After Trying For A Baby For 8 Years, Couple Receive Unexpected News

Ashley and Tyson Gardner were like any other married couple who were trying to get pregnant. Their story of struggles, trials, and tribulations will be sure to move you as the emotional rollercoaster of fertility can be so hard on so many couples.

They waited in the doctor’s office anxiously for test results as they had done on multiple occasions before. They had now been trying to conceive for the last eight years. However, the news they received on that July morning would change their lives forever.

The couple’s problems emanated from Ashley’s unfortunate affliction. Ashley started her menstrual cycle when she was 13, but it wasn’t until she was 15 that she noticed something was wrong. She started to have excruciating pains in her abdomen.“I went to the doctor, and he told me it’s just part of being a woman,” Ashley told the Daily Herald. The doctor wasn’t so sympathetic to Ashley claiming, “In not so many words, he said buck up, it’s not a big deal, everyone goes through it.”

Over the next few years of her life, Ashley just decided to live with the pain. Doctors were not helpful and claimed that many other women were suffering in the same vein as her. There were a few days every month where Ashley was just inconsolable. The pain was too intense. “I wouldn’t go to school. I wouldn’t get out of bed,” Ashley described. “It hurt too bad to even straighten my body out. It felt like everything was ripping.”

After suffering in silence for a few years, Ashley was at breaking point. She went back to the doctor, but all he would do was give her an injection for the pain. She didn’t want a quick fix; she wanted to know what was wrong with her and to find a cure. “I remembering saying I don’t want pain medication, I want this fixed. I don’t want to just put a Band-Aid over it. There is something wrong,” Ashley recalled. She had to find the answer.

Before she discovered what was happening to her, an 18-year-old Ashley married Tyson Gardner. The beautiful couple tied the knot in August 2005 and spent the first year of married life just getting to know each other. They were still very young. They still had a lot to learn about each other and being in a committed relationship. Once Ashley and Tyson got into their second year of marriage, they decided it was the right time to think about starting a family.

Ashley and Tyson were still trying to get pregnant well into their third year of marriage. They had been trying for over a year, and they were not successful. They decided to see a fertility doctor but, again, were left disappointed by what the medical expert had to say to them: “He said oh you’re young, it’s fine, sometimes it just takes time,” Ashley remarked. “We were told it was no big deal.” Like with Ashley’s affliction, they were left with a sense of confusion and frustration.

When the issue of infertility arose, Ashley thought back to the affliction she had been suffering with for years – was it related? She spoke to a friend of hers who was also trying to conceive. This friend told Ashley that she had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and she might also be suffering from the same illness. PCOS is a condition which affects a woman’s hormones and causes fertility problems. Ashley decided to look up the symptoms.

Ashley was investigating PCOS to see if that was what was causing her infertility and if it is the same affliction she had been suffering with for years. “I started looking into PCOS, and it wasn’t quite matching up with what I had,” Ashley remembered. After looking into many illnesses and diseases, Ashley finally stumbled upon something that matched exactly what she had been going through. Could this be it? The answer she had been searching for for so long?

While she was reading about PCOS, Ashley stumbled upon something called endometriosis, and it seemed to match her symptoms. “I clicked on it, and I had every symptom on the whole entire list. It wasn’t just a few it was every single thing.” Endometriosis is a disorder which causes certain tissues that would normally grow inside a woman’s uterus to grow in other areas of the body. Every month, these cells break down, causing the body to feel exhaustion as well as causing infertility and bladder issues.

After Ashley had discovered what endometriosis was, she took her findings to her doctor but was surprised by what he said. “I took the information to my doctor and told him about my research. He told me no you’re fine. Everything is fine.” Unhappy with his diagnosis, Ashley and Tyson decided to get a second opinion. However, they didn’t get the answer they were looking for. “Each doctor didn’t believe me,” Ashley said. This was very hard for Ashley and she didn’t take it well.

Ashley described her troubles with trying be diagnosed with endometriosis: “The frustrating thing for me was that I had done so much research on it and I knew what it was doing to me. I knew it was just going rampant in there and was getting me so much further away from ever being able to have a baby. Yet no one would believe me. No one would fix it.” Frustrated with endless thyroid tests, Ashley decided to stop seeing doctors for a while.

