Photo: Myka Meier
After years of trying to expand her family,Myka Meieris finally preparing for her new addition.
For Meier, IVF never crossed her mind after conceiving her first child, 5-year-old Valentina, naturally with her husband Marco. Hoping to have her children close in age, she realized after a year without getting pregnant that she “needed a little bit of help.”
“I always say disappointment is the worst emotion because you want to be positive but when you do everything that you’re told, it’s really really hard when it doesn’t happen,” Meier tells PEOPLE. “It’s a very isolating feeling and it feels hopeless sometimes.”
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Myka Meier
Despite her initial desire to avoid any “invasive” ways of conception, Meier spent the next four years going through four rounds of IVF — and multiple failed attempts at implantation.
“I went through all the highs and lows,” Meier says. “I had a miscarriage. I had failed implants. I had embryos where they would take the embryos out and then genetically test them, and none of them were healthy enough to implant.”
“It is very taxing on your body,” she adds. “I always have this thought process of, ‘Don’t think, just do.‘I used to kind of chant that to myself, ‘Don’t think, just do,’ and then inject myself with whatever my medicine was for that day just to get through it.”
Meier says the process became difficult and she tried three different IVF clinics and six different IVF specialists before admitting she was “at [her] last straw” when she didn’t find success.
However, with the support of her family and friends Meier says she pushed past the “tears and disappointment” and gave the IVF process one more shot with her last embryo.
“I just always felt like I had another little soul out there. I really did,” she explains of her decision to continue the process. “Like, I always felt like it was my job to find a way to make this sort of life come into mine.”
“I just thought, if I can go until I can’t go anymore, emotionally or physically, then I will,” Meier says. “To me, the mentality was, it’s not if, it’s when.”
That mentality is why, in part, Meier decided to be open about her IVF journey with her thousands of social media followers — even before her pregnancy.
“Sometimes people only talk about their struggles when they have success,” theModern Etiquette Made Easyauthor says. “But I wanted to start talking about my struggles before I conceived to show people that I was still in a dark place and then brought people along.”
“It’s fun to say I’m pregnant but a lot of the time people don’t realize the years and years of literally blood, sweat, and tears that go into the process.”
“When you’ve had so many failed transfers and implants and miscarriage and disappointment, you don’t expect it really to work at all,” she tells PEOPLE. “So when I found out it stuck, I was, of course, just over the moon, thrilled, shocked, elated, but almost in this it’s too good to be true mode.”
“It’s funny because for so long, you dream of it and then it’s like the little things now where I’m quite superstitious,” she says. “It’s like, until he’s in my arms, I can’t fully relax.”
“I’m just really hopeful that everything goes smoothly now,” adds Meier.
source: people.com
