Some women grow up dreaming about one day being a mother.
Pauline Ann van der Meijs has wanted to be a mom for as long as she could remember.
But she’s always had a fear of being infertile for some reason. She suspects it had something to do with the movie Dumbo.
“This beautiful Disney classic opens with all animals in the circus receiving their babies delivered by the storks, except for Dumbo’s mom. She and only she stays childless and had to watch all her fellow elephants cuddle their little ones. How ironic that this same thing would happen to me later in life. But the movie doesn’t end there. Dumbo’s mom receives her wonderful baby through a special delivery a little later on in the story and thank God the same thing would also happen to me later on in life,” she tells Love What Matters.
Pauline and her husband Maas decided to start a family of their own after Pauline’s father passed away.
She had been diagnosed with endometriosis which presented some problem.
After about nine months of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, they decided to see a fertility doctor. It was then decided that they would start to use hormones and intrauterine insemination (IUI) to conceive.
“I couldn’t believe it. My lifetime fear that I would struggle to conceive just became reality,” Pauline said.
Her journey got a little more complicated from there.
“After doing three IUI’s and more importantly after having three monthly emotional breakdowns in the bathroom with blood-stained toilet paper in my hands, we decided together with the doctor it was enough! We were going to start IVF,” she explains.
She was terrified to think that IVF was her last chance at getting pregnant.
This process involved several up and downs and nail-biting moments of waiting to see if their process would work.
Still, Pauline did not give up even after all the heartbreaking moments which included several miscarriages. Then things seemed to get worse.
“That same night after we heard the cause of the miscarriage I bled, way too heavy to be normal. I went to the doctor’s office the next morning to the same ultrasound technician and again she was too quiet to give me good news. ‘Something wrong with the machine?’ I asked after 20 minutes of silently looking at the ultrasounds. ‘No dear, I think there is something very wrong with you.’ An hour later I was in a specialists office in another hospital because they suspected I had auterine arteriovenous malformation (AVM).”
Pauline was rushed to the emergency room for extreme heavy bleeding. She lost more than a liter of blood on the way to the ER.
It’s suspected that the only reason she survived is that she was already in another wing of the hospital.
“In the ER they shot me up with medicine and they decided to treat me with medicine first instead of performing a hysterectomy right away. ‘She doesn’t have kids yet.’ I heard my doctor say to the other doctor in the hallway. For some reason, I already knew this was the end of the road for me. This was all too much to handle, I was going to give up,” she explains.
But Pauline did have another option. They decided to have a surrogate carry their baby through IVF.
After their surrogate was impregnated, Pauline ended up having an ectopic pregnancy.
“This time I think was the worst part for me. That my stomach had scars on it for the rest of my life while I haven’t even carried my own child. I have accepted them now but this took a while for me to recover from.”
Their surrogate eventually gave birth to their daughter Nova Ann.
She hopes her story will inspire other struggling with infertility.
“This story is meant for all women who are starting, are right in the middle or think they are at the end of their journey. I just want to say to everyone, never give up on believing in yourself. Believe in yourself and the love for your partner, that is the most important thing. You two need to stay a team and when you two believe in each other’s strength and love, you can conquer the world, even the world of infertility.”
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
