- K
We are Barry and Melanie White. We are originally from Florence, Alabama and now live to Hayden, Alabama (small town 40 miles north of Birmingham). We have been together since we were teenagers. We are what you would call high school sweethearts. We dated 10 years before getting married in 2007. We starting trying to conceive pretty much right after getting married.
Today, 8 years later we are still in the process of trying to become parents. We believe we would make great parents plus our baby would have the love of two sets of grandparents, multiple aunts/uncles, and cousins. Barry and I both are very close with our families. It has been very hard to not have them around us since we moved to Hayden which is approx 2 hours from Florence. Luckily, we have each other and our love keeps us both happy. I do have to say that Barry is my rock and I just don't know what I would do without him. He is such a sweet, funny, and loving husband. He would do anything for just about anyone. He is a very hard worker and always gives 100% toward everything he does in life. He is current employed as a cabling engineer with Tek Links. I worked my way through college to graduate in 2010 as an LPN. After graduation, I was blessed to start my dream job as an OB-GYN nurse and I am currently employed at OB-GYN Associates of Alabama at St Vincent’s Hospital. It is such a joy for me each day to care for my pregnant patient and their unborn babies. I love what I do very much, but can’t help but feel a little envious of the happy mothers-to-be. I tell many of my patient that I will just live my "pregnancy" through them.
In 2011, after trying to get pregnant for 4 years, we decided to talked with Dr. Keith (my OB-GYN physician and boss at the time) about what he thought our next step should be to have a baby. He suggested that I have a hysterosalpingography (HSG) procedure. This procedure allow the physician to have a clear view of a women uterus and fallopian tubes in order to determine if there is blockage of the tubes or any abnormalities of the uterus. I has the HSG performed and my results were completely normal. Dr, Keith then suggested that I have a laparoscopy surgery in order to rule out possible endometriosis or any other issues that could be causing my infertility problem. The surgery was performed in 2011, he did find some mild endometriosis. However, the endometriosis was not interfering with my ovaries or fallopian tubes and therefore not the reason for my infertility. Around that same time, we found out that I have a thyroid disorder called hypothyroidism. One of the side effects of this disorder is that it can cause a women to not ovulate an egg on her own. I met with an Endocrinologist for further evaulation and began taking a daily medication to stablize my thyroid hormone.
In 2012, we moved from Florence to the Birmingham area. After getting settled in to our new enviroment. We started trying to get pregnant again. We discussed our infertility issues with Dr. Goolsby, who is my current boss and now OBGYN physician. She recommended that I start taking a fertility medication called clomid. This medication stimulates a women's ovaries and assist them in ovulation. After starting the medication, I had some labs drawn to determine if I in fact was ovulating on this medication or not. The labs determineds that I still was not ovulating an egg. Dr. Goolsby decided to increased the dosage of the clomid the next month to see if this would stimulate my ovaries better. The new dosage worked! I was finally ovulating on my own as long as I was taking the increase dose of clomid. Barry and I were finally hopeful that I would become pregnant. Sadly, 3 months past on the clomid and still no pregnancy.
Dr. Goolsby recommended that our next step be to see a fertility specialist. We meet with Dr. Steinkemp at Alabama Fertility Specialist for evaluation and further testing to determine why we still were not conceiving. He ran several different types of test. We found out throught he test that I have a very low ovarian egg reserve. Let me explain what this means. Every women is born with a certain number of eggs in her ovaries. When the eggs run out, then the women is no longer able to get pregnancy and begins menopause. A women , my age (35), should have a ovarian egg reserve level of 1.0 or higher. My test showed that my level was 0.4 (extremely low) This means that I will be completely out of eggs in 2-3 years and begin menopause by the age of 38. Dr. Steinkempf strongly recommended that we having a baby ASAP since time is not going to be on our side for much longer. Our next step was to continue the higher dose of clomid but this time include an Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) procedure. This procedure injected sperm directly into the uterus just like artifical insemination.
After 3 IUIs with clomid we once again were heartbroken to not be pregnant.
Our insurance does not cover anything related to infertility. Each month that we attempted the IUI with clomid, was costing us out-of-pocket approximately $500. After 3 failed IUIs, we had used all of our saving and didn't have any other means of getting this much money to procede with our dream of becoming parents. We deicided to take a break on the fertilty treatments and start saving ever penny we could to be able to start trying again.
