TW - Live birth, miscarriage
We are the lucky ones. Not everyone’s story ends like ours did. IVF isn’t a golden ticket to parenthood. It’s not a guarantee of a child. It’s a chance. It’s putting $20,000 on BABY and hoping the roulette wheel comes up in your favour.
We started with the fertility clinic and IVF in 2016 after unsuccessfully trying to conceive on our own. We weren’t candidates for IUI. Over 5 years, we spent over $70,000 trying to start and then complete our family. This included uncountable procedures and injections, 4 retrievals, 7 embryo transfers, 2 miscarriages, several failed cycles, and a couple surgeries for each of us. We now have 2 children from IVF.
I don’t talk about our experience with infertility very often anymore. Now that we are on the other side of treatment, it feels wrong to talk about the pain we endured. Not because it didn’t happen, but because there are others who are living that hell now. After all, we got exactly what we wanted from IVF. But even though I don’t talk about it, the emotional trauma remains. I often wonder how long I’ll carry the pain.
We are on the other side now, and I’m thankful every day for how our story ended.
Amanda