August 21, 2012

Travis and I have been married for 3 ½ blissful years. Through our entire marriage, we have wanted and tried to get pregnant. We want to have a family, a small family (2 kids), but a family none the less. About a year and a half ago I went to my annual “Lady” appointment, and my doctor came in and said, ‘You aren’t pregnant yet?’ and immediately I started to cry.  No, we weren’t pregnant but wanted to be desperately. In fact, my cycle was crazy and unpredictable. She told me that she could put me on birth control to get me pregnant, but that it wasn’t a good idea given my previous blood clot problems. Instead, she put me on a medication used for people who are pre-diabetic (which I am not), but also good for women with PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome) which she thinks I probably have. She said it would regulate my cycle, and often times helps women get pregnant. She told me that if it didn’t work, and I lost a large amount of weight and still didn’t get pregnant, she could help me further.

I left that appointment happy and discouraged at the same time. I realize I need to lose weight, I do… and I try… I lose about 30 lbs and then I plateau, get discouraged and ultimately give up. Plus, nobody notices my 30 lb. loss which is a huge kick in the privates! I decided, I would join weight watchers again and hopefully be able to get pregnant quickly.

A couple of months later my friend told me she was seeing a Nurse Midwife who didn’t care about your size, and thought people should be able to get pregnant regardless. I was excited, so I made an appointment and Travis went with me. I met the CNM who took blood and told me to come back on certain days of my cycle. I asked him if we could have Travis tested initially as well due to some medical issues. He said it was fine, and set another appointment for a couple of weeks later.

We went to our next appointment excited to hear what the CNM had to say. He came in to see us, and said, “These are the worst test results I’ve ever seen. On a scale of 1-10 in fertility, you guys would get a 2. I can’t do anything to help you. You need to see someone else.” We sat there in silence, stunned. Both, at the news, but also at the way it was delivered. We were humiliated, and devastated at the same time. How could someone who wants people to have babies, treat people like that?  We left discouraged. But I was determined to find someone to help us.

I had several friends talk about having been to the Reproductive Care Center for fertility treatment, and all had good things to say about it. I called my insurance to see if they covered any fertility treatment (obviously they cover NOTHING), and then decided to go in for a consultation. 

In November 2011, Travis and I met with Dr. James Heiner for a consultation.  He was really nice, and extremely honest. Was my weight a problem?  Yes, but he asked me to lose 5 lbs. DONE! Was our testing a problem? Yes, but it didn’t mean things were hopeless.  He told us it was possible for us to get pregnant. Our best (and only) option, was to do In Vitro Fertilization, with the help of ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection), and with those two things, we had about a 40% chance of getting pregnant! 40% doesn’t sound like a lot, but when on average the normal person has a 17% chance of getting pregnant each month, and we only had a 0.01% chance of getting pregnant on our own – I’ll take 40% any day!

Travis and I were so excited that it was even possible! We met with the Nurse who gave us all of the information regarding what the process of IVF looks like, and we told her we wanted to do it, so we were told we would be given a calendar for the new year. We were going to try and get pregnant in January or February, and we were excited. We then met with a lady from the financial department, who showed us the cost for IVF and ICSI ($20k+). We were so excited, and figured if we liquidated some of our assets and saved for a couple of months, we could make it work!

We were confident we could make it work. So, we told our families. “We met with a specialist who told us our only option for having a child is to do IVF”.  Our family’s response? “When will you do it?”  “As soon as we can save $20k.”   I think part of us hoped our families would volunteer to help - $20k is a HUGE chunk of money!  However, the only person to offer money is my brother. He has a young family, and offered to loan us his tax return. We thanked him for his generous offer, but could never take money from him and his cute family! 

In December, we were waiting to find out our schedule for In Vitro so we could make arrangements to pay for IVF – when we received some bad news.  Travis’ business had hit a rough patch. One of his business partner’s clients had decided to sue the business because she had lost A LOT of money! The loss of money was devastating, sure, everyone lost money in the market crash. However, she had not been taking their advice, and rather than waiting for the market to rebound – she decided to pull out a bunch of her investments, resulting in a loss of money. Their company has a contract with clients stating they will go through arbitration rather than court – to settle any legal issues.  However, arbitration costs upwards of $75k and since they are a new company – they don’t have the assets to pay for arbitration. Instead, their backing company determined they should settle at $25k.  The company didn’t have $25k sitting around at the time – which meant, we had to use the money we had set aside for IVF, to pay for this lawsuit.  I was devastated.  I cried more than I had ever cried before. It would take us forever to save up $25k now… Poor Travis felt horrible and responsible, even though it wasn’t his fault. We did not tell our family we had the money to do it, and we didn’t tell our family about the lawsuit either. We kept quiet so we didn’t have to disappoint anyone other than ourselves.  It was a difficult time for us, but we got through it.