Shay and Jordan's IVF

My name is Shaylyn Lancaster and my amazing husband is Jordan Lancaster.  We’ve been married for a little over 3 awesome years, but with the great times also come some hard times.  Growing up, I had a brother and a sister pass away due to a genetic disease called SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy).  My parents are both carriers which means their children have a 25% chance of having the disease and passing away, but they were lucky enough to have 2 healthy children, my sister and I.  When we were in high school, my sister and I both got tested to see if we were carriers as well, and unfortunately we were.  So growing up, I knew that when I did get married, my husband would need to be tested to see if he was a carrier.  When the time came, we prayed and prayed that he wouldn’t be and we would be ok to have children naturally.  We finally got the results and were devastated to learn that he was a carrier too.  But, even though we were extremely upset, we were also grateful for the technology that we have so that we know we’re carriers and we can do something about it, and that something is Invetro Fertilization (IVF).  IVF is very expensive, so knowing we needed to save up for a few years, I quickly finished my schooling and got a teaching job as a 4th grade teacher and my husband worked extremely hard at his job selling pest control during the summers and finding odd jobs and subbing during the winter.  During pretty much the whole school year, we were having consultations, getting more testing done, setting up doctor appointments at 6:30 in the morning so I wouldn’t miss school, and doing everything we could to be ready when we had saved up the money.  But thanks to our incredible parents and family, they helped us come up with the rest of the money and we were able to plan on doing the implantation towards the end of the school year.  Finally, the time had come and we were so excited to learn everything had worked and we were pregnant!  Things could not have been more perfect.  We changed our diet and were being extremely careful physically and were so excited to go to our first ultrasound and see our baby on the screen.  But as soon as the screen came on, we knew… We had miscarried.  We had never felt such devastation before and just simply didn’t know what to do.  It was a hard couple of months, but our family helped us through it and we picked ourselves up and decided to try again.  We went through all the appointments and test work over again, only to find out the embryos didn’t even take this time.  The feeling of not even being able to try to have kids is a feeling that’s indescribable, especially when the sole reason is money.  It’s a hard pill to swallow and it’s hard watching the person you love the most hurt as much as you are and there’s literally nothing to do for them.  For us to be able to do it again, we would have to wait a couple years to save up the money again.  Neither I or my husband are comfortable asking for money, but at this point we are willing to do whatever it takes.  We’re not expecting a lot, but seriously anything helps.  We’re so grateful that we know what we have and can do something to prevent having to deal with the death of a child and we’re so grateful for the help we’ve already received.  We love you all and can’t thank you enough!

Love,  Jordan and Shay Lancaster