Courtney & Anthony’s IVF Journey
Hello everyone!
Some of you may know the struggles that Anthony and I have faced throughout our infertility journey, however, for those of you who do not I want to share our story with you. I’m hoping that in sharing our story, Anthony and I can receive as much help, prayers and good vibes as we can while we go through these next few months of InVitro Fertilization (IVF) treatment.
Anthony and I got married 11 years ago while he was home for Christmas from tech school with the Air Force. Just a few days after we were married we both loaded up our little black S10 full of wedding gifts and were on our way to Texas to begin our lives together. We spent the next three and a half years enjoying being married and easing our way into military life. Since I was only 18 when we got married we weren’t exactly concerned about conceiving. To be completely honest, we were both naive when it came to getting pregnant and assumed that as soon as we were ready it would instantly happen for us. How wrong we were.....
After three and a half years in Texas, we received orders to England and I’ll be absolutely transparent in saying that I was totally against going in the beginning. I couldn’t imagine being that far from family because I was 100% ready to become a mom and have my own family and I didn’t want our own families to miss out on the opportunity to be a part of our, soon to be, babies life. When it came time to move, I packed up once again and followed my Airman because my “home” had become wherever we were as long as we were together. We met some of the best people there, we traveled to so many incredible places and ate the best food. One morning, in 2014, I woke up with some nausea and immediately got butterflies thinking “I’m going to be a mom!” I just knew it. I just felt it in my bones. I took a pregnancy test and got two solid pink lines! We confirmed with our doctor via a blood test that we were pregnant! We were absolutely thrilled! Unfortunately, about two weeks after our positive pregnancy test I began having severe abdominal pain and cold sweats. I spent about 2.5 hours in a cold bathtub where I was blacking out and coming to, disoriented and shaking uncontrollably. After an extended trip to the ER we were told my HCG levels were declining. I received an ultrasound which confirmed that I had an ectopic pregnancy in my right tube. An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy in which the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. If left to grow, it may damage nearby organs and cause life-threatening loss of blood. I was given an injection of methotrexate in my thigh to treat the ectopic pregnancy. Shortly after I was diagnosed with endometriosis via a laparoscopy. We visited a fertility clinic in the UK, but moved pretty soon after.
In 2017, we moved to Tennessee where Anthony began his new job as an Air Force recruiter. Being as he has a job that was quite a bit more flexible and allowed us to dive head first into our fertility issues we did just that. We visited with a fertility clinic in Nashville shortly after moving and began taking fertility medications to try to help us conceive. We were prescribed Clomid and Femara with no luck. Our next step was intrauterine insemination (IUI) which we paid out of pocket for for two rounds, again with no luck.
This year, in 2021, Anthony received a promotion and we headed to Indiana where he’s pursuing his Air Force career as a Special Warfare recruiter. Before we even moved we knew we wanted to continue on this exhausting, stressful, and lonely rollercoaster ride to get where we both so desperately want to be, becoming parents. We had found several fertility clinics out of state with great success rates and pricing packages, however, with the insurance we have we needed referrals to speciality clinics from our primary care doctor to first be approved by our insurance. As many of you know, our insurance does not cover anything fertility related and are extremely strict on who and how far we can go for specialized care. Each clinic we had chosen was declined by our insurance for various reasons even though we are financially responsible for paying the entire price of treatment minus the price of consultations. Luckily we have found an amazing clinic that is fairly close to us which allows for easier accessibility and a little less stress when it comes to the roughly 4 week process . Visiting with the doctor, he decided that based on the extended amount of time we’ve spent TTC (trying to conceive), my endometriosis, as well as our ectopic pregnancy and two unsuccessful IUI’s that IVF (InVitro Fertilization) gives us the best chance of becoming the parents we so desperately want to be.
IVF is terribly expensive. Anthony and I have thought long and hard about the financial aspect of all of this. It isn’t an easy decision and even though this is extremely uncomfortable for both of us we are going to allow ourselves to be at our most vulnerable and embrace the help we receive. I’m going to share a quote from a recent IVF forum I’ve read that relates perfectly to our situation, Meg Cabot once said “Sometimes in life, you can fall down holes you can’t climb out of yourself. That’s what friends and family are for - to help. They can’t help, however, unless you let them know you’re down there.” In volunteering your help to us you’re saying “I see you down in that hole and I want to help you!” We are dealing with the most trying, difficult, stressful, vulnerable, financially exhausting, emotional time of our lives and we’re asking for help from our family and friends. We’ve been dealing with infertility for our entire marriage while seeing everyone around us get the one thing we most desire, so easily. It’s been trying on our marriage, our finances, our relationships with friends and family. It’s hard to explain our situation to someone who has absolutely no idea what we’ve been through. I hope this sums up a little of our journey and all the difficulties we have faced. I hope our story helps someone else. I hope our story shows how much we truly want a baby of our own and shows how hard we have tried thus far. We hope our story shares with you that we are running out of options and have tried the minimal costs options first.
If anyone would prefer to donate directly my cashapp handle is $courtkneetackett . Furthermore, if anyone has any information they’d like to share with us on what to expect on our journey please feel free to text or private message either of us. We’ve never been through an IVF treatment so are completely unaware of expectations. If anyone is experiencing the same issues and just needs someone to talk to please do not hesitate to reach out to one of us to talk. It’s an extremely lonely and mentally exhausting journey and no one couple should have to go through it alone! ♡︎