My friend asked me, “Is it worth it? Is the emotional, physical, and financial stress really worth it?”  If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said “I don’t know.”  But today, today I say “1000%, absolutely, without a doubt, the infertility journey is worth it.”   Every single painful injection, every dollar spent, every heartbreaking negative test before this was TOTALLY worth it.

The journey of infertility is HARD.  It sucks.  It is not fun and it is draining on the mind, body, and pocketbooks.

There were so many times where I lost faith.  So many times of sadness and heartache. But the season that we’re in now, the season where we get to hold our baby and finally get to see what we tried so hard for, is so, so, sooooo worth it.

We began our journey shortly after marriage, about 2 and a half years ago.  We wanted to start as soon as possible since we were both getting older.

Month after month, the tests kept showing negative.  It was defeating.

After getting a general workup and bloodwork from our primary care doctors, we were hit with some bad news.  They told us that chances of conceiving naturally were very low and we should look in to fertility treatment.

I’m the type of person who believes “knowledge is power” so, I scoured the internet looking up all of our options, checking out different doctors, and researching ways to increase fertility.   Joey and I agreed that we would continue to try naturally in hopes of a miracle but at the same time, we would do everything we could to help increase our fertility.  Ultimately, we did have to go on the IVF path which has lead us to our beautiful baby, Braydon.

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There’s so much stigma regarding infertility and a lot of people walk the road alone.  I have wanted to share our story for a long time.  It has taken a lot of courage to open up  and I am hoping that by doing so, we can help de-stigmatize it and that we’re able to help other couples going through the same thing.   This is probably the MOST vulnerable I’ve ever been publicly.   There’s just something that keeps pulling at me.  It seems like every where I’ve turned recently, there have been clues telling me that this is what I need to do; that I need to share my story.

The path to parenthood can be VERY lonely— know that you are not alone.  You’ll have a million questions and google will be your best friend.  You will constantly question whether any of it is worth it.  It’ll test your strength and put strain on your marriage.  I want to be here to help you because this path is not meant to be walked alone.

I look forward to sharing more of our story!

In this series, I’ll be talking about  how we chose our doctors, tests we took, what to expect through IUI and IVF, and much more.

Please stay tuned!

Our Miracle Baby

In the meantime:

Society for Assisted Reproductive Tech has some great info regarding IVF

Braydon’s Labor and Delivery Our delivery story