Our Fertility Journey

7/26/2019 Our Fertility Journey

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Why Write Our Story?

Why did I decide to write our story? The simple answer is that Katie and I experienced a

miracle. This miracle happened when we hit rock bottom in our journey to becoming parents.

When the door to adoption closed, when the door to foster parenting closed, when our new

landlord forced us out of our rented house, and when the doctor told us it wasnt e!en worthtrying to concei!e anymore because we only had a "# chance. $uring this time at the rock

bottom is when %od answered our prayers. When we thought there was literally nowhere else to

turn, %od answered, in &is perfect timing. We chose to write our story because it shouldnt go

untold. We ne!er want to forget our journey and this miracle, and we want as many people as

possible to hear just how good %od is. I know that not e!eryone story ends like this, but I also

know that just when you think you!e reached your breaking point, when you think that its

impossible to try one more thing, to face one more day, %od is with you and &e knows exactly

what you are going through.

Evaporation Line

's a husband, you learn a lot of new things during the months or years of an infertility

journey. (ou stop caring so much about the stats of your fa!orite sports team and start caring

how many follicles your wife has produced that month and how many days post o!ulation she is.

(ou know more about your wifes cycle than you e!er cared to, and you start saying words like

cycle instead of )that thing that happens once a month when shes not as nice to me.* The first

word I learned and the word that kicked off our entire journey, was )+!aporation ine*.

Katie and I got married at the ripe age of - and --. I had recei!ed my bachelors degree

a whole / days earlier, but we were ready to take on the world. The first months of marriagewere an absolute blast. We would go on dates out to eat or make big meals together. We would

take walks almost e!ery night after work. We absolutely lo!ed spending e!ery minute together.

'll was right in the world. We were happy.

I dont know why I said it 0 but one day four months into our marriage I told Katie that I

thought we should ha!e a baby. I felt it. I felt like %od was calling us to ha!e a baby. When I told

Katie this, she was a little shocked. We had always said that we would wait fi!e years and then

start trying. That seemed like a reasonable time1line since we were so young. Then all of a

sudden, four months into our marriage I felt this tug on my heart that we needed to ha!e a baby. I

dont remember the exact con!ersation we had, but I must ha!e been !ery con!incing 2orannoying3 and we decided to try it one month and see what happened. 4o we tried it.

Two weeks after we tried it, I came home from work and saw a pregnancy test in the

bathroom. There was a !ery thin blue line. It was positi!e5 I ran out and hugged Katie. 6onfused,

she asked me why I was so excited. I told her I had seen the positi!e pregnancy test and how

excited I was. 4he told me that when she took the test it was negati!e. We con!inced oursel!es

that maybe it took a long time for the test to react. We were con!inced it was positi!e. The


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feeling we felt in that moment changed us. I was going to be a father, and Katie was going to be

a mother. We were going to be parents together.

The next day, Katie got her period. It was o!er just hours after it had felt so real. We had

no idea what had happened. 4o, like we would do so many times in the next couple of years, we

%oogled it. 'fter a lot of research we learned that awful word7 +!aporation ine. It turns outsthat when some pregnancy tests are left out for a long time, a thin line appears making it look

positi!e. That is exactly what happened to us.

This e!aporation line changed us though. It made us reali8e that we desperately wanted to

be parents, to ha!e a child of our own, and that feeling would not stop growing. We didnt know

it, but this one little line kicked off a cra8y rollercoaster two years.

The First Year

'fter the e!aporation line incident, we reali8ed that we wanted to be parents and we

agreed we would continue to try. It is funny looking back at this time, because we were

absolutely clueless as to what we were about to go through. The first few months there was no

strategy to concei!ing. It was simply keep doing what newly married people do, except lea!e out

some of the e9uipment. ' few months passed, and nothing was happening. Then we started

trying to time it. 'n app was used to track Katies cycle. ' month or two of timing it with the

app, and nothing still. We went to the pharmacy and bought a bunch of !itamins 2around :;ostly relief, because our

dream of becoming parents was still ali!e.

