'After years of IVF, we fell pregnant naturally. It shattered everything.'

This article originally appeared on Medium.

Our wedding day was supposed to be the start of everything. We were finally about to embark on this new journey — married, in love, with the future laid out before us. But life has a twisted sense of humour, and before we could even begin, it handed us a secret that would change everything.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

After a year and a half of emotional wreckage — three rounds of IVF, three miscarriages, countless hospital visits alone while my husband buried himself in his neurosurgery residency — we had finally decided to stop. It was all too much. The physical and emotional toll had broken me. And being in a small town, isolated from any real support system, while my husband was consumed by the demands of his career only made it worse. I was left alone for nearly every doctor's appointment, every blood test, every heart-wrenching moment when I heard the words, "I'm sorry, but there's no heartbeat."

I still remember sitting in the sterile room, surrounded by machines that didn't offer any comfort, receiving the news about two of those miscarriages.

Alone.

No husband to squeeze my hand, no one to hold me as I processed the devastation. He was hours away, scrubbing into surgeries, doing what he had to do. And as much as I understood the importance of his work, it didn't erase the loneliness. Healing from those losses wasn't just about the physical recovery; it was the hollowed-out feeling of being forgotten, of grieving alone.

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We decided to put everything on pause.

No more IVF.

No more attempts.

We had a wedding to plan, and I needed to feel something other than loss. So, getting pregnant was never on our 2024 bingo card.

But life has a funny way of forcing you to face the things you've tried so hard to run from. On the day we were supposed to say "I do" and officially start our lives together, we found out I was pregnant. A positive test on the very day we were about to become husband and wife.

Shocked doesn't even cover it. This was the thing we had wanted for so long, but now, as the reality settled in, we weren't sure if we were ready to deal with it all over again.

We were happy, yes, but it was that cautious kind of happiness — the one that comes with baggage. The kind that asks, "What if this ends the same way?" We had been here before, and it had broken us. I was scared to hope, scared to believe that this time would be different.

For my husband, it was a moment of mixed emotions. He didn't get to process our previous losses properly — he never had time. There were always surgeries, shifts, emergencies pulling him away, leaving me to deal with our heartbreak alone. And now, here we were again. Was he ready? Was I?

The truth is, our marriage ended before it even started — not because of love lost, but because of the sheer weight of everything we had been through.

The excitement of the wedding was overshadowed by the history of our miscarriages, by the loneliness that had defined our engagement, and by the fear that this pregnancy could bring the same heartbreak. It was too much. We weren't ready, emotionally or physically, to go through it again.

Life had given us what we had once prayed for, but in the cruellest of timings. As we stood there in our wedding attire, staring at that positive test, we weren't the happy couple you'd imagine. We were two people asking, "Are we strong enough for this?"

It wasn't the fairytale start to our marriage. In fact, it was the opposite. Our relationship had been bruised, battered and tested by life's unpredictability. And on the day we were supposed to begin again, we found ourselves questioning everything.

We thought our story would be about love and commitment, but it turned out to be about survival. Whether we would survive this pregnancy, this uncertainty — only time will tell.

But I'll tell you this: the day we got married wasn't the beginning of our happily ever after. It was the day we were forced to face our hardest battle yet.

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Feature Image: Getty.