In January 2014, we meet with Dr. Steinkemp to discuss what the next step would be for us. He recommended that we try a new fertility medicine called follestim, which is a injection instead of pill like clomid. Plus this was a more powerful medication and would stimulate the ovaries even more. He also recommended a repeat HSG procedure to re-evaluate my uterus and fallopian tubes, which I did. The HSG results were the same as before, no blockage or abnormalities seen. We were unsure if we could afford the follestim since medication alone is about $1,200 per month. God must have seen our struggle because one day while waiting in the lobby to see Dr.Steinkempf, we meet an angel named Lyle. She was also going througn fertility treatment but no longer needed her follestim medicine. Therefore, she donated all her left over follestime to us. This made it possible for us to proceed with next step of hopefully becoming parents. We did our first round of follestim and our 4th IUI. Once again, our dreams were crushed when we learned we were not pregnant that month either.
Since we still had some of the donated follestim from Lyle, we decided to try again. Dr. Steinkemp recommeded another round of follestim along with our 5th IUI. This time he increased my dosage of follestim to the max dosage but again we were saddened to found out we were not pregnant. After are 5th failed IUI, Dr. Steinkemp recommended that we precede with one more IUI but this time wants to add an additional injectable medication called Menopur to the mix.
By this time, we had used all the donated follestim. Therefore were left to purchasing not only follestim but menopur on our own. Cost for both this medications is approx. $2,500. God once again send us a blessing. My work had a change in our insurance policy. Now my insurance would cover up to 60% of my medication. This would bring our out-of-pocket cost for our fertility medications to approx. $1,250. Once again we started saving all the money we could until we had enough to try the new medications and another IUI procedure. In March 2015, we started the follestim and menopur injections along with our 6th IUI procedure. Once again we were heartbroken to find out we were not pregnant.
Now, after 6 failed IUI procedures and months of fertility medications, our next step will be to have an In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) along with same medication combination as before. The down fall to this procedure is that it is much more costly. One cycle of an IVF procedure is around $ 9,000, not to mention the additional cost for medications. Total cost for us out of pocket will be approx $12,000. Who in the world has that type of money just laying around. It would take us years to save that much money up. Not to mention that I don't have that much time left till I am out of eggs.
We starting researching the internet and found out about a grant provided by Baby Quest Foundation. This grant provide the choosen couple with up to $10,000 to help precede with infertility treatments. We applied for the grant three times but due to the large number of applicants we were not choosen to recieve the grant.
Out of options, one of our good friends, Whitney, recommended that we start a “Go Fund Me” fundraiser. She set-up an account for us in hope that we can raise enough money to proceed with IVF procedure and our dreams of becoming parents.
Our prayers were answered and after 8 months of fundraising and promoting our site, we had raised enough to schedule our first IVF procedure. Yeah!!! We were both beyond excited. Finally, we might actually get pregnant. We started our medications in October 2015 and on October 10th had our egg retrieval. We had a total of 6 eggs retrieved from my ovaries. We received a call the next day and we were told that 4 of the 6 eggs were healthy and mature. Yeah! We proceeded with fertilizing the 4 eggs. On October 13th, we meet with Dr. Steinkempf to discuss our 4 "little babies". He said that only 2 of the 4 were still divided cells like normal. The other 2 were no longer growing. We had our 2 little embryos transfered inside my uterus that day. We then were on the longest 2 week wait of my life to find out if indeed we were pregnant. Sadly, we found out after the 2 week that my blood work showed that we once again were not pregnant. That the IVF did not work. As you can imagine, we were completely devastated. We both cried together for several days. After grieving the lost of our failed if, we know that it is all in God's hands. He has a reason for us going through all this and has a plan for us to one day be parents. Despite the heart break and pain, we are going to continue on our fertility journey. We are scheduled to talk to Dr. Steinkempf again next week. Hopefully he will have some insight and encouragement to give us. More than likely, he is going to recommend another round of IVF either using my eggs or possible using a donor egg since my own eggs are not the best quality. I will keep y'all updates on our next step as soon as I find out what it might be. In the meantime, please keep us in your prayers.
And this lead us to where we are now with this account. We are more than appreicative of all donation and there is not amount ot small. Believe us, ever penny counts. If you are not able to give, we ask that you just pray for us along with share our story so other can learn about the struggle of infertility.
Another way we are raising money is through my personalized paintings & home decor website. I make many different things like baby hospital door signs, door wreaths, wedding gifts, etc... Click this link to check it out: www.melaniesartisticdesign.com
Thank you so much for reading our story and may God bless you for all that you do to help us in our dreams of having a baby.