All the while this was happening, Ashley and Tyson were forced to fend endless questions about their fertility to friends and family. “People would say a lot of insensitive things, not because they mean to just because they don’t know. It’s not talked about,” Ashley recalled. “I can’t tell you how many times I went home crying because people were so insensitive.” What are you supposed to say to these questions? It’s hard for a couple to open up about sensitive issues such as this one.

Tyson was from a family of 10, and he had never even heard the word infertility before. He explained that at the time “it was really confusing.” Family and friends were even so insensitive that they would ask, in jest, whether they were “doing it right,” he admitted. “We got a lot of ignorant comments,” Tyson recalled. “People just don’t understand infertility.” Tyson was a strong-willed person, but Ashley didn’t deal with the torment so well.

Unlike Tyson, Ashley was really struggling with the pain and shame of it all. “There’s a lot of shame in infertility,” she admitted. “I’d wonder, why isn’t my body working? What’s wrong with me? No one believes me. No doctor will diagnose me. Maybe I’m crazy. Am I not good enough? Is God punishing me? Maybe he doesn’t think I’m fit to be a mother.” She would internalize the pain and kept it to herself. However, better news was on the horizon.

In September 2012, Ashley finally got what she was looking for – a doctor who believed hern. Julie Grover, a Provo doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, was Ashley’s savior. “During my first exam she said you for sure have endometriosis,” Ashley exclaimed. Dr. Grover sent Ashley for surgery within weeks of her diagnosis. The laparoscopy confirmed she indeed had endometriosis and the surgeon removed as much as the scar tissue as possible. Ashley and Tyson were told to start trying to conceive again.

Even with the surgery she underwent, conceiving naturally when a woman has endometriosis is extremely difficult. It stops the woman’s eggs traveling down the fallopian tube, so fertilization of the egg is impossible. Ashley and Tyson tried again for six months after the surgery, but they were unable to conceive. Their only option was now to see a fertility doctor and discuss what treatments were available to them. Fertility treatments are long, difficult and often very frustrating. But the Gardners were determined and persevered nonetheless.

In the summer of 2013, Ashley began four months of intrauterine insemination, which is an artificial insemination most commonly referred to as an IUI.  Ashley explained her experience: “IUIs are extremely difficult to go through. I can honestly tell you an IUI is way more difficult than IVF, for me at least.” Moreover, the emotional and physical stress of treatments, seeing doctors and waiting for results for taking its toll on the young couple. “I want to cry even thinking about it right now,” Ashley said.

Unfortunately for Ashley and Tyson, the IUIs didn’t work. “I was beaten and I was done,” Ashley explained. “I threw my hands up and said I’m never going to have kids. I give up.” At that point, the couple had spent $4,000 on IUIs, and thousands more on various other tests that their insurance did not cover. Tyson told The Daily Herald, “That was a very frustrating year for us”. Ashley and Tyson had one more opportunity. They needed to make it count.

After the IUIs had failed, there was only one thing left to try – in vitro fertilization, most commonly known as IVF treatment. By June 2014, the Gardners had saved up enough money to give IVF a shot. Conception via IVF treatment is the most expensive way to get pregnant. However, Ashley and Tyson were desperate to have a baby, so, despite the fact that they were not overly wealthy, they decided to pour what they had into the treatment in the hope that it would work.

IVF treatment can be pretty painful. Ashley had to suffer through fertility injections every morning during the process. She also had to do blood tests frequently and have ultrasounds so the doctors could monitor what was happening and check that everything was in order. Anyone who has gone through this treatment can attest to its severity, and it is definitely not cheap. Can you imagine the poor couples who spend thousands of dollars on a shot at IVF and it doesn’t succeed? All of this was going through Ashley’s mind.

Ashley did her best to keep healthy while she was on the treatment. She took vitamins daily but was forced to take a lot of painkillers to deal with the constant headaches which came with the IVF treatment. It was a very testing month for the couple, but in particular for Ashley. She had bruises all over her body from the injections she had to suffer through. They did their best to ‘grit their teeth’ and get on with it, but this was a very tough time to get through.

