My name is Stephanie Avery and my husband's name is Christopher, aka: Coy. We have been married almost 10 years and from the beginning we always wanted to have a family, a large family. We both come from large families, he has 7 brothers and sisters and I have 4....
After 1 year of marriage Coy and I found ourselves pregnant and excited to start a family. 2 1/2 months into the pregnancy, we went through the hardest trial of our married lives. We miscarried. We went through the typical emotions that comes with miscarrying. I felt like it was my fault. Maybe I did something wrong, I lifted something too heavy, or moved the wrong way. Did I do something that harmed my unborn child? Then came the feelings of not being worthy to have a family. Was Heavenly Father punishing us for something we did? Would we be horrible parents? Then came the hatred feelings, this was more me than Coy.. I couldn't stand seeing anybody being pregnant or even hear of anybody talking about being pregnant. But after many prayers and blessings those feelings gave way.
After our miscarriage we tried to get pregnant again without any luck. There were several times I felt like I was pregnant, so I would break down and buy a test, but every time they would come back negative, even though I was several days over due. It was very frustrating and draining on the emotions... So Chris and I decided to take a break and concentrate on getting my husband's schooling done.
About 5 years ago we started up again with different treatments to see if anything would happen. We monitored and took everything just to increase our chances. But still nothing. I was also having problems with my cycle and decided to pay a visit to my Dr. I gave him all of my symptoms and he decided that I could possibly have endomitriosis. We decided the best thing to do was for me to have surgery to make sure it was endomitriosis and to make sure everything else is the way it should be. No blocked tubes, no inverted uterus, all of the possible issues that could be preventing us from getting pregnant. I came out of surgery with a positive diagnosis of endomitriosis, and he put me on a treatment schedule for 6 months. After the 6 months were up, we tried all of the medications again and even tried IUI's. We did this for 9 months, getting shots every month, getting check ups every month, and I was beginning to feel like a lab rat. I couldn't take it anymore. I finally gave up, I needed a break from everything. I needed to heal and be able cope with the fact, that I may never be a mother.
I have been around adoption all of my life and I am very pro-adoption. But is it for me? Chris is pro-adoption, he actually has 2 siblings that are adopted from Romania. He saw the blessings from it, but also the hardships. He wants to try invitro and I would prefer adoption. My cousin did invitro several time and it finally worked but it was $80,000 later. I know money shouldn't be an issue, but it is unfortunately.. I don't know if I could do invitro and risk the rejection again and again. Spending all of that money and still not have a family.....I feel like adoption is the more logical option both financially and emotional.
So here we are today. Coy is finished with school, and I just got a job promotion. We both feel that it is time to start a family, but where do we start? Should we adopt or try invitro? So many thoughts, so many feelings, and SO confused...
I also just wanted to thank everybody that started this great site. It has allowed me to realize that I am not alone, even though I feel like I am the only one going through infertility. Thanks for all of your support.
9 comments:
It is such a hard decision!! By the time we came to where you are at I was so done with all the meds and putting my body through so much. After a LOT of prayer we decided to adopt. This was not an easy road emotionaly but physically it was GREAT. I lost the weight I had gained through our fertility process and I felt wonderful. When you feel better physically you can handle things a little better. It took us about 6 months to be approved from start to finish. We had a hold up with Jon's back ground check. But we were approved in Jan 2003 and Cade was born August 2003. I understand your husbands anxieties of adoption especially when he has sibling who have had to deal with their own trials that come with adoption. One thing I do have to say is that it is a lot different now days. We know that there will be some hard times and our boys will have questions but we have a lot of answeres for them. Even though it is scary to have a partially open adoption it bennifits you in the long run. As for IVF I would try that as well. There is a link on this web site(Reproductive Care Center) They do what is called a "shared risk program". I coppied this from their web site.
