IVF #2
Hello, My Name is Amanda,
I'm not great at these things, but i want to be real with you guys! I live in Lethbridge, Alberta with my Amazing husband Ryley! We spend most of our time working our full-time jobs, on adventures in the mountains or with our furr-baby Marlo! Ryley and I have been together for 8 years and married for almost 3! Since we started dating we have always had open conversations about starting a family and becoming parents. We would go on road trips and experience the most amazing things with each other and comment how amazing it would be to have a child along with us. We had a running list of baby names, endless visions of what our life would be like as parents and a light inside of us that made us so excited for our future family. It always felt like the world had more instore for us and that we were meant to have someone else to share it with. Reminiscing about those days takes a toll on me, because of what we have been through & things aren't the same or even close to how I imagined.
No one prepares you for infertility. I don't mean that lightly. The pain and trauma we have had to go through over the last 3 years has been difficult. We have had to seek help professionally from a Psychologist during our hardest times, and have been living month to month not knowing what comes next in our fertility journey.
The last year has been especially difficult. The world was shutting down in March 2020 and by some miracle on my last dose of hormones I got pregnant. I couldn't believe it.. but finally someone answered our prayers. Sadly it was short lived as I ended up having an early miscarriage. Meanwhile all fertility clinics were closed so I had to wait and just hope that it would happen again on it's own. Sadly, it never did and we proceeded with our referral to the Fertility Clinic in Calgary. At this point we had done a few more rounds of hormones before making the decision to go with IUI (Intrauterine insemination), I also started acupuncture and was able to regulate my cycle on my own (This was a big achievement in itself as early on in our journey I was diagnosed with Amenorrhea(loss of cycle) and PCOS). We proceeded with 2 Hormone IUI'S and 2 Natural IUI's 3 of which did not result in pregnancy and 1 that was cancelled prior to treatment due spontaneous ovulation.
IUI treatment success rates are 13%... They are not every high, but deep down inside we did feel we had a better chance. All of our blood work , Sperm results, Ultrasounds ect came back normal. Nothing was jumping out and saying " Infertile". IUI's had to be preformed in Calgary and I spent a lot of time on the highway and missing work to do them. The hormone cycles were the hardest as i was very uncomfortable during the car rides close to ovulation time and emotions were out of control. IUI's sadly proved to be not successful for us. We spend about $1000 a month for travel, the IUI cycle, medications, monitoring appointments ect (not including missed work). Almost $4000 of our saving and no baby yet. Sadly, Alberta has NO coverage for fertility treatments and everything including ultrasounds are out of pocket for us. We felt the toll emotionally, physically and financially.
We were faced with the hard decision over the last few months about how we wanted to proceeded with treatment. Ryley and I talked about it back and forth but it always ended in tears. This was the hardest conversation to have with someone you love dearly. A conversation that you are never prepared to have.. we really thought by now it would of happened for us, like most people do! I'm a very go with the flow person where as Ryley is analytical. We found ourselves getting so deep into in the scenarios we were worried about the "what ifs", anxious about the costs, uncertain about our future and felt overwhelmed and unable to make a decision.
This last week we took a trip to the mountains stopped worrying about the details and hiked 14 km and realized we can do hard things! We also seen that nature has many different trails you have to really look to see them. Not one path fits all & sometimes the most beautiful scenes come from the least traveled path. I've always found inspiration in nature to keep going, keep trying and to trust the process.
We officially decided that IVF (In-Vitro Fertilization) was our next step in the journey. What does this mean? It means for us we have a chance (55%) of going on that same hike with our baby next spring. It means that light of hope, It's shining stronger and that we might have our prayers answered. This Journey has not been easy and we know the road wont be either.
We need your help. We have to pay $9100 by June 4th, 2021 to do the IVF Cycle. This covers the cost of the treatment, however additional costs may arise as treatment progresses. We will be getting some support from our parents and have a bit of savings we can use to reach our goal but any amount helps take the financial pressure off. Our medications are 3000-8000 but most of it should be covered by our insurance!
If you make a donation your name will go on the back of a puzzle piece, once we have all the pieces to our puzzle we will have enough for IVF treatment and we will forever have a keepsake of all the people who made our journey possible. We can not thank you enough for your support. If you would like to reach out to us personally please e-mail : [email redacted]. I will be posting update on my Instagram and documenting most of this journey to help raise awareness for infertility.
Thank you so much,
Amanda & Ryley 
