TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information about miscarriage and infant loss, which may be triggering to some.
After three years of trying to get pregnant, Linda Liefvoort and husband Brad of Melbourne, Australia, were certain that once again their attempt to conceive didn't work out. This time, they’d gotten pregnant using intrauterine insemination, or IUI, the second time they tried the procedure. Linda just had a feeling that she’d miscarried again. But it turns out her feelings were far off: Not only was she actually pregnant, but she'd also come to learn she was going to be the proud mama of triplets.
Like so many couples, it was years of struggling to conceive that led the Liefvoorts to seek help from a fertility specialist.
Speaking with CafeMom, Linda says tests revealed she had fibroids blocking one of her fallopian tubes. It was then that she and her husband decided to try IUI — a treatment where sperm is placed inside a woman’s uterus to facilitate fertilization, according to the American Pregnancy Association.
“I had injections and ultrasounds to check that the eggs were growing on the right side and to regulate their growth,” she says. “When they were the right size I had an injection to release the egg, and then the doctor used what looked like a turkey baster to get my husband’s sperm as close to the eggs as possible.”
They waited and waited — finally, in May 2019, they learned their IUI was a success.
Linda says she could tell that things “felt different” even before she took the test. Her pregnancy moved along quickly: At five weeks she started throwing up in the evenings, at five-and-a-half weeks she started having cravings, and her six-week scan showed that her baby was “a bit small but they said it was okay.”
“They told me to come back in three weeks for another scan,” she tells us. “I went back at nine-and-a-half weeks [in July] and was devastated to find that the pregnancy hadn’t progressed.”
She’d had a missed miscarriage, meaning the fetus had died but her body hadn’t physically miscarried yet, as the Miscarriage Association website stated.
“The baby was gone but I still felt pregnant,” she elaborates. “I felt like my body had let me down. I had a dilation and curettage and tried to move on.”
After some time passed, the couple knew they wanted to try again.
This time they weren’t as lucky. They didn’t get pregnant during their second IUI, and it took another cycle before their third IUI attempt worked.
“I didn’t feel any different but took the test when I knew I was due to,” she recalls of the day in September 2019 when she found out she was pregnant again. “To my surprise, it came up as positive straight away!”
But as the weeks passed by, Linda says she didn’t “feel” pregnant.
“It was very different from the first time,” she shares. “No nausea, no throwing up, no sore boobs, no food craving. I felt no change.”
Because of her previous pregnancy issue, her obstetrician asked Linda to come in at seven weeks for a viability scan.
“I remember driving to the appointment with my husband and warning him that we may be getting bad news at the scan, that I didn’t think this pregnancy was progressing either,” she remembers. She was sure that she’d miscarried again.
Not only was the news at her doctor’s office unexpected — it was far better than the couple could ever have imagined. They were pregnant with twins!
“He wanted me to go back the following week — week eight — just to make sure it was still OK,” Linda says.
At their eight-week scan they received even more surprising news.
Their twins were actually triplets.
“Once we got over the shock, the rest of the pregnancy was a dream,” she says. “No nausea or morning sickness or anything the whole time. I worked up until two days before I had the babies at 32 weeks and three days.”
Linda gave birth to the triplets early on April 16.
“The growth of two of the babies had started to slow down so my doctor decided to deliver them a bit early,” she explains. “They spent five weeks in hospital in the special care nursery and one baby spent two nights in NICU to help with his breathing.”
Linda says she hopes her story will help other women who are struggling with getting pregnant.
She says that all she really wants is to offer others some hope.
"And [I want] to point out that if you are having fertility issues, it doesn't necessarily mean that IVF is your only option,” she shares. “I'd never heard of IUI prior to needing it and I was lucky that it worked for us.”