An IVF Money Back Guarantee Package Plan is available to patients that qualify. The charge is $20,750 plus any premiums that are determined to apply. This “*shared risk®” type plan includes up to 4 fresh IVF
cycles with all the associated frozen embryo transfer cycles (potential value of >$46,000). There are exclusions
for medication and anesthesia charges. Please request a detailed handout about this program if interested. Billing office staff can review this option with you and determine the total charge including any applicable
premiums after your physician has completed a “IVF Money Back Guarantee Plan Criteria Form”. In some circumstances, additional pre-IVF testing may be required to determine eligibility.
I think this is a great plan and give you the best possible chance to concieve or your money back. Not all of it of coarse for like meds and that. I really wish we had of looked more into this. Hang in there you will know what to do. If I could do it over I would do both at the same time and give yourslef as many options as possible.
Good Luck and Keep us posted
Love, Kim
P.S. What a beautiful picture!!!!
Hey Stephanie hang in there i know exactly how you feel i couldnt decide about IVF or adoption and i know money shouldnt be an issue but it is for me as well. We have chosen to take the adoption route all i can say is just pray about it and the lord will lead you in the direction you should go and to Kims comment every since we have decided to do adoption i have felt so good all the drugs and stuff they make you take (like you said a lad rat) just messes with your hormones even more. Good luck and keep us updated.
Our stories are similar: I too lost a pregnancy, but when we started to look into adoption, my husband lost his job, so EVERYTHING was put on hold. When he got a new job, we decided to go the adoption route (cheaper than IVF and not such a "monthly" roller coaster) and it took 20 months from the time we were approved to when our daughter was placed in our arms. Our adoption is extremely open, but it really works for us. Here's hoping you find peace in the answers you are looking for.
Beck, glad to see you here. (Or, read you hear anyway.) I really enjoyed reading your adoption story - hopefully you'll share a little here too!
So many different roads for you right now! Both have so much to explore. One foot in front of the other! I think there just comes a time when you just have to put all your eggs in a basket and go with where the spirit (or gut) is telling you to go.
Wishing you the best!
Hi Stephanie,
So glad you found the sight! I should have thought about you right away. I also had endometreosis. After I had surgery I think that is what made the IVF work. People ask us all the time if we wished we would have done all that from the very beginning. We both adamatly say no. We felt prompted to adopt and knew we needed to get our Parker. I would just pray about it and go with your promptings. There is no reason that you can't pursue both. We had our adoption papers in and were doing iv vitro. We would have never felt like it was a waste of money if the outcome was a baby either way! Seriously call me if you ever need to talk!
hey lady...i know im not a part of this blog but i had to come take a look after you mentioned it...i had never heard your whole story! you know my story and i'm here for you whenever you need me! you are so strong...and thanks again for the hug this morning...i needed it.
Hey Steph! I just wanted to say whatever path you decide for yourself has to be what's best for you and Chris.
The most frustrating struggle with our infertility was that we have always, and continue to, test "normal". If we are so normal how come we have never achieved pregnancy on our own? I saw a local OB/GYN here who was supposed to be an expert on infertility. My first visit with him was 2 1/2 years into marriage. When I told him our concerns he asked me if we had really, really been trying. We had never done anything to prevent pregnancy and always felt like we needed to have a family right away. That same Dr. told me to go REALLY try hard for a whole year, and then if I still hadn't achieved pregnancy after that to come back and see him. I was really angry and spent the next 12 months monitoring my tempuratures, reading about women's cycles, and spent countless dollars on ovulation predictor kits and pregnancy tests. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! One year (to the exact day) I made an appt with that Dr. He ordered a spermanalysis and a hysterosalpinogram. I finally felt like maybe we were going somewhere, but again...they came back perfectly normal. I asked if we should see a fertility specialist/endocrinologist. He told me "No, your normal. Just keep trying. There is no reason you should achieve pregnancy on your own." I left there feeling helpless. Why weren't we achieving pregnancy?