I hope that story illustrates the emotional rollercoaster that an infertility struggle is. @ne

minute youre ne!er going to be able to ha!e kids, the next minute e!erything looks ok, but wait

if e!erything looks ok then why ha!ent we had a baby yet? It consumes you. It is all you think

about. $uring these few months of cycle monitoring and testing was one of those times where

we felt consumed. Katie was going to appointments two or three times a week, we had some

doctor telling us when we should get it on, and we were getting test results back regularly thatcould change our li!es fore!er.

Eeedless to say, the timed intercourse approach didnt work. 't the end of the cycle

monitoring stage we got our official diagnosis7 )unexplained infertility.* $ont get me wrong, I

was thrilled that there wasnt a diagnosis that said we could ne!er get pregnant 0 but come on5

Thats like going to a dietician and them saying )yep youre fat.* I wanted answers5 Tell me what

the issue is and lets fix it. Cut, no such luck. We had unexplained infertility which ga!e us

exactly 8ero insight on how to fix it. 4o after months of testing, we had not gained any ground.

@n to the next thing.

#n$ant %&option

$uring our cycle monitoring we started talking about a lot of different options. If for

whate!er reason we werent meant to ha!e a biological child, we still felt called to be parents. 4o

we started researching how to adopt. @ne thing we reali8ed 9uickly was that there were a ton of

options. Infant or older child? $omestic or international? 6losed or open? 4ame state or cross


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country? We talked about the huge amount of options that were a!ailable and decided that we

were going to pursue a domestic infant adoption.

>y original thought was there had to be hundreds of pregnant woman, teen momsFsingle

woman etcA, that wanted to gi!e up their child for adoption. &eck, we were doing them a fa!or

for wanting to raise their baby right? We 9uickly learned that infant adoption was not going to beas easy or as inexpensi!e as we thought. The a!erage cost of a domestic infant adoption is

around :"


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ha!e our hearts ripped out. We prayed and talked for about a week. %od had opened our hearts to

adoption, but it wasnt the right time.

Fertility !e&ication

Cack on the natural conception front, we were onto the next step to battle ourunexplained infertility. The plan was more of my fa!orite7 timed intercourse. This time we would

be aided by some fertility medications. The medications would help Katie produce more follicles

than normal each month, and then when the time was right the doctor would gi!e her a trigger

shot which would make her o!ulate exactly "; hours later.

&eres how a typical month would go during this time7 Katie would take her medication

starting a day or two after her period. 'round a week and a half into the cycle Katie would go

into the doctors to monitor how many follicles had been produced that month. I remember

asking Katie e!ery month. )Two leading follicles5? Eice5 >aybe it will be twins5 What side are

you o!ulating from this month* 'fter this initial appointment, Katie would go in e!ery couple ofdays to monitor how the follicles were growing. ); millimeters? 'lright so they should gi!e you

the shot tomorrow right?* When the follicles were the right si8e, they would gi!e her the shot 0

and the "; hour clock would start.

ike many new phases that we started in our journey, we were full of hope. I learned a

new phrase during this time7 )Two Week Wait*. If you ha!ent figured it out yet, this is the two

week time between timed intercourse and when you can find out if it worked or not. There are

websites and blogs de!oted to gi!ing ideas on how to pass the time. Bor a husband, the two week

wait is a little different. Bor the most part, I was able to focus on other things during this time and

it would usually go by pretty fast. @ne piece of ad!ice I would gi!e any man is ne!er ask a girl ifthey are on their period, for ob!ious reasons. This takes on a whole new meaning during this two

week wait when you are trying to concei!e. I dro!e Katie absolutely insane by asking her if she

had gotten her period yet. >y intentions were good. I wanted to know if she was late and if it had

finally worked that month. 4o I got sneaky. I started asking )how are you feeling?* I married a

!ery smart woman. 4he caught on !ery 9uick to my brilliant scheme and shut that down 9uick.

I finally got to the point where I didnt need to ask. I would make a mental note of when

the nurse had ordered us to ha!e intercourse 2sounds so romantic doesnt it?3 and then around

that day I would gage Katies mood. $uring this phase of our journey e!ery month I would say

)Im sorry* and hug Katie when that day came. It was this constant roller coaster of hope anddisappointment, hope and disappointment, hope and disappointment.

