This is both the most honest & the most painful photograph I have ever produced. I was taking a class in Boston and brought my IVF meds, a found bird's nest, and a replica of the one good egg I was so desperate for. I shot this right after my miscarriage when I was pregnant with triplets.
East LongmeadowBostonNESOPMassachusettsErinErin ChruscielErin Tierney ChruscielErin Chrusciel PhotographyLLCNew Englandphotographerfemale photographerwoman photographerportraitportrait photographerinfertilityresolveresolve new englandtryingtrying to conceivettcI am TryingeggovaryDonor eggNew England School of Photographymiscarriage
The very, very beginning: me & my cuddly baby brother. I always loved babies. When I was a child I wanted to be a teacher or a pediatrician.
I was lucky enough to come from a large family so there were no shortage of little ones to hold. I have over 20 first cousins, most of whom are younger.
My mom had my second brother when I was in college & we have a special bond to this day.
My husband and I got married when I was 30. We starting trying to have a baby of our own when I was 32. I had been obsessive about NOT getting pregnant & I was now excited to finally be in a place in our lives where we felt truly ready to start our "house, baby, dog" plan. In that order, or course.
For the record, we still don't have a dog.
We tried for months. I didn't get pregnant and could not understand why.
My position at a large company was eliminated, I lost a network of friends & co-workers, & started to feel pretty lonely. I dove into my new passion of photography. I took a lot of photos of my friends' beautiful children which led to starting a child portrait photography business.
There was nothing wrong with my cycles or my general health. With no clear answer months dragged by. I became depressed. We had envisioned sharing the news of our pregnancy with our family. Instead, we were drifting into isolation. I kept several journals, meditated, did yoga, tried acupuncture and Chinese herbs. Nothing worked.
Finally, my gynecologist suggested we get tested at a fertility clinic. I was sure she was crazy. Our family was so fertile!
I saw this chart for the first time & I remember thinking, "I should have been thinking about this much sooner. I had no idea."
I want to share this chart with every young woman I meet.
So began the tracking. Tracking periods, tracking ovulation, tracking body temperature, all to increase odds of conception. Spreadsheets are one sure way to take the fun out of sex.
We are optimistic planners & had bought a home with bedrooms for children. I refused to touch this one as I had envisioned painting & decorating it for our baby. It sat like this for years. I would medidate or exercise in there but mostly I would sit and cry. I notice in this image the stuffed yellow bear that Stephen bought in anticipation of our baby in the room. I still get a pit in my stomach even 15 years later looking at this photo.
I vaguely remember taking this photo of this sweet family when I was passing by a window in Boston one night. I can honestly say that the thought of grabbing a baby & running crossed my mind more than once.
The infertility doctors first suggested trying Clomid to increase my egg production. As someone who does not like to take any medication, I was apprehensive of Clomid (and every hormone thereafter) and worried about long term effects.
I went reluctantly through every step. Several cycles of Clomid did not work.
More tracking.
We then did five rounds of IUIs. Every time the box of medication showed up, I wept. I was bitter that I had to endure invasive & painful tests, hormone injections over & over when it seemed that so many people could just have sex.
One of the most difficult aspects of this process was that we were never sure if pregnancy was just around the corner. It's so easy to caught up in the lure of a new protocol, a new non-tradional solution, a new vitamin regimen. In our case (& as in many cases) the infertility was "unexplained". This means while there are options available to you, there is no guarantee that any of them will work on you. It felt like gambling. I am not a gambler.
I was truly so happy for my friends & family who were lucky enough to get pregnant. Still, I look back now and wish I had the awareness to avoid such painful events like the baby shower I attended immediately after having a miscarriage.
A part of me remained optomisitic. Apparently, I made my list of names...in a spreadsheet, of course.
We took time off and then tried IUIs again. I think we did 3 more rounds unsuccessfully.
Our last IUI worked! I was pregnant... with triplets.
I was terrified of the risks associated with carrying multiples but I imagined we would figure it out. Stephen was ready to go out & buy 3 baby Bjorns.