In fall of 2005 (4 1/2 years of trying to get pregnant) I gathered up the courage to ask the physician I was working for to give me a referral to a local urologist, which he did without question. That is how we got our foot in the door. He reviewed everything and recommended that we see an infertility specialist. FINALLY! I made our first appt that September. On our first visit my Dr. was so suprised that my OB only ran 2 tests! He recommended several. We decided right away that we needed to proceed and find out what the problem was. The BIG problem? Finances. We had just purchased our home and I was still in nursing school working only part time. He informed us that we would get a discount for being a CASH patient, but the total for the diagnostic tests was approximately $8,000. I was literally ill, but at the same time decided that this would be the determining factor on how we were going to get our children. After all was said and done...we were still NORMAL! Everything was normal. We were catogorized in the <1% of infertility patients...and diagnosed with "unexplained infertility". Our chances of achieving pregnancy on our own was <1% per month. We were 1 in a million! A normal fertile couple has a 25% chance of achieving pregnancy each month. This news came as a suprise to me. Everything's perfect? Then why? I became more angry than I had ever been! I tried really hard to be happy for my sister and all my friends who were pregnant at the time. We chose to proceed with IUI (another $2,300). After that didn't work and we had our 48th negative pregnancy test we chose to go ahead with in vitro. It was not an easy decision. We made 13 grade one (perfect, again) embryos and 3 failed tests and 2 positives resulting in miscarriages. It was time for a break!
We were never against adoption, in fact, Quinten was adopted. We tried foster care as the least expensive way to go about adoption, but that came with it's own set of emotions! We found ourselves completely attatched to this little tiny infant...he was ours 6 days a week! But every week he was allowed to see his mom for a whole day and that was hard to watch. It was hard that in order for us to take a family vacation we had to have permission from his mother.
I became so frustrated with the foster care system that we began to look into adoption agencies. They, too, were very frustrating! LDS family services wanted 10% of our annual income and they expected us to include the birth mother as part of our "extended eternal family". We were to consider inviting her to birthday parties and family gatherings. I don't think so! We would be ever so grateful that a person would choose to give their child to us, but we felt it would be very confusing and troublesome to the child having both mom's around all the time. Quinten comes from a very closed case adoption and has never had the desire to be reintroduced to his birth mother. We are ok with open adoptions to a certain extent. This led us to look into other agencies. Their base prices (also based on income) put us at a minimum of $17,000, and could also require us to help pay for birth-mother's housing, utilities, food, etc. And the cost of the birth. We would be talking well over $20,000 when all was said and done. And the good news was we could have a baby in 6 weeks...if we didn't care that the baby was addicted to meth. This presented another problem. How much longer would we have to wait for a healthy baby? Could have been 2-3 years.
At this point we had had 9 months off infertility treatments. My body, mind, and hormones were back to normal. We decided to talk to our infertility Dr. again and run the last couple of tests he wanted to run. He too was boggled as to why our 13 perfect little embryos did not take. 3 things: scarring on my uterus that wasn't evident on any of the previous tests, a clotting disorder (found in 3% of caucasian women), and genetic disorders. SO, more testing. We had to karyotype Quinten's and my DNA...we are both "normal adult male/female" (and we have it in writing ;)). More labs to determine if I have some kind of weird clotting disorder (I'm normal, again). A hysteroscopy to take a camera into my uterus and check my lining. They also biopsied my uterus to make sure it was microscopically fit to sustain a pregnacy. NORMAL!