This may sound weird but when I look back at this time I am so thankful for %ods

perfect plan. &indsight is -


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going through except maybe a doctor or two. We only had each other to rely on, and this brought

us closer than I e!er thought possible. 6ombine this with the ridiculous amount of timed

intercourse we were ha!ing and that my friend is a recipe for a close marriage. I belie!e %od

used this trial to build a foundation for the rest of our li!es together. Whate!er trial may come in

the future we will always ha!e this to fall back on.

#'# (oun& 1

'nother word I learned along the way was IGI. Which actually is an acronym for

Intrauterine Insemination. This was the next step with our fertility doctor once the fertility

medication phase had failed after a few months. The plan basically was Katie would continue

with the same fertility medication, but this time around instead of timed intercourse I would

)deposit my sample* into a cup again and the doctor would place it in Katies womb at the exact

right time. The sample had to be collected within an hour of the doctor placing it in Katie. >uch

less romantic and fun if you ask me. We were both excited about trying something new, and we

both thought we had a great shot this time. I got so good at building up our hope during thisprocessA probably to a fault now that I think of it. Cut how could this go wrong? The doctors

had found nothing wrong with my semen, and nothing wrong with Katies reproducti!e system,

so if we had a doctor literally place my semen directly by Katies egg at the exact right time

when she was o!ulating, how could that not work?5 It seemed foolproof right?

If youll recall, step number one in this process is collecting my sample. Bor this first IGI,

step number one pro!ed to be the most difficult, cra8iest, and most awkward processes in my

entire life to that point. Eow I know you must be thinking, )6ome on 6hris, all you ha!e to do is

get it into a cup. &ow hard could that be?* Well theres this thing called >urphys aw which

states, )'nything that can go wrong, will go wrong.* 4crew you >urphy. Katies cycle was alittle early this particular month, which meant the lead follicle was growing faster than expected.

4he found this out during a morning appointment, and to make sure the follicle didnt get too

big, they ga!e her the trigger shot during that appointment. This meant that the IGI would be

occurring "; hours later at precisely "7


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could think of was a coworker or manager hearing or seeing me depositing my sample in the

work bathroom.

The second option7 rent a hotel room. We came really close to doing this. We e!en had

con!ersations like )isnt there sketchy motels by the beach that rent by the hour?* Imagine if

someone I knew dro!e by at the exact wrong time and saw me lea!ing an hourly motel with acup of my own semen? )'nd the per!ert of the year award goes toA* The hotel option pro!ed to

be too expensi!e and ne!er really materiali8ed. 4o I left for work that morning only with this

plan7 I would make up and excuse to lea!e work for or -< minutes. Katie would pick me up

around -7


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co!er something up. Thank %od they didnt call the police. 6an you imagine? That would be a

tough one to explain.

I walked back into work, probably with some huge pit stains, and couldnt stop laughing

about the ridiculousness that had just happened. Though I would not recommend this strategy to

anyone, I felt a lot less stressed about the book1close acti!ities I was trying to finish on time. TheIGI procedure went fine, and we waited the usual two weeks. @nce again we were met with

disappointment. The IGI had not worked. It wasnt like we werent trying. I joked earlier that we

would ha!e done anything necessary to make this work. I think this story is proof of that5

'nother month of disappointment, but an experience I will certainly ne!er forget7 for better or

worse. 't least I didnt end up in jail for per!erted acti!ities.

Foster are

'fter we reali8ed that massi!e cost that comes along with infant adoption, we decided we

should look into foster care. We had heard stories or saw things on tele!ision shows, of familiesadopting children out of foster care. 4o Katie sent off an email to the E& $epartment of

6hildren, (outh and Bamilies 2$6(B3, explaining that we were interested in adopting a child

from infant to around two years old. The response we got, like most things in our journey, left us

feeling confused and deflated. It went something like this, )&i Kathleen, thank you for

contacting us. The situation you described is extremely rare. $6(B does e!erything possible to

reunite children with their biological families, so a !ery small percentage of children that age are

actually adopted by foster parentsA* The email went on to explain the process of taking -

hours worth of classes, as well as completing a home study prior to ha!ing any children in your

home.

We were faced with the reality that we could in theory ha!e a child in our home for more

than two years, and would not be allowed to adopt that child until the either the parents wai!ed

their parental rights, or pro!ed that they could not li!e up to their reinstatement plan. The

reinstatement plan is something the state works out with the biological parents. This could look

something like the parent has to pass three drug tests and then they could regain parental rights.

