Couple shares infertility struggles to encourage others not to give up on their dream of having a family
Author – Cloe Cabrera
After enduring the heartache of several pregnancy losses, Mitchie and John Overstreet never gave up hope they’d have a child of their own. That’s why their baby girl, Dylan, who was born December, is their miracle baby.
“I still can’t believe she’s here,” says an emotional Mitchie Overstreet, of Brandon.
“Even after we brought her home I felt like I was taking care of someone else’s baby. But she really is ours. She is really here.”
Over six and a half million American women struggle with infertility. Mitchie and John’s story echoes that of so many couples who are grappling with the medical, financial, physical and emotional challenges of infertility. But they never gave up on their dream.
Mitchie, 46, always knew she wanted to be a mother. She remembers taking her dolls in a stroller for walks at age 5 and wanting children of her own. “I would tell my friend, who is still my friend today, I want to have babies while I’m still young enough to chase them around,” recalls Mitchie, who grew up in Panama. “I don’t want to be too old.”
Mitchie discovered her infertility issues during her first marriage when she and her husband tried to have a baby. They visited a fertility expert, but it never happened. Eventually, they divorced.
Mitchie and her current husband, John, married seven years ago. The couple knew they wanted to have children and immediately started trying for a baby. After several months, they sought help from a reproductive specialist.
Mitchie began a round of Clomid – a drug prescribed to stimulate ovulation in women.
But she didn’t get pregnant. That was followed by three grueling rounds of IVF. On the third cycle, Mitchie got pregnant with twins.
“We were ecstatic,” she recalls. “Our dream had finally come true.”
But their joy soon turned to heartache. At their first 12-week appointment with their Ob/Gyn, doctors couldn’t detect a heartbeat.
Mitchie remembers returning to the fertility expert searching for answers as to why they lost the twins. But the couple says they were met with indifference.
“(The doctor) seemed upset that we had come back,” Mitchie says. “We had just been through a very traumatic experience and he wasn’t very nice to us.”
The couple decided to take a much-needed break from trying to have a baby. They waited two years before trying again, this time with help from The Reproductive Medicine Group.
“I was 40 by then and I decided I was ready to try again,” says Mitchie. “Dr. Goodman was recommended to me by some friends of mine who went through IVF and were successful and they really liked her.”
The couple went through extensive testing before undergoing their first round of IVF.
They got pregnant with the first cycle.
But they experienced another heartbreak – a chemical pregnancy, a pregnancy in which a woman tests positive for pregnancy but miscarries before anything can be seen in the uterus on an ultrasound. The loss usually occurs before the fifth week of pregnancy.
The loss was devastating.
The couple turned to donor eggs for their next attempt.
“We decided donor eggs would be a good idea because we wanted to have a healthy baby,” says Mitchie. “We didn’t want to take a chance the baby wouldn’t be healthy with my eggs.”
They couple split the cost of the first round of IVF with the donor, who also was trying to have a baby. The cycle was not successful.
They decided to try again with a different donor. This time, two embryos were transferred and three additional embryos were cryopreserved, says Mitchie, who was now 45. Both embryos implanted but when the couple went in for their six-week sonogram the sacks were empty.
“We were so very close,” she says. “I really felt like it was supposed to be. I just had that feeling. We decided to try with the frozen embryos. I knew in my heart this was the last chance and it was going to happen for us.”
Of the three embryos that remained, two were implanted into Mitchie in April. She became pregnant with one of the embryos.
The medical team at The Reproductive Medicine Group carefully monitored the pregnancy during the first trimester.
Every sonogram was daunting. Mitchie admits she spent the first few months of the pregnancy braced for bad news. “I was scared to death to even tell anyone that we were pregnant,” she says. “I was afraid we would jinx it. The 14th week I finally started to tell people, but I was very cautious through the entire pregnancy.” But this time, the story had a very different ending. Baby Dylan arrived in December.
“Even after we brought her home, I kept waiting for someone to take her,” says Mitchie. “I don’t think it sunk in that we really have a baby. I always wanted to look in the back seat and see my baby, sitting back there smiling. And now I do.”
The Overstreets say to anyone in similar circumstances to never give up hope and that dreams can come true.
“I wouldn’t stop trying,” says Mitchie, as baby Dylan lays in her lap. “If you are able and have the will and the faith, keep trying. If it’s something that you really, really want, stay positive and eliminate all the stress from your life; focus on yourself and your health, that’s very important when you are trying to have a baby. And never lose faith; it’s important to never lose faith and never give up hope that you can have a family.”.
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