ABC11's Ana Rivera shares personal IVF journey that leads to big announcement

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- For the last four years you have welcomed ABC11's Ana Rivera into your home every morning, dark and early.

You've seen her get married and start her life in Raleigh, so she has decided to share her progress on her latest journey to becoming a mom:

Injections, procedures, ultrasounds, negative tests and a lot of tears. The infertility world was one I never thought I'd be a part of.

"It consumes all your thoughts. You're taking injections every day, you're constantly thinking about how are my ovaries doing? How am I responding to the medication. So there's a lot of anxiety," said Dr. John Park, of Carolina Conceptions.

One in five women are diagnosed with infertility and I was one of them. So at 30 years old, I walked into Carolina Conceptions. Dr. Park started with running tests.

"The diagnostic testing up front consists of trying to understand ovarian function, ovarian reserve, whether the patient is ovulating normally, also their anatomy," Dr. Park said.

The results shocked me. It seemed like everything that could be wrong was wrong. But now we had a plan. We'd start with the big one, in vitro fertilization treatments or IVF.

"I think most patients start with more basic treatment first. And then go through options and move to IVF as a last resort. But there are some results on the diagnostic testing that says none of those other treatments will work," Dr. Park said.

The day I started the shots, I was working the morning shift at the Durham studio. So I had all of the injections delivered there.

I sat in the parking lot with my husband injecting myself with hormones. And luckily for me, someone who is terrified of shots, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

This was just the beginning of multiple timed injections every day, a slew of vitamins, and a bruised bloated stomach. Unfortunately, the first round was canceled. My body was not responding to the medications.

There were so many times I sat in my car, crying and wondering what I did wrong. Finally, in December, we transferred a perfect embryo. Two weeks later, I was pregnant.

We planned to surprise our parents with the best Christmas present. But days later, we lost the baby.

The next few months, we continued with rounds of IVF. That meant preparing injections on the anchor desk, getting some help from my parents, shots in the airport parking lot and just trying to keep the faith. But another embryo transferred ended with another miscarriage.

We weren't ready to give up and on our third round for the first time ever we had three perfect embryos. One of them was ready for transfer in May. Full of hope, we watched the embryo transfer on the ultrasound screen

That little embryo decided to stick around. We are expecting our first baby in February!