@r no police !isits for domestic disputes in three months. &eres the catch7 Eew &ampshire is

one of the most lenient states for this. 4o in the first example of drug tests, if the parent pass one

drug test, but failed the other two, they would extend the reinstatement plan because the parent

was showing some progress. This is why it would be possible for us to pour e!erything we ha!e

into parenting a child, but may not be able to legally adopt for years. 'nd of course there wasalways the chance that after many years the parents could get finally pass the reinstatement plan

and could ha!e the child come back into their home.

Knowing all of this was a possibility, we decided that if %ods plan was for us to adopt

out of Boster 6are, or e!en if we were meant to only care for a child for a little while before them

returning to their home, we should do anything to open this door. That meant attending three1


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hour classes. In hind1sight, Im really glad we took these classes. We learned a ton about early

child1hood de!elopment, how to handle !arious situations with kids you would ne!er think

about, and just how difficult parenting can be 0 especially with someone elses child. It was also

heart1breaking to hear about what some of these kids ha!e to go through. (ou would ne!er think

of awful things happening in your own back yard, but they do. Eo matter where you li!e.

There was this awful struggle in both of our minds of understanding what the state was

trying to do7 reunite children with their families. Cut also of this intense anger of hearing about

what these parents did to their children. It was so easy to run scenarios in your mind about taking

care of someone elses child and then ha!ing them taken away from you back to their parents

who were not responsible enough to take care of them in the first place. It takes a !ery special

person to be a foster parent. I remember after se!eral classes, Katie and I praying together asking

%od to change our hearts if this is what he wanted for us. I ha!e so much respect for people who

unconditionally lo!e someone elses child, knowing full well they could be gi!en back to their

parents at any time. The hardest part is knowing what the biological parents did to ha!e their

children taken away, and sending the child you poured your life into back into their parents care.

We attended all se!en classes, and Im glad we did. Im also glad %od didnt choose this

path for us at this point in our journey. We werent ready for that kind of emotional mind game.

&e opened our hearts to the possibility, and I would not be surprised if we explore this option in

the future. There is such a need for foster parents, and I hope someday we are in a position to

help a child in need. ike so many other times in our journey, we ended the classes and still had

no idea what our path to becoming parents was going to be. +ach time we started something new

with so much hope, so much optimism, only to feel deflated and confused.

#'# (oun& 2

=ust a month after IGI number had failed and I had done some unmentionable things in

a grocery store, it was time to try another round of IGI. 'nother round of optimism and hope.

@ur odds must be great this time. It cant not work two months in a row right? This round

worked out much better than the first. Katie actually got the trigger shot on a Thursday night

which meant the procedure would be on a 4aturday morning. Derfect5 I could be there for her,

and pro!ide the sample in the pri!acy of our own home.

We arri!ed at the doctors office 2the same office I had made a fool of myself in by

passing out ; months earlier3 around L7


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your time. Eo one belie!es in you out there. Its us against the world. +T4 %@@@@5 's Cill

Celichick says, Mdo your job.*

'fter ha!ing that special little moment in the back room of the doctors office the nurse

told us that the doctor was ready and we should go to the procedure room. We walked in and I sat

awkwardly in the corner as my Katie laid back on the examination table. 4he told the nurse thatshe was cold and the nurse turned a heat lamp that was abo!e the examination table. @ne of the

few things that Katie and I argue about on a regular basis is temperature. 4he is always cold. It

could be


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(oc* +otto,

I %oogled )Hock bottom Nuotes* and one of the first 9uotes that came up was this one

from =.K. Howling7 )Hock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.* If

one word in this 9uote was changed it would describe our story, and many others perfectly. The

word that needs to be changed is )I* to )%od*. )Hock bottom became the solid foundation onwhich %od rebuilt my life.* Heaching rock bottom sucks. We reached ours with two doors

slamming shut, and lea!ing us with nowhere left to go.

'fter we finished our Boster 6are classes we had a great idea. We would ha!e the 4tate

come out and complete our home1study for free and then if there happened to be an infant to two

year old that needed to be adopted we would ha!e all of the red tape out of the way already. 'lso,

we could use the home study completed by the state as our pri!ate infant adoption home1study

and sa!e :-,


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Lan&lor&)&i 6hris, so youre thinking about adopting a kid?