Thank you again & God bless,
Barry and Melanie White
Today, 8 years later we are still in the process of trying to become parents. We believe we would make great parents plus our baby would have the love of two sets of grandparents, multiple aunts/uncles, and cousins. Barry and I both are very close with our families. It has been very hard to not have them around us since we moved to Hayden which is approx 2 hours from Florence. Luckily, we have each other and our love keeps us both happy. I do have to say that Barry is my rock and I just don't know what I would do without him. He is such a sweet, funny, and loving husband. He would do anything for just about anyone. He is a very hard worker and always gives 100% toward everything he does in life. He is current employed as a cabling engineer with Tek Links. I worked my way through college to graduate in 2010 as an LPN. After graduation, I was blessed to start my dream job as an OB-GYN nurse and I am currently employed at OB-GYN Associates of Alabama at St Vincent’s Hospital. It is such a joy for me each day to care for my pregnant patient and their unborn babies. I love what I do very much, but can’t help but feel a little envious of the happy mothers-to-be. I tell many of my patient that I will just live my "pregnancy" through them.
In 2011, after trying to get pregnant for 4 years, we decided to talked with Dr. Keith (my OB-GYN physician and boss at the time) about what he thought our next step should be to have a baby. He suggested that I have a hysterosalpingography (HSG) procedure. This procedure allow the physician to have a clear view of a women uterus and fallopian tubes in order to determine if there is blockage of the tubes or any abnormalities of the uterus. I has the HSG performed and my results were completely normal. Dr, Keith then suggested that I have a laparoscopy surgery in order to rule out possible endometriosis or any other issues that could be causing my infertility problem. The surgery was performed in 2011, he did find some mild endometriosis. However, the endometriosis was not interfering with my ovaries or fallopian tubes and therefore not the reason for my infertility. Around that same time, we found out that I have a thyroid disorder called hypothyroidism. One of the side effects of this disorder is that it can cause a women to not ovulate an egg on her own. I met with an Endocrinologist for further evaulation and began taking a daily medication to stablize my thyroid hormone.
In 2012, we moved from Florence to the Birmingham area. After getting settled in to our new enviroment. We started trying to get pregnant again. We discussed our infertility issues with Dr. Goolsby, who is my current boss and now OBGYN physician. She recommended that I start taking a fertility medication called clomid. This medication stimulates a women's ovaries and assist them in ovulation. After starting the medication, I had some labs drawn to determine if I in fact was ovulating on this medication or not. The labs determineds that I still was not ovulating an egg. Dr. Goolsby decided to increased the dosage of the clomid the next month to see if this would stimulate my ovaries better. The new dosage worked! I was finally ovulating on my own as long as I was taking the increase dose of clomid. Barry and I were finally hopeful that I would become pregnant. Sadly, 3 months past on the clomid and still no pregnancy.
Dr. Goolsby recommended that our next step be to see a fertility specialist. We meet with Dr. Steinkemp at Alabama Fertility Specialist for evaluation and further testing to determine why we still were not conceiving. He ran several different types of test. We found out throught he test that I have a very low ovarian egg reserve. Let me explain what this means. Every women is born with a certain number of eggs in her ovaries. When the eggs run out, then the women is no longer able to get pregnancy and begins menopause. A women , my age (35), should have a ovarian egg reserve level of 1.0 or higher. My test showed that my level was 0.4 (extremely low) This means that I will be completely out of eggs in 2-3 years and begin menopause by the age of 38. Dr. Steinkempf strongly recommended that we having a baby ASAP since time is not going to be on our side for much longer. Our next step was to continue the higher dose of clomid but this time include an Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) procedure. This procedure injected sperm directly into the uterus just like artifical insemination.
After 3 IUIs with clomid we once again were heartbroken to not be pregnant.
Our insurance does not cover anything related to infertility. Each month that we attempted the IUI with clomid, was costing us out-of-pocket approximately $500. After 3 failed IUIs, we had used all of our saving and didn't have any other means of getting this much money to procede with our dream of becoming parents. We deicided to take a break on the fertilty treatments and start saving ever penny we could to be able to start trying again.