Here I am pregnant, super-nauseous, having hormone induced hot-flashes & covered with cats. Cats love a hot, tired pregnant woman.
Side note: how tiny was our bed? No wonder I didn't get pregnant.
This is the tactful way we told my parents that I was pregnant.
I guess I wanted to document the progress of my growing belly. Now I can use this photo to document that dark mole I recently had removed.
I apparently saved emails with congratulations on our pregnancy for the baby book.
I had an ultrasound on a Friday & was told one of the heartbeats had stopped. We were told to return on Monday to check on the remaining two.
I felt like death was inside of me. Stephen & I mostly sat in stunned silence but we did watch "Lord of the Rings" thinking such fantasy could take us away from our reality.
In one scene, Frodo is too weak to continue his journey to destroy the powerful ring he is carrying, all while it is destroying him. The story culminates as his dear friend Sam exclaims in a moment of desperation, "I cannot carry the ring, but I can carry you."
We had to pause the movie as I was sobbing uncontrollably to Stephen.
All three heartbeats had stopped beating by Monday.
I woke up from the anesthesia after the removal sobbing about "my babies" to a nurse I didn't know. I remember the warm blankets she gave me.
Friends & family were as supportive as possible. I remember food & their shared tears. I remember Stephen standing tall for both of us. He did a lot of cooking for a long time.
We cried. We mourned. We planted crocuses that would come up in the spring when the babies would have been born.
When my first nephew was born, I felt a love like no other. He was perfect.
Clearly, I wanted to smuggle my new nephew home with me.
There is something about this process that makes you feel like YOU are broken. When there is no identifiable issue or origin - just endless vitamins, web-sites and well-doers with advice, you get fooled that if you just do the right combination of things you can make it work. This can wreak havoc on your relationship with your body and your sense of self.
I spent a lot of time alone & used photography as an outlet. Hello, grey sky and lonely, cold tree. I must have been a lot of fun to be around at this point.
We mustered the energy to try again. We began an aggressive hormonal cocktail & IVF treatments.
THIS, we figured, would be the answer. The odds of conception with IVF were still pretty decent for my age.
Stephen took me to this restaurant, run by a good friend, for my 36th birthday. I remember Stephen trying to sterilize a needle & safely inject my butt with the latest hormonal cocktail in the car before we went in.
Hot.
Each cycle included a large box of hormone vials, needles of various sizes, & dermal patches delivered to our door. It became such a trigger for me.
Stephen took on the role of med organizer. He would sort them in the closet so I didn't have to see them all at once. I can't believe I took this photo.
I can believe I took this one.
Ouch.
I think my plan was to show this to my kids when they were being ungrateful someday.
I ran a lot. We went out to dinner a lot. We spent a great deal of our waking hours talking, planning & thinking about getting pregnant. Each failed cycle was more difficult emotionally than the last. I remember the winter being especially difficult. Christmas just felt like it was supposed to be about children.
Four IVF cycles failed. Despite aggressive protocols, my ovaries were not producing the eggs in the quantity or quality you would expect for a 36 year old.
Our kind doctor had the terrible job of suggesting that we should consider adoption or donor egg if we wanted to be parents.
I was horrified, disbelieving, & sad. But it is easier to be angry. So Stephen channeled our pain & rage into research. He is a problem solver so he dove into infertility research & found "the best" doctor and a second opinion.
We drove four hour round trips for blood tests, 10 minute ultrasounds & appointments with our new team in Boston. They reviewed our information & concluded that yes, in fact, our other clinic was likely correct. My eggs were probably shit (my term, not theirs) but they would try a new protocol and one last cycle.
Ever hopeful. One. Last. Shot.
I went in all full of myself, sure that this would be it. I woke up from the egg retrieval to hear that they only retrieved a single egg.
Surprise, I was sobbing again.
With only we egg we did not have much hope. However, this "last chance" egg fertilized & grew. We wore all our luckiest clothing and went in for the transfer. We waited for two weeks, took & took a blood test.
I was pregnant. It worked.
