Journey to Baby Goldsmith

When I was sixteen (in the mid-90's) I learned that guys with cystic fibrosis have a 98% chance of being infertile because of the CFTR gene mutation. It didn't really affect me at the time, but when I was a sophomore in college, I really hoped I would be able to have children of my own one day. I took the opportunity to take early childhood development and childhood nutrition classes, believing that I would soon meet somebody, get married, and have children.

Fast forward 15 years (age 37) - I was now in the end stage of cystic fibrosis (lung failure) and still a bachelor. I was fighting to survive for months in the hospital as I waited for a double lung transplant. I truly didn't believe that I would ever have the opportunity to get married or have children like I thought I would. But, by the grace of God, I survived! I had a successful double lung transplant in February 2018 and will forever be grateful and thankful to my donor for giving me the amazing gift of a second chance at life.

Two years after my life-saving surgery I met an amazing woman, Lindsey, and fell in love. We are now married and on our journey to parenthood. Amazingly, because of modern medicine, guys like me (with cystic fibrosis related infertility) can have biological children with assisted reproductive technology (IVF)! We knew we wanted to explore this, so we started our journey in January 2021 with our OBGYN, Urologist, and a local fertility clinic. We knew the cause of our infertility was because of my CF, so we expected the process to go quickly since we didn’t have to search for answers. Everything was going smoothly and after many appointments and a lot of lab work, we were cleared to start IVF and ordered the thousands of dollars of medication needed.

Unfortunately, shortly after the medication was ordered we ran into unexpected issues retrieving sperm so we had to put IVF on hold for a few more months to figure out our next steps. Luckily, with the help of other CF couples, we found a Male Fertility Clinic in Utah that does the more invasive procedure I need at a fraction of the cost!

Next week we will be heading out to Utah from New York to have my procedure so we can proceed with IVF before the medication we have expires. We do not have insurance to cover fertility treatments/medication, so we are paying for everything 100% out of pocket. We saved all our money from our wedding gifts, applied for grants, and have been working together pet sitting for the last year and a half to save up for our appointments, procedures, and medication to grow our family, but we had to spend more than we originally expected for our fertility treatments. Instead of letting that get in the way of our dream of becoming parents, we are reaching out to our family & friends to help make our dream come true.

Thank you so much for reading our story. We truly appreciate you and your support on our long, emotional journey to Baby Goldsmith. We will keep you all updated!

Much love,

Justin (& Lindsey) Goldsmith