Sirine Bunkua's Story

@withlovesirine

My husband Nick and I have been married for six years. What most people didn’t know, was three of those six years, we struggled with infertility in silence. The whole time everyone was wondering when we would have a baby, unfortunately, we were wondering that too. I always knew that one day I wanted to be a mom, but I was so focused on my career and getting our lives together the first three years, that we didn’t think about the fact that we possibly could struggle with infertility. The truth is, most people don’t think that they are going to struggle. But, little did we know we would be the one out of the eight couples statistic that would struggle to conceive. We tried two years naturally realizing that nothing was happening. I finally went to see a specialist at USC fertility in 2018 and realized that my egg reserve at the age of 30 was actually equivalent to somebody who was 38. We decided to start with a bunch of different tests which led us to try Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) with a round of oral medication in October of 2018. That round failed... we ended up doing two more rounds. Every round got harder as the first round’s oral medication turned into stomach injections..... let’s just say, I’m beyond blessed my best friend Jeanna is a nurse - she gave me every single injection except for the last one, which Nick did, amazingly. In order to meet our schedules - this meant getting injections in parking lots, hotel bathrooms, Nordstrom bathrooms, and anywhere we could meet at 6:30 every night. I had always been so terrified of needles... it was three rounds of IUI with full injections, blood tests, and countless doctor appointments where they poked and prodded and it kept failing. After the third failed round, I wanted to give up but.....our doctor encouraged me to try just one more time and said to take a break if it failed, before trying IVF. We went for it, we did a double IUI, which meant I went in for two days of consecutive procedures. I struggled..... I cried, it hurt...... I had the worst headache of my life and just squirmed around in my bed after the first procedure. The second procedure went much better, less painful and I was much more hopeful! 

Two weeks later, we found out we were pregnant. Unreal, something we worked so hard for.... for so long. Finally came true! I struggled with accepting true happiness for so long, but we finally did it. It was our turn, our time.... and we are forever grateful for our sweet baby boy, Bryn who is currently 7 months old! As we celebrate our own story, my heart is still filled with sadness but also so much hope for all my infertility sisters who are still continuing to struggle to conceive. The road is lonely, hard, and unknown, but if you lose hope, you lose everything, so keep going! Chin up, Socks up, YOU GOT THIS! I share my story in hopes that it will help others feel less alone as Anna did for me. If I learned anything throughout this journey - it was that I was meant to struggle so that I could be an inspiration to others. My wish would be for everyone to be more sensitive to others’ journeys. Always be kind, you never know when someone is going through something. Be supportive and STOP asking when couples are going to have children, you never know who’s struggling. Wishing you all baby dust on your journey!

xoxo, Sirine