After the pain and frustration of the first month, the next part was easier on the couple. Once the month-long cycle had passed, they felt a sense of relief. Now it was up to the doctors who needed to begin harvesting Ashley’s eggs. They managed to harvest 16 eggs, which is a lot for this kind of treatment. Only one of them needed to be the one. After so many years of mostly downs and very few ups, Ashley and Tyson needed some luck.

The next stage of the treatment is where doctors need to work their magic. Where modern science meets nature and the two collide. They took the eggs that were harvested from Ashley and then combined them with sperm harvested from Tyson in order to make fertilization. This is the process that many couples, including Ashley and Tyson, are unable to do naturally. If fertilization succeeds, then an embryo is created, and they insert it into the womb to mature.

What normally happens during IVF treatment is that there are multiple embryos that doctors can work with. Most of the time some are used and the ones that aren’t are sent to be frozen so they can potentially try again if it doesn’t work the first time. But like with so many things in their story, this didn’t work for Ashley and Tyson. There were only two embryos that the doctors were able to harvest, so this was their only shot. It was now or never for them.

Typically speaking, the rate of successful insemination via in vitro fertilization treatment is around 30% – 40% per embryo that is inserted into the woman. The chances vary depending on many factors; the age of the woman, the reason for infertility and the number of embryos that were transferred. It is a very unstable treatment, and it does not always lead to success. If it doesn’t work the first time, then the couple can try again the next month. But, as previously stated, this was not an option for the Gardners.

Ashley and Tyson had done all they could. There were no more injections to give and no more doctors to see. All they could do was wait to find out what had happened. It was a tough week,  with a lot of ‘what ifs’ and hypothetical thoughts were running through their minds. They tried to stay as positive as they could and at least they had each other to count on. A process such as this one can only make the love they had for each other stronger.

After such a long and arduous process, Ashley was finally pregnant. The couple had tried for so long and been through so much that they decided to have a professional photographer capture they moment they opened the envelope from the doctor. He managed to capture their elation, which soon turned to tears of joy as they shed their frustrations and anxieties after discovering the wonderful news – they were pregnant. But this is not where the story ends. There was more surprises in store for Ashley and Tyson.

The happy couple were still unsure as to what had happened with the IVF treatment that Ashley had gone through. Two embryos were inserted so they did not know if one had implanted or both of them were successful. All they knew was that they were pregnant. There was still a chance that they could have twins! They went in for the seven-week scan, but what appeared on the screen had everyone in complete shock.

The news that the fertility doctor delivered was remarkable. Both of the embryos that were implanted had split. After everything they had been through, all the tests, all the treatments and all the heartache, Ashley and Tyson could not believe what they were being told. They were going to have quadruplets! The odds of this happening were roughly one in 800,000. Talk about luck. After all of the heartbreak and frustration, they were finally going to be parents, to four children!

Ashley tried very hard to stay healthy during the pregnancy in fear of losing her babies that they had fought so hard for. “We need all the love and support we can get,” she commented on her blog. “Please know that I am extremely high risk and things can change at a moment’s notice for us.” Because of the couple’s story, major news outlets such as Good Morning America and CNN picked up the story. The Gardners became a viral sensation.

After years of heartbreak, Ashley and Tyson gave birth to two sets of identical twins on December 29, 2014. It must’ve been an incredible moment for the young couple. All their hard work and perseverance had paid off. They had a beautiful, and rather a big family. The twins were all girls who they named Scarlett, Indie, Esme, and Evangeline. Now the hard part of raising a family was about to begin. This is what they wanted all along.

Ashley and Tyson’s family had grown exponentially. “We’re tired, sure, but we’re absolutely happy,” Ashley said following the birth. The couple were getting used to life as a family of six and not just the two of them as it had been for so long. “As a first-time dad, it’s been a roller coaster of emotions from the beginning,” Tyson said. “It will certainly be a challenge, but we’re up to it and we’re confident.” Their story hasn’t ended yet.

Ashley and Tyson regularly update their blog, Gardner Quad Squad, which they have had for a long time. They regularly tell amusing stories about their girls and being parents. The couple and their quads are very active on social media, too. The girls have also featured on a TLC show called Rattled, which documented their first year of being parents. After everything they went through, this couple really deserves all the happiness and success that have been afforded to them.