!e) (es5 Were really excited about it

Lan&lor&) 4o youre telling me you had the town come o!er without my permission?5

The next ten minutes was the landlord berating me about how we constantly were doing things to

the home without his permission. &ow we )made the house look too nice before a tax inspector

and OhisP taxes went up* 2he actually said that3. &ow we put up a can!as shed, and if that was a

real shed 2which it wasnt because it was a can!as shed, but thats cool if you want to yell at me

for something I didnt do3, and we didnt ha!e a permit for it, he could be in big trouble. &e said

our rent was way too low and he would ha!e to raise it to keep up with the market. Im not

exaggerating that this jerk yelled at me for ten minutes about nothing.

I always go back and forth whether or not I should ha!e told him the town was coming

out. I mean I probably should ha!e, if I was being completely fair. Cut, the fact was that the

house we were renting from him was not up to code, and as a renter I had e!ery right to ha!e the

town come out and inspect it. 'll of the work we had done had first of all impro!ed the !alue of

the house 2youre welcome you jerk3, and the original landlords had told us we could do it. Then

this stand1up guy buys the house from our original landlords and waits until our lease is up and

basically kicks us out so he could raise the rent 2:"


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e!erything right, and all of a sudden our %od had abandoned us. Eowhere to turn. Hock Cottom

sucks.

#-F

We mo!ed in with my parents. We had our own space and were li!ing with significantly

lower costs which made sa!ing !ery easy. 'll of that was great, but I couldnt shake this strong

feeling of inferiority that o!ertook me for the first few weeks. I !owed to care for Katie and

pro!ide for her when we were married, and here we were7 li!ing in my parents attic. It was a

hard transition, but like Katie and I ha!e done so often, we ne!er let it separate us. We used

humor to make fun of the situation, and I belie!e it e!en brought us closer together. @ne day at

church, the pastor said )so many people just want a bigger house or nicer things in their home.* I

leaned o!er to Katie and said )we dont e!en ha!e a home.* We both burst out laughing in the

middle of the sermon. &umor is a great gift from %od, so I didnt feel bad about laughing in

church.

We talked about next steps. 'doption was on hold until we could afford a house, since

they probably wouldnt accept an attic in a home study. 4ince the doctor we had been seeing had

told us there was nothing left for them to do for us, our only other option was IQB. We searched

high and low for a fertility specialist that would do more tests for us, and could not find anything.

The medical industry found a solution to infertility, that had good success rates, and they could

make money off of. Eo one wanted to waste time diagnosing the reason for our infertility when

they had a solution that worked. We were !ery hesitant towards IQB, because it is somewhat

contro!ersial within the 6hristian community. Bor those of you who dont know, basically the

doctors gi!e the woman a bunch of medication which makes her produce a lot of eggs, whichthey har!est. They then take sperm from the man, and create embryos, and then implant the

embryos in the woman. The reason its contro!ersial? 4ome practices implant many embryos

into the woman and then select the strongest one, and abort the others.

We were not interested in this techni9ue in the least. It was disgusting to us. We

researched and researched. I %oogled )6hristian point of !iew on IQB*. To add to my confusion

the articles were split


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couple that has completed IQB can gi!e their embryos up for adoption to couples that may not

e!en be able to create embryos with the IQB process.

We prayed about this, and felt %od was pleased with this plan. We talked about creating a

Will in case something happened to us with fro8en embryos, and talked about how cool it would

be to help a couple out that was not able to produce embryos. We felt like we had a great plan. Ire!iewed my insurance plan, and found that I had one of the !ery rare plans that co!ered IQB.

