Babies’ Story

Part 3   Condolences. . . and Congratulations!

Part 4   CaringBridge Journal

Part 5   On to the Next Beginning. . .

This book was written by the heart of an

angel through Mommy’s hands.

The Beginning of the Beginning…

I should have known right from the start that this was not going to be a typical story. I should have seen the signs that, in hindsight, were glaringly obvious. I should have known right off the bat that we live in the one percentile. It all started when I was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). Without going into too much detail, I was diagnosed with insulin resistant PCOS. That basically means my body doesn’t process sugar or utilize my insulin very well. When you eat food, it turns into sugar in your bloodstream. Your body gets the signal to pump out some insulin to deliver the sugar to your muscles and tissues, and the excess is stored as fat. My insulin receptors, for whatever reason, resist my insulin, keeping sugar in my blood, signaling my body to pump out more insulin. It just so happens that insulin production directly correlates to the production of a certain hormone. Overproduction of this hormone was causing my body to not ovulate. Every fertility doctor and ob-gyn that I saw, including my high-risk doctor’s students, all said the same thing: "You do not look like a PCOS patient." Let me explain—PCOS patients generally are overweight, especially around their midsection, grow facial hair while the hair on their head thins, and have acne and skin tags, along with a few other unpleasant symptoms. After I went off the pill, which regulates hormones, I lost weight instead of gaining like a PCOS patient would, but I did start to break out a bit. Other than some acne, I had no other PCOS indicators. I ate healthy and ran six miles a day. I was 5’7" and 128 lb.—hardly what you would consider overweight. My second fertility doctor tried all the natural ways to try to get my body back on track. He put me on a diabetic diet (low GI foods), told me to exercise a lot (more than running six miles a day?), and put me on metformin—a medication given to people with diabetes to help regulate insulin and sensitize insulin receptors in the body. Now I don’t actually have diabetes; this is just something fertility doctors prescribe to women with insulin resistance–based PCOS to help with fertility problems. So I started a very strict diet (after going to a nutrition specialist) and added Insanity workouts three times a week in addition to my daily six-mile runs. This new lifestyle helped me lose weight (I dropped to 122 lb.) but didn’t help my fertility issues. By the end of all this, I was on a strict diet of lean meat and veggies—even fruit was taken off my list of approved foods.

We had tried for over a year to get pregnant. The fertility doctors had me trying everything, including an array of combination fertility treatments, but could never get me to ovulate. My one fertility doctor told me, and later told my high-risk ob-gyn, that I was his toughest PCOS patient to crack. We were trying our final option before in vitro would be our only option left (that or no kids). I was taking hormone shots to the stomach every day (which I had to do myself). We tried the lowest dosage, which did nothing, and started steadily increasing the amount. Unfortunately, there is very little control with the injectibles, and my body reacted too well by the final high dosage, and we had to cancel that round as it would be too risky of having a crazy amount of babies (too many eggs would be released). So we started over with the smallest amount and steadily worked our way back up. Once again my body reacted too well, but only three follicles (follicles are what release eggs during ovulation) were considered dominant and would be ready for ovulation—the legal limit for doctors to allow for a trigger shot (the trigger shot is a hormone shot that forces dominant follicles to ovulate). I asked the doctor what my odds were of having multiples. He said that I still only had 20–25 percent chance of getting pregnant at all, and of that 20–25 percent, I had 17 percent chance of having one baby and 5 percent of that 25 percent of having twins and then an even slimmer chance of having more than two.

Now let me explain something—I had a single dominant follicle once before that we used the trigger shot for, and it didn’t work (it is extremely rare for the trigger shot to not work), so I still didn’t think the trigger shot would even work for me. And since we already had to cancel one round of shots because of too many dominant follicles, we didn’t know if we’d ever be in a position of having just the legal limit of three dominant follicles to even try the trigger shot again.

And so our story begins.

Part 1

PREGNANCY JOURNAL

December 12, 2012

Trigger shot/intercourse.

December