Couple’s years-long ‘unexplained infertility’ had a solution that led to a ‘miracle’

After five years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive a child, doctors told Maria Armstrong and her husband Jordan that they suffered from unexplained infertility. But as it turned out, it wasn’t quite so unexplained.

“There’s such a haunting emotion about infertility that is so hard to navigate and hard to put into words. I always try to describe it as, like, ‘I’m grieving something that didn’t happen’… All the doctors said, ‘It’s unexplained infertility,’” Maria recalled.

The couple turned to fertility treatments, including intrauterine insemination and IVF. 

“We did six IUIs and all of them were unsuccessful. And we did a lot of tests and spent a lot of money, and nothing was turning up,” said Maria.

One night, Maria was lying awake and remembered someone had mentioned endometriosis to her. The Mayo Clinic defines endometriosis as “an often-painful condition in which tissue that is similar to the inner lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. It often affects the ovaries, fallopian tubes and the tissue lining the pelvis.”

Maria visited a specialist for the condition, but said the doctor didn’t think she had endometriosis, even telling her, “There’s no way you have it.”

Undeterred, Maria finally found a doctor who listened to her concerns, and a laparoscopic surgery determined that she did, indeed, have stage two endometriosis.

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Just three weeks after endometrial surgery, Maria was pregnant. “It was a miracle,” Maria said.

In a video shared by Good Morning America, Maria and Jordan can be seen crying and laughing with their dog beside them after Maria held her very first positive pregnancy test.

“I felt like I was literally in a dream that I’ve dreamt over and over and over and over again. It was a miracle,” Maria said about that moment. “After so many negative tests, I just did not ever think that I would see the words, and see those lines.”

On that day, Jordan had been preparing to comfort his wife like he had every month for the previous five years. Instead, she surprised him with a positive pregnancy test.

“We are so over the moon and so excited. I just cannot believe it. Feeling the kicks and feeling, just like watching my body change. It’s such a privilege to be nauseous. It’s such a privilege to gain weight. It’s such a privilege to just be in pain, because I know a lot of people who would kill to be in the place that I’m in. We’re just really excited and cannot wait, and we are having a little girl and just really excited to meet her,” Maria said.

Maria understands that not every couple has the same fertility journey that she and her husband had, but she wants to share her story for others in the same situation and give others hope.

“The reason that I wanted to open up and be vulnerable and start sharing about our journey, and our journey to conceive and all of the struggles and all the insecurities that come with it, it is honestly because someone shared with me where I was when I started struggling,” Maria said. “And honestly, if it wasn’t for the people, the women specifically, who made me personally not feel as alone…I just wanted to be able to use my platform to do that for others.”