This in itself was a huge miracle, and made us think that this was a great path to take. Cetween

the medical procedures and medication, this process can cost north of :,


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ooking around the waiting room, it was somewhat comforting to know all the couples

there were in the same boat as us. They all looked tired like Im sure we did, not from it being

7


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the chair was a small TQ which was off 2hence the remote in the bag3, and a stack 2by stack I

mean a tall stack3 of maga8ines. Eow you know why I called it a per!ert lounge. I stayed far

away from that side of the room, because the bathroom weirdly seemed much cleaner.

ea!ing was really awkward as well. I turned the red light on, and left through the lobby

where there were e!en more folks waiting for the room I just used. 4o weird. I wanted toannounce that I did not sit on the leather chair or use the remote, so the doctors paper or the

plastic sandwich bag would not ha!e to be replaced, but thought people might not appreciate

that. @n the way out Katie asked )so how was it?* and we cracked up laughing walking past the

real office on the first floor I had just humiliated myself in by announcing to the nurse I was

there for a semen analysis. (ou ha!e to know how to laugh at yourself, or youll ne!er make it

through anything difficult. It had to be one of the most bi8arre mornings of my entire life, and

there was nothing to do but just laugh about it.

Our #-F .lan

' few weeks later we recei!ed a call that our results were in and we should schedule an

appointment with $r. &ill to go o!er our tests and finali8e a plan. We scheduled our appointment

and were escorted back to $r. &ills office as we were a few weeks earlier. 'fter re!iewing our

results, he had concluded that we only had a "# chance of concei!ing naturally and we had been

basically wasting our time with IGIs and the fertility medication that we had been trying the past

year. &e didnt mince any words and looking back on it, the skeptical side of me thinks he was

trying to sell us on IQB. &e kept saying, )I can get you up from "# to edications were

going to cost :"


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thought this was going to be the time that %od would start answering our prayers. @nce again we

were wrong, but this time we couldnt ha!e been any happier about that5

%ns/ere& .rayer

Bor the first time in two years, we were anxious for Katie to get her period. We werehoping for it, because when it did arri!e we could order our medication and finally get things

rolling. @f course I knew exactly when her period should happen, so I made a mental note. I

remember it was supposed to happen on a Wednesday. Wednesday rolled around and I felt like I

could actually ask Katie this month if it had happened, since we both wanted it to. That morning

the answer was no, when I got home that afternoon the answer was still no. )Thats alright. Im

sure it will happen tomorrow* I reassured her. Thursday morning was still a big fat no and

frustrations were growing by the minute. I suggested that we just order the medication, to distract

us from waiting, and get the ball rolling. Bor whate!er reason we agreed to wait to make the

order.

Thursday night and frustration was at an all1time high. The one time we wanted her

period to get here and the stupid thing just would not show up. )6an you just gi!e us this one

%od?* I remember thinking. The frustration reached a boiling point for Katie Briday morning at

around "7"< '>. I was awoken by a frustrated groan from Katie. 4he still hadnt gotten her

period, but had a bloody nose of epic proportions. 4he walked downstairs to the bathroom

extremely frustrated, and I laid in bed wondering what the heck I was going to say when she

came back upstairs to encourage her. I laid there for a while and finally heard Katie coming back.

)&ey, you okay?* )I dont know5* she answered, )can I show you something?*

4he held up a pregnancy test with two thick dark lines on it. There was no mistaking it.There was no tilting or s9uinting needed, it was no doubt,


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her phone. There was a !oicemail5 The longest thirty seconds of my life was watching her face

as she listened to that message. &er face changed and tears started streaming down her face. >y

stomach dropped. Why would %od build our hopes up like this only to crush them again? &ow is

this happening again? 4he hung up the phone and Katie said barely audibly )my number is so

high5 We are pregnant5* I started crying harder than I e!er had before, and in the middle of

exington '!enue with thousands of people walking around us, we bawled our eyes out and

hugged. In that moment, we both knew that this was real. %od had answered our prayers. It was

happening5

That moment with my wife 2and baby53 feeling %ods presence so strongly in the middle

of the crowded exington '!e. was the most incredible moment in my life. I pray regularly that

%od would ne!er allow me to forget that moment, that whene!er I doubted, whene!er I had

anxiety I would remember that moment and that %od answers prayers. That no matter how bad

things are, no matter how silent %od seems, &e is with us and knows exactly how things will

turn out. That night we decided on a name for our baby 2if it was a girl, which it was53 exington

%race. 4o that whene!er we look at our beautiful daughter exi, we will remember that %od

answers prayers, that she is a gift that we should ne!er take for granted, and that no matter what

storm we go through, we will get through it together and come out stronger on the other side

because with %od, all things our possible.

Our Fertility Journey

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