My Infertility Journey

It's weird to me how sometimes your body just knows when there are going to be complications. From my teenage years, I was afraid that I would struggle with infertility. At the age of 20, I began fertility testing as I had already been unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant for over a year. Sadly, an unfortunate event when I was seventeen landed me with an STI that when untreated can cause damage to reproductive organs. I am unaware how long I had the STI, but immediately got treatment for it. The first treatment, however, was unsuccessful and I had to go through it again to fully get rid of it. The STI was asymptomatic with me, so if I didn't start fertility testing I may have never known.

After successfully treating the STI, I went through further fertility testing to see if there was anything that could be causing infertility. I had blood draws, an ultrasound, and even an ink test all to see what could be happening. The only notable results were a cyst on my left fallopian tube and a tilted uterus. The cyst was said to be simple and should resolve on it's own, only concerning if it causes pain later. I have not experienced any pain with this since, so I have not had another ultrasound done to see if the cyst is still there. However, the cyst was not in the way during the ink test, which was performed to test the flow through my uterus and fallopian tubes. As far as I am aware, I release eggs when I am supposed to and doctors couldn't find any reason why I was unable to get pregnant. About a year later, my husband went to do a semen analysis to see if he could be ther problem. Results came back with low sperm count, but he was not considered sterile or infertile.

After our move into the new house, I started working with a fertility doctor to begin attempting IUI. This doctor put me on fertility medication and we constantly monitor my progesterone levels. Before medication, those levels were fairly low. They are now towards the high range when we test it. In theory, the progesterone levels can indicate whether I released an egg or not. We have now made three attempts at IUI with no success and plan to try one more time this month. At the last procedure, it was noted that the motility, viability rate of the sperm sample was over fifty percent, where normal is forty percent or higher, and low being anywhere below forty percent. This number is the percentage of sperm cells in a sample that are capable of reaching the egg in the right circumstances. We were told that even with the low count, we had a high chance of success with the first round. As noted previously, we're about to do round four, so we obviously did not succeed on the first try.

After discussing options with my husband, he decided he will do another semen analysis to see if his count worsened, got better, or stayed the same to see if that could be a potential issue, and I have another appointment with the fertility doctor I've been seeing to discuss what has been done so far and what can be done moving forward. If round four is unsuccessful, our next step would be to plan for IVF. This is not ideal mainly due to the cost of the procedure. IUI only cost us about two-hundred forty dollars per round, but IVF would cost us close to twenty-five thousand. We are aware of how expensive children can be, even when conceived naturally, and we are financially stable to support a child on our own. However, this does not mean that we can afford to throw twenty-five thousand dollars at a procedure at this very moment. We decided that we would wait to do IVF until we were able to pay this amount, but I expressed my fear that I may never be able to conceive a child if we wait to be able to fully pay for the procedure up front. But our only other option would be to see if my brother-in-law is still willing to be a donor for us, keeping the father's genes as close to my husband's as possible and we would prefer to have the child be one hundred percent ours. I also fear that if there is an issue on my side as well, that sample may still not work and would be a waste of even more money. We have already spent over a thousand dollars on this journey for nothing to happen.

These fails have been extremely discouraging, but I refuse to believe that I will never be able to carry my own child. I want to do whatever it takes for one of these procedures to finally succeed. I even plan to set up a donation page and maybe even a donation site at my work to help me and my husband to raise the money necessary to complete IVF. Luckily, we already have pretty much anything a baby could need in the first year of life and most of it was completely free to us. This takes a large financial burden off of us, but does not quite give us the money needed. I plan to continue my journey and I guess we'll have to see what life has in store for me from here on out.