I would like to capture that moment to make it eternal

Enjoy it every second. As it deserves to be.

We are not yet aware of what is happening. It has taken us a lot to get here.

We felt this was not for us. We thought that we were meant to be happy, but “differently”.

Monday 3rd March 2014. My husband and I went to the clinic for a pregnancy test as if we were going to a routine visit to the doctor for a cold. No nerves, not expecting any new news that were going to surprise us.

During the few minutes we waited since we arrived and we sat on the couch in the back of the hall, I visualized what would happen minutes later. We would go to the consultation room and a member of our doctor’s medical team would tell us very carefully, but openly, that regrettably it had not worked this time either.

My heart did not skip a beat by having that thought. I felt I knew what was going to happen and waited with resignation and serenity. The repeated failures had left their mark on me without being aware of it.

Suddenly, we see our doctor approaching us in the hall with her best smile and opening her arms to embrace us. At that moment, she said “You’re pregnant, congratulations”. I sceptically embraced her as if I had not understood what she had just said. Like when you hear something in lower voice and you cannot move and need someone to repeat it to make sure you heard it right.

I think that I told her: “But, how? That is not possible”. And, still smiling, she says, “Yes, you’re pregnant. The test was positive immediately. Let’s go to the consultation room”. All at once, as she hugs my husband, my voice-over tells me: “It cannot be, you have not come here to hear that you are pregnant. You have come to hear that we would need to try again”.

We are on our way to the office and we meet almost everyone: the nurse who accompanied us on the day of the transfer, the nurse’s doctor with whom we have some confidence and appreciation after the time spent, the reception desk girls that are always interested in how things are going. It’s inevitable that they know that: we are pregnant!

We go inside the consultation room still astonished. I don’t even know where I drop my jacket and I sit on a chair next to my husband.

The doctor tells us in more detail the joy with which they have started the day she and her team, after seeing the positive result in my urine test.
“It’s about time!” she said, “It had to be your turn now”.

My husband and I look at each other and I ask her again: “But, is it sure that I am pregnant? Is it possible that the medication I am taking has given us a false positive? As soon as I finish the sentence I feel ridiculous.

The doctor, without losing her smile, tells me: “You’re pregnant. The values have been very high. There is no doubt about it”.

“I cannot believe it,” I reply. “I have been feeling menstrual cramps for days”, I insist. To which she replies, “Those are spasms of the uterus that is widening for the embryo to be able to grow”.

Incredible, we could not believe it yet. I spent the last few days saying to my husband that I felt the same than the other times: the body preparing for the menstruation. My husband is still astonished but confesses at that moment that he had never completely lost hope.

The doctor asks us to do a blood test, rather than to confirm the pregnancy, to know how all the values are. And we go back home to wait for the results.

The first song playing on the car radio is “Happy” from Pharrell Williams. It is as if fate suddenly talked to us and told us: “Wake up from the nightmare, guys. Your time has come. You have been given what you wished for so long and you thought you could never get”.

At that moment, it came to mind the last day we met with our doctor. After the last failure.

I talked to her honestly: I told her that I did not believe anything would work for us. That something was happening to me that was not yet studied enough and therefore no embryo could feel comfortable inside me. And for all that, we should start thinking about beginning the process of adoption.

The doctor calmed me down. She repeated that she understood what was happening but she was sure that there were still chances for us. I think that it was her who convinced us to go for another attempt.

We left the consultation room really touched. Life had not been easy since we started to consider the possibility of parenthood. Many emotions, fertile time and lost money that had brought us to the limit emotional and economically and without any solution on short or medium term. In short, we were completely exhausted.

The doctor, aware of that and of our resources, and committed in every way to us from the beginning, did not want us to leave that day without the conviction that we would try again.
And so we did, thanks to her.

What a joy and excitement I feel when I remember all this now and that hug as she told me: “You’re pregnant, congratulations!” I think that I will always remember that moment. It is as if suddenly the Three Wise Men had come, we had won the lottery, the pools, all at the same time.

My husband and I are living a dream ever since. It is too soon to know how everything will evolve as we still have to go through most of the pregnancy. But I definitely think it has given us back that feeling that stimulates us all day by day, which is to fight for what we love, for what we want, and that we, more myself than my husband, had already lost without the possibility of getting it back: HOPE.

Without any doubt, that day we got back the excitement for fighting for our baby.

What will happen from now on with the pregnancy, we do not know it yet. But, we are sure that the last visit with our doctor before the last attempt and the courage with which she faced our disappointment, brought back to life all our feelings of struggle that we thought we did not have anymore. And we are very grateful for that.

This letter is dedicated to our doctor to whom we will never be able to thank enough for what she has done for us and to all those couples with repeated failures that have lost the hope of becoming parents.

The most important for success, as this struggle is often long and very painful, is to be in a good clinic such as the Instituto Marquès and trust that you are in the best hands, as it happened to us since the first consultation when we met our doctor. We trusted her good judgment and here we are, with a 7 weeks positive!

If your Doctor, in whom you trust, recommends you to go forward, do not be overcome by the fear of another failure. Trust his/her words. If he/she was not convinced of it, he/she wouldn’t take the risk to let you go through another disappointment.

And if in doubt about which clinic to choose, do not hesitate: the Instituto Marquès gives that touch of distinction, where you will always feel in confidence and in the best hands.

All my best wishes to you,

(Calella, April 2014)