Waiting on Baby Willey

Story

First, thank you for reading our story. For those that don’t know, we are heartbroken to share that we are struggling to grow our family. Soon after becoming Husband and Wife in 2018, we started planning our journey to becoming parents. Unfortunately, our journey to becoming parents has been filled with many lows and obstacles to overcome.

When 2021 came, we started testing to see what was holding us from our dream of being parents. Shortly after testing, we were told we are part of the 1 in 8 couples that would struggle with fertility. How lucky are we? Even unluckier, insurance companies still view fertility treatments as an elective procedure. This is unfair, as it is not like this is the path we chose for ourselves. Their viewpoint on fertility treatment means that in order for us to have our dream of a family, we need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars trying to make it happen. Money that could have been used to stock up on diapers, build a nursery, pay for daycare, or even start a college fund.

After many consultations and tests, we started the next chapter in our journey and completed one round of IUI. This resulted in a pregnancy, which had us so thrilled. Finally, our dreams were coming true. Unfortunately, at our 7 week appointment, we were told that the baby hadn’t grown and we were in the beginning stages of a miscarriage. The devastation we both felt left us speechless. However, we were not ready to give up on our dreams or ourselves.

This Fall, we started the process into IVF. At this point, we had already exhausted our HSAs and had to build a new financial plan. We have chosen to work with a fertility center in Colorado, which saves us around $10,000. However, each round costs over $15,000 and that does not include transfer medication, monitoring, or travel expenses. Each stage of IVF consists of multiple monitoring appointments and endless medications, usually in the form of a shot, costing thousands of dollars. The first stage of round one of IVF, the stim/egg retrieval stage, ended up in us not having any eggs to retrieve. Instead of starting over, we decided to complete a duostim and try again in this cycle, which resulted in one egg that could be retrieved. We were able to go to Colorado over New Years to complete the retrieval and that egg made it to the embryo stage. We were so happy with the news and the potential of a baby. On our way back home, we got the call that the embryo did not survive. More devastation and more heartbreak.

So here we are, back at the bottom, more hurt and bruised up this time having to start over. We want nothing more than to share our love with a child of our own. This is where all of you come in. Our next step is another egg retrieval, on higher medication. Every dollar will help us in our steps to parenthood, and words can't describe how thankful we would be. If you want to follow along on our emotional roller coaster ride to parenthood, we have an Instagram account @waitingforbabywilley.