In January 2014, we meet with Dr. Steinkemp to discuss what the next step would be for us. He recommended that we try a new fertility medicine called follestim, which is a injection instead of pill like clomid. Plus this was a more powerful medication and would stimulate the ovaries even more. He also recommended a repeat HSG procedure to re-evaluate my uterus and fallopian tubes, which I did. The HSG results were the same as before, no blockage or abnormalities seen. We were unsure if we could afford the follestim since medication alone is about $1,200 per month. God must have seen our struggle because one day while waiting in the lobby to see Dr.Steinkempf, we meet an angel named Lyle. She was also going througn fertility treatment but no longer needed her follestim medicine. Therefore, she donated all her left over follestime to us. This made it possible for us to proceed with next step of hopefully becoming parents. We did our first round of follestim and our 4th IUI. Once again, our dreams were crushed when we learned we were not pregnant that month either.
Since we still had some of the donated follestim from Lyle, we decided to try again. Dr. Steinkemp recommeded another round of follestim along with our 5th IUI. This time he increased my dosage of follestim to the max dosage but again we were saddened to found out we were not pregnant. After are 5th failed IUI, Dr. Steinkemp recommended that we precede with one more IUI but this time wants to add an additional injectable medication called Menopur to the mix.
By this time, we had used all the donated follestim. Therefore were left to purchasing not only follestim but menopur on our own. Cost for both this medications is approx. $2,500. God once again send us a blessing. My work had a change in our insurance policy. Now my insurance would cover up to 60% of my medication. This would bring our out-of-pocket cost for our fertility medications to approx. $1,250. Once again we started saving all the money we could until we had enough to try the new medications and another IUI procedure. In March 2015, we started the follestim and menopur injections along with our 6th IUI procedure. Once again we were heartbroken to find out we were not pregnant.
Now, after 6 failed IUI procedures and months of fertility medications, our next step will be to have an In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) along with same medication combination as before. The down fall to this procedure is that it is much more costly. One cycle of an IVF procedure is around $ 9,000, not to mention the additional cost for medications. Total cost for us out of pocket will be approx $12,000. Who in the world has that type of money just laying around. It would take us years to save that much money up. Not to mention that I don't have that much time left till I am out of eggs.
We starting researching the internet and found out about a grant provided by Baby Quest Foundation. This grant provide the choosen couple with up to $10,000 to help precede with infertility treatments. We applied for the grant three times but due to the large number of applicants we were not choosen to recieve the grant.
Out of options, one of our good friends, Whitney, recommended that we start a “Go Fund Me” fundraiser. She set-up an account for us in hope that we can raise enough money to proceed with IVF procedure and our dreams of becoming parents.
Our prayers were answered and after 8 months of fundraising and promoting our site, we had raised enough to schedule our first IVF procedure. Yeah!!! We were both beyond excited. Finally, we might actually get pregnant. We started our medications in October 2015 and on October 10th had our egg retrieval. We had a total of 6 eggs retrieved from my ovaries. We received a call the next day and we were told that 4 of the 6 eggs were healthy and mature. Yeah! We proceeded with fertilizing the 4 eggs. On October 13th, we meet with Dr. Steinkempf to discuss our 4 "little babies". He said that only 2 of the 4 were still divided cells like normal. The other 2 were no longer growing. We had our 2 little embryos transfered inside my uterus that day. We then were on the longest 2 week wait of my life to find out if indeed we were pregnant. Sadly, we found out after the 2 week that my blood work showed that we once again were not pregnant. That the IVF did not work. As you can imagine, we were completely devastated. We both cried together for several days. After grieving the lost of our failed if, we know that it is all in God's hands. He has a reason for us going through all this and has a plan for us to one day be parents. Despite the heart break and pain, we are going to continue on our fertility journey. We are scheduled to talk to Dr. Steinkempf again next week. Hopefully he will have some insight and encouragement to give us. More than likely, he is going to recommend another round of IVF either using my eggs or possible using a donor egg since my own eggs are not the best quality. I will keep y'all updates on our next step as soon as I find out what it might be. In the meantime, please keep us in your prayers.
And this lead us to where we are now with this account. We are more than appreicative of all donation and there is not amount ot small. Believe us, ever penny counts. If you are not able to give, we ask that you just pray for us along with share our story so other can learn about the struggle of infertility.
Another way we are raising money is through my personalized paintings & home decor website. I make many different things like baby hospital door signs, door wreaths, wedding gifts, etc... Click this link to check it out: www.melaniesartisticdesign.com
Thank you so much for reading our story and may God bless you for all that you do to help us in our dreams of having a baby.
Thank you again & God bless,
Barry and Melanie White