We were left to make a BIG decision again. In Vitro round #2! Another $11,900 for procedure, $4,000 in meds, and hundreds of miles and hours to Vegas. It did always stretch us financially, but this is for family. We had to cut other things out of our budget like new furniture, new cars, and no vacations. We could make it work! We ended up with 17 grade one monocytes, and we (based on Dr.'s recommendations) chose to freeze them as one day old embryos. We exercised everyday. I didn't allow myself or Quinten to drink a diet coke for a whole month prior. I got plenty of rest and took lots of deep breaths everyday to reduce stress levels. And then we took another break! We made it through the holidays and started over this Jan 2008. After a whole month of shots and trips to Vegas, the day before our embryo transfer I got a call from the doctor and he had some really bad news. The lab had forgot to thaw my new embryos. My uterus was ready to accept 5 day old embryos and my new batch were only a day old. He was extremely appolgetic, but we realized that we still had 2 frozen 5 day old embryos left from the last batch...hey, why not? We headed to Vegas and 10 days later...another negative pregnancy test. We jumped right into the next cycle. They generally have specific days they schedule embryo transfers and this time they did it based on my schedule! On March 14th we were scheduled for our next transfer. Of the 17 embryos that we had frozen only 2 had made it to blastocyst stage. I was devistated! This was our only shot. We transferred them, but I had it in my head that it would not result in pregnancy and it was time to fill out those applications for adoption. We were scheduled for our pregnancy test on March 24th. Of course, I can't wait that long and I didn't feel pregnant (I thought) at all, so I needed to prepare myself for the worst. I took a test on March 21st. Immediately there were 2 pink lines!! I couldn't believe it! This came with even more fears...pray it's not another miscarriage. Please don't let the HCG drop! I knew the levels had to be at least 25 to show up on a pregnancy test as positive. The doctor told me that he likes to see them above 50 on the day of the pregnancy test. Would it at least be at 50? I had to wait 3 VERY long days to find out. (with our miscarriages the highest level we reached was 76 before they began to fall). March 24th was a Monday. I woke up early, went to the shop to have my mom help me draw blood, packaged it and shipped it to Vegas. The doctor would call around 2p.m., so that only gave me 5 hours to see all my patients and get home to receive the phone call. He called and told me, "Congratulations, Elisa. You're pregnant! We will monitor your HCG levels every other day for the next week. Continue taking your medicaitons and we will see you for your first pregnancy ultrasound next week." I was shocked! I couldn't believe it! I asked him what my levels were at that day and he replied, "280! That's really high". We had never in all my pregnancies had such a level. Now I really didn't know how to feel! Couldn't be excited about it for fear that something was going to happen, but elated that we might make it to a pregnancy ultrasound and see our little one on the screen! I drew blood on Wednesday and Friday again. Those were horrible long days! What would they be? Well, Wednesday they were 642 (more than doubled in 48 hours) and then 1038 (more than doubling again). This really couldn't be happening! They scheduled our first ultrasound on April 1st. I was 5 weeks and 3 days pregnant. When they flipped the screen around so I could see it there were two (yes TWO) tiny little sacs! TWINS! It has been an amazing journey!
I have felt emotions and heartache that I never want anyone to experience. It's hard to explain, and this you know all too well, but I would never do it differently. In Vitro was the path that Quinten and I chose. It was what we felt we needed to do at the time. I always had a tremendous amount of support from my mom, dad, in-laws, siblings (I probably stayed at Jeff and Tanna's 100 times in 2 1/2 years), and Aunt Wendy. We chose in vitro only because there was nothing wrong with my uterus...it was flawless. I knew that even if we had to adopt embryos, I was capible of carrying a child. I feel like we have been extremely blessed! I may never get pregnant on my own, and we probably will never do in vitro again, but we feel so blessed to have a little boy and girl on the way. I honestly would never change anything! Our struggle with infertility put a lot of pressure on our marriage and was the ultimate test for us. It brought us closer together and allowed us to deal with those struggles and trials as a couple. We invested twice as much as we would have adopting 2 children, but that is what Quinten and I felt like we needed to do.
I have always wanted to sit down and talk to you about this, but it's hard when we have a chance to get together we are usually around all our other family. I was quiet for a long time and very private about what we had to go through. In some ways I still am...I'm trying to repress those memories (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). However you and Chris get your babies they will be yours and everyone will love them so much. Do all that you can, as much as you can, and enjoy each other everyday! P.S. I was frustrated with the foster care system, but am so grateful for the opportunity we had to have little Anthony in our lives. He brought us so much joy and taught us that we weren't perfect parents! I would recommend trying foster care to anyone. If you are a licensed foster couple you can also adopt through the adoption exchange or the Heart Gallery (you can find them online) and I have seen little ones in the ID adoption exchange.
I love ya, Steph. I miss not seeing you around! I think about you all the time, and hope to come visit sometime! You can call or email me anytime you need to talk! Sure looks like you have fun on the farm all the time and it makes me envious of your summer weather! Good Luck Stephie!
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