Fertility Awareness Week 2024

Praying to miscarry an IVF pregnancy is something I never thought I’d find myself doing. All the time I put in. The injections. The appointments. The invasive procedures. All to get pregnant.

And I got pregnant! After multiple IUI’s I had finally gotten to IVF…and it worked on my first try! It felt so right. 

But then I arrived at the first scan… and she couldn’t find him.  

It's a Pregnancy of Unknown Location, ‘PUL’ for short, she tells me. “Unknown location?” I think to myself. what?!

“I’m so sorry Lielle.” She knows I don’t understand. “We can’t find the embryo. It implanted. But not in the right location. We aren’t sure where it’s located….In these situations, our best hope is a miscarriage.” She speaks slowly and clearly. 

But I’m speechless… How have they lost my embryo? Where could it have gone? It’s all I can focus on. 

“But the HCG levels are rising normally…” I say. I’d been getting my bloods done twice a week at my monitoring appointments and I knew all the numbers. I start shooting questions at her. I beg the reproductive endocrinologist for more information…I hadn’t even graduated from the IVF clinic yet.

…It destroyed me to pray for that miscarriage…and when I had to be thankful for my loss, the broken pieces of my heart burned to ashes. 

—

This is infertility. 

It isn’t just waiting to get pregnant. 

It’s courageously standing up after a fall only to be knocked back down suddenly and unexpectedly. It’s expecting defeat but hoping for success. It’s getting back up and trying again. 

My name is Lielle Sugar and I’m one of the clinicians at The Alliance Center. I’ll always carry that little boy around with me, even though I never got to meet him. Even if I had to pray for his loss to save my future. Because instead of replacing him, my children compliment him. They show me how amazing he could have been - if he’d made it.

To kick off infertility awareness week I wanted to share this short story about my second miscarriage - my IVF loss. It reminds me of how the experience of infertility can be simultaneously amazing and terrible. So powerful and life-changing and yet, so private. Nobody knew what I was going through. 

I wanted you to know - I get it.

We get it. 

And if you need us, we’re here for you.