✨National Infertility Awareness Week✨

1 in 8 couples

7.4 million

Someone you know..

.. someone like me

⭐️ I am 1 in 8 & here’s our story

Tyler & I have been together since 2017 Our journey started when we had our first miscarriage in January 2018. We then actively tried to bring a precious baby into this world for a year, to no avail.

Infertility- is defined as not being able to conceive after 1 year or longer of actively trying.

There it was for us, our lifelong dreams of getting married and starting a family, when the textbook definition of infertility was slapped right into our faces. We started running tests with our local OBGYN and he started me on Letrozole in January 2019. We completed 6 medicated cycles, and still had not gotten pregnant. This is where our OB recommended me have an HSG to make sure my Fallopian tubes weren’t blocked. This is where insurance stops* Mind you, I have been double covered by insurance our entire marriage, but insurance companies see reproductive issues as “voluntarily trying to bring a child into the world” and refuse to cover any costs, leaving us to pay outrageous amounts just to have something others can willingly have for free. We moved after summer in 2019 to Mobile, AL and were referred to a fertility clinic there, The Center for Reproductive Medicine, where I had my first consultation in December 2019. We immediately began testing for myself and Tyler to see if they could pinpoint the cause of why we were not conceiving. Our doctor recommended us start with IUI’s also called intrauterine insemination. These cycles consist of hormone pills taken throughout certain days in your cycle, multiple ultrasounds and blood draws to make sure the IUI is completed at the correct time in your cycle, and injections in your stomach to release your follicles prior to your IUI. You then go back for day 21 progesterone lab checks and then a blood draw for pregnancy on day 28. None of which is again covered by insurance. We completed our first IUI in March of 2020 and I got pregnant, but they knew I would miscarry, my hcg levels were too low. *This is the part in our story where I will say I was VERY naive in thinking we would get pregnant and have a baby off our first try, and boy I was wrong. I then completed a second IUI to which I did not get pregnant. All of the hormones pumped into your body, hormones from miscarrying, and the devastation of again not being pregnant was more than I could handle, and I was then diagnosed with PPD, where I started on Zoloft for 3 months. I came off of it, and finally felt like myself and like I was thriving again, until I was at work and started uncontrollably bleeding and was rushed to the ER, to find out I was miscarrying a baby in October 2020, when I wasn’t actively trying, & we were crushed. I felt like I had just gotten back to what normal felt like, to do it all over again. I went back into my doctor, and we agreed on completing another IUI, same protocol after I completed a hysteroscopy $1500 OOP and upfront before it could be performed. This was scheduled for January 2021, where the doctor removed any scar tissue and made sure I did not have endometriosis, since they continued to tell me I was textbook perfect for a pregnancy. I completed a 3rd IUI in March 2021 where I got pregnant, my hcg levels kept rising but not doubling and they were pre warning me that it looked as if I had an ectopic pregnancy. I had to have blood draws every two days and ultrasounds to confirm if it was ectopic or not and if I would need surgery. Every two days I had to miss work, every two days I was told to prepare for a miscarriage until I came back two days later and it was complete opposite telling me my baby was thriving, until it wasn’t. I carried that baby to 7w4d. After that cycle, my dr recommended completing an RPL panel or recurrent pregnancy loss panel along with Genetic Testing for myself and Tyler. These tests a piece were hundreds of dollars out of pocket, to which all came back normal. Our dr then wanted to check for any clotting disorders, to which all came back normal. U N E X P L A I N E D infertility. That’s the diagnosis we were given. Our doctor gave us one last time to complete an IUI before we were required to move to IVF, to which we completed in May 2021, with no pregnancy. This is where my heart felt defeated. They quoted us $20,000 for IVF and this didn’t even include the medicine that was going to cost close to $5,000. I thought I’d be sick to my stomach that day.. my dreams of becoming a mother were gone, because realistically who has $25K just laying around, and that’s for ONE cycle, not everything you pay until you have a baby. This is where the sweetest person & friend came into my life, Mary Kate Craukamp She recommended CNY Fertility to us and once I read up on their fertility clinic, I immediately setup an appointment for July of 2021. At our consult, a weight felt lifted off our shoulders, and it felt like our new doctor was finally listening to us and trying to change our protocol that was continuing to not work. We turned $25,000 into $10,000 which is A LOT, but definitely more affordable. We scheduled our retrieval and fresh transfer for September 2021, and we didn’t spend a dime of extra money saving until then. At retrieval, we retrieved 10 eggs, 5 were mature, 4 fertilized, 1 we transferred, 1 embryo didn’t make it, and we were able to freeze 2 embryos on day 3. My fresh transfer WORKED. I was pregnant with a perfectly healthy baby girl for 8 weeks, we got to hear her sweet little heart beat 3 times At our first OB appointment after being released from our fertility dr, they were unable to find our baby’s heartbeat any longer. If I could have prayed this baby into existence, I would have done so by that point.. the anger, the loss of hope, the despair that I felt in that moment.. I got off the ultrasound table, walked to the bathroom in front of my husband, dropped to my knees and cried my eyes out. My baby was gone, the one that I got to tell my family about, the one I saw it’s fast little heartbeat and heard it with my husband.. it was unreal how fast everything changed. We drove back to Mobile that day, pretty much in silence, until my D&C a week later. November 2021, you rocked my world.. I told Tyler I never wanted to go through this again, and my precious OB begged me to please don’t stop trying. I had complications from my D&C, which resulted in two emergency room trips, ultrasounds, and a visit back to Dothan to see the doctor. I had someone recommend genetic testing of our embryo during the D&C, to see if there was a genetic issue- to which all came back normal. I have prayed so hard to be able to bring a child into this world with my husband, I would give up anything in my life to do that.

Infertility is the hardest road I’ve ever been on. Not only for losing a child multiple times, not only for the financial aspect of it, but the extreme stress placed on my body from the constant labs, constant ultrasounds, constant surgeries, constant vitamins, constant hormone meds, constant injections in my stomach, constant injections causing rashes, constant injections causing severe bruising, having to remain mostly sedentary to make sure you don’t do anything to lose a child during your TWW.

Financially, IVF is absolutely draining. We have put so many things aside or on the back burner just to save money for a child. I have medical bills just now starting to come in from losing our baby in November, bills for all ultrasounds and lab draws from Sept-Nov. I have a $2000 D&C bill that my insurance coded to infertility and insurance won’t cover. We have been SO blessed to even be this far into our journey, where some can’t make it even this far. We have decided to transfer our last two embryos in a frozen transfer next month.

With that being said, we would LOVE for you to sponsor a piece of our puzzle: I have purchased this puzzle that we can hang in our baby’s room one day! If you would love to donate, we will write your name on a puzzle piece and we hope to one day display this so our baby will be able to see all the people who have helped bring him or her into this world. All proceeds will go to our FET in May and all medical bills associated with it.