Our Journey to Baby Blake (IVF)

Chaffin and I have been married for 2 years but we’ve been together for 11. At the beginning of our journey we were two 16-year-olds who were so in love with so much hope and expectations for what our life would be like. We pictured it and talked about it all the time. After we graduated college, we would buy a tiny but charming home, we would rescue a pup, we’d have an intimate beach wedding, and then we’d have a baby. We almost had everything we dreamed about. We graduated, bought the charming home, rescued the pup, and got married. But getting our baby in the baby carriage has been a challenge. In sex ed they teach you how babies are made. They don't teach you the heartache you feel when you can't conceive the way your were taught. I went down the check-list, I did everything the way I was “supposed to”. No one really prepares you for the day you find out you can't naturally conceive a baby with the man of your dreams.

Chaffin was diagnosed with low testosterone in 2012 and was put on a testosterone cream. When we started to try and have a baby we found out that because the cream was providing him with testosterone his body turned off that function which turned off his reproductive function. Luckily, with a testicular biopsy they were able to retrieve sperm but due to the low mobility of the specimen IVF is our only option to have a baby of our own.

As of now, we’ve gone through one egg retrieval and have had 2 failed frozen embryo transfers. We really weren’t expecting to have to do everything all over again. We were hopeful and naive, which is dangerous and left us broken and broke. We thought with my young age and healthy uterus that the first transfer would definitely result in a live birth. When that didn’t happen we were devastated but still had hope because we had one healthy embryo left. So, when found out the second transfer was unsuccessful our world shattered. Not only were we out of viable embryos we were also out of sperm. We had to take a lot of time as a couple to reflect and decided what we wanted to do next. The only thing we knew is that we wanted to have a baby.

Once we were ready, we went to our doctor and he told us our best option to conceive was to start the process all over again. This means Chaffin would have to get his surgery and I would have to do an egg retrieval again with the hopes of getting more eggs and more healthy embryos. This has been a long year with a lot of ups and downs. To be honest mostly downs. The stress and heartache of this process is hard enough but then you throw the financial aspect in and it seems impossible to handle.  We've gone through our savings, refinanced our cars, and our family has given us as much as they could. Unfortunately, it won't be enough to cover the upcoming costs. 

We’d never thought it would come to this but we need help to reach our dream of having a baby and any little bit could help.