I was excited, nauseous again & told everyone. We planned our fall baby & couldn't wait to finally be done with infertility & join our many friends in parenthood conversations.
We felt vindicated. We felt like our hard work had paid off.
But this process is not about working hard.
At the 8 week ultrasound, we saw our technician's face drop. We knew. The heartbeat had stopped. By now, we didn't even need to be told. It was such a long drive home from Boston.
This time we made a "hope" garden & planted a Japanese maple that would be at its peak in the fall, when the baby would have been born.
I couldn't take any more. Our doctor told us to take a vacation.
We did. Stephen booked us a trip on short notice & we stared sadly at a lot of British & French babies.
This is the hall at our Boston clinic. I insisted on taking the stairs (10 floors) in some sort of statement to myself that I was still strong despite my broken heart.
Stephen grabbed a brochure off the reception desk to scribble a date. It was a conference for Resolve New England for couples considering adoption and donor egg. Though still emotionally raw, we went anyway.
We met an amazing group of people who grew their families through adoption & donor egg. It was the first time I could begin to think about having a child in a different way than I imagined. I had so much to process.
It wasn't until I one of those couples invited us to their home to meet their children that I think I truly could imagine making the choice to use another woman's egg to have our baby. I am forever grateful to them.
I was 37. At this point the odds of successfully giving birth after being on such aggressive protocols for mutiple cycles and essentially four miscarriages were significantly greater if I used donor egg. I had to mourn my idea of motherhood, the genetic connection to my children & my apparent desire to not be "different". It took a while.
We proceeded with the anonymous donor process locally. It was surreal trying to make concrete decisions about what traits mattered to us in a donor. Certainly, we never consider our partner's distant family health status when you can just have sex to create a baby. We discussed, filled our forms & put our faith in the nurse to find a match.
Our team found a woman, willing and able to donate her eggs to us that matched our criteria. We were elated.
A day later, my 2nd cousin, Marie (pictured here) heard we were "in the market for some eggs". She offered to find out more about the process & I nearly dropped to the floor. She is a brilliant, healthy, kind woman who was studying law at the time. She was fully aware of the medical risks and psychological concerns. We tried to talk her out of it.
She said yes anyway. Her generosity overwhelmed us.
It felt too good to be true. I could have some genetics in common with our child if this worked. Our children would know Marie & their story would not be a missing link in their life. This felt like an emotionally difficult choice for me but a healthier one for our potential babies. I felt like the less mystery around their conception story the better.
In the month preparing for the transfer, we were in Florida for few days with friends. There was in issue with my medication & we spent part of this trip on the phone with the infertility pharmacy, our clinic & at the CVS in Miami.
Good times.
I had to be on extra hormones to prepare my body for pregnancy. This meant the usual hormone patches, little needles (pictured) and nasty intra-muscular ones that left bruising for months.
Marie underwent her hormone protocol simultaneously. Her surgical egg retrieval was successful. 22 eggs were retrieved & 2 developed after fertilization to day 5. It was excellent news.
This is the day of the transfer. I wore this shirt on every transfer day because I was actually feeling anything but strong. This was our last option for me to carry our baby and give birth. I guess this is my nervous smile.
The doctor put this little beauty in a cozy spot in my uterus and wished us luck. I cried. I always cried. I thought after every transfer, "well technically, I am pregnant. Maybe THIS is the moment I conceived our baby."
Steve's face here cracks me up. I honestly have no idea how we made it though this nightmare.
The nurses told us to wait until the blood test after two weeks and don't bother with home pregnancy tests.
We never listened. I wanted to learn bad (or good) news at home as opposed to a phone call. Even the tiniest bit of control was important when your life is dictated by this process.
We like to call this photo "Holding Four Aces."
6 weeks , 2 days. This little embryo is growing along with my anxiety. I was immobilized by the possibility of another miscarriage.
But this time was different.
This baby kept growing. I made it to the second trimester. I was off the injections, off the patches & less nauseous. I was the "regular" pregnant woman (to my OB, at least).
It's a girl. I happy cried.