Infertility a thing or two that might help you

Since I was 17 years old I was diagnosed with poly-cystic ovaries, at that age it doesn't seem a big deal and usually at that age you are not thinking in further consequences such as infertility.

I got married 6 years later and I remember having a missed period thinking I was pregnant but obviously I wasn't, years passed by and the disillusions of not getting pregnant made me think that it might never be possible for us. As a couple I can’t say that it took a tow in our relationship on the contrary we start getting closer because only us could understand what you go through.

We did some research of doctors and clinic, some of them did not have the right equipment to help you but it took several doctors and appointments to realize this the hard way.

Some doctors prescribe the medicine to make you ovulate but didn't have the equipment to watch you whole cycle, if you had and irregular cycle like I did is very hard to follow some instructions at first, you get confuse on the days, on how to take the medicine and all the confusing instructions, at the end of the day the only thing you have in mind is get pregnant and nothing else and you obviously expect to happen as soon as you enter the doctor's office.

If you are looking for a doctor or fertility clinic, do your homework, it is best to look for the ones that have the equipment to watch you cycle and the ones that have open availability, you never know when you are going to be ovulating or when you are going to need it for any of your treatments.

We got very disappointment with time 4 years passed by and we decided to go for the big shot… a fertility clinic, it sounded scary and drastic but we were so disappointed plus we couldn’t take another year of our family and friends making comments about kids, pregnancy, biological clock etc etc (people don’t seem to understand how hard can conceiving be these days).

Fertility clinics make several tests that few fertility doctors didn’t do on us, at the end of the day we found out that my husband also had abnormal sperm and that made it twice hard to conceive. After trying for 5 cycles we met with our doctor again because it was time to make some decisions, as its clinics policy you need to try at least 5 cycles with medicine before trying insemination or IVF, at this point I couldn’t take it anymore, it was too much to digest, I was not only heartbroken, disappointed and stressed out but my body couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to take a break; my husbands suggest trying the natural ways like acupuncture, naturopath, exercise, diet etc. And so we both did and to be honest I couldn’t done it alone, you need the support system of your family and specially your partner to hold your hand and to take decisions when you can’t do it because you think that you don’t have the strength.

After few months of these natural ways I start getting my old self back, optimistic and enthusiastic about getting pregnant, so I decided to get back to the fertility clinic and review my options with the doctor, that is when we started the medications for the insemination which by the way were extremely expensive! Each $250 plus you have to inject yourself but I was decided and in my mind I could only think is going to work I know it!

So the day came and after the injections we needed to check if the medication had work, the eggs were growing and each day there were more and more, it work so well that at one point there were to many and the nurse wanted to have “the talk” with us. I could believe my ears when she told me there were too many and an insemination was out of the question. So our options where losing the cycle, meaning losing all the eggs and all the money already invested or retrieve all the eggs and do and IVF. I think I wanted to cry but my mind was blank at one point my husband looked at me and said sad that and IVF was out of our means. I told the nurse we were thinking of missed the cycle and instead of throwing the eggs away I was going to donate them for someone who needed them, at least if my dream wasn't going to be true at least someone else’s will. She wrote some numbers on a card and said go home and think about your options, and so we did…

Thinking on a long-term even if we missed the cycle and start another one, no one could guarantee it was going to work but if we tried the IVF would have spend all our money in something that had more chances. If we decided to keep trying insemination after insemination by the time IVF was the only options we would have been broke, So we decided to go for the IVF of course our family help us and we manage to use our life savings to make this possible, plus we had at that point 9 good embryos to froze in case the first IVF didn't work we could try again without going to the expensive treatment to ovulate.

At the end of the day we send $10.000 on average for all the treatment and in our first round of IVF we conceived our beautiful and healthy son Elias. 6 embryos end up frozen for future tries and the clinic charge $800 a year to keep them frozen.

For us it not only work the IVF, I am convinced that it was the overall of having a good support system, good diet, exercise, acupuncture and naturopath session that help in all the process, you not only need to be fiscally good but also emotionally and when you think you can’t take it anymore have a break and recover your strength because this a long path and you need to be at your best.

Never give up.