Infertility is not something that the average person contemplates while trying to start a family, because why would you? Talking about starting a family was one of the most exciting times in mine and Stephen’s marriage. We always knew we wanted to try to have a baby right away. We have been together since high school and have basically grown up together. We dated for 5 years before getting married so our thought process was “why wait when we’ve been together for so long”. So a month before we got married we decided that I would pull the plug on birth control so my body would be ready to start trying as soon as we got married. Our families had bets that we would most definitely have a “honeymoon baby”. Honestly we did too. I never tracked my period or paid a lot of attention to when I would be ovulating, we just decided that it would happen when it happened.
Fast forward to about 6-8 months after we got married. I had been talking to a girlfriend who had just had a baby about a year before and I told her I was getting worried because nothing had happened. Stephen worked offshore at the time and was gone about 75% of the time. She kept telling me over and over to stop worrying because he was gone and it hasn’t been that long in retrospect. When you tell people you are trying or that “it will happen when it happens” the questions NEVER end. Every time you see that person its always an “are you pregnant yet??”. Of course the answer was always no. And little did we know, the answer would be no for a very long time.
13 months to the day we got married I made an appointment at my Gynecologist to make sure everything was okay. I was extremely worried because we had been trying for 13 months and you always here that “if you’ve been trying for over a year and have not conceived, go see a doctor”. I told her what was going on and she did some tests and she told me that everything was fine and that I was perfectly able to have children. I was relieved but then I started questioning WHY we haven’t gotten pregnant yet. It was something that never left my mind. After lots of googling and searching I asked Stephen if he was up for going to get checked, just to make sure there wasn’t anything going on. He agreed and actually got an at home male fertility test at Walgreens. He took the test and when the results came back negative for sperm we knew the next step was to see a Urologist.
We really didn’t do any research on a particular Urologist it was kind of a quick decision to make sure the test wasn’t inaccurate. After further testing the doctor recommended a Duct Removal surgery. We decided to go forward and he told us that after this surgery we should try for another 6 months and if nothing happened to come back and we would revisit the issue. So we did just that. We went back 6 months later and he told us that we would never be able to conceive on our own and that we needed to see an IVF (in vitro fertilization) doctor and that they would work together on our case. Little did we know this was going to be a huge turning point in our journey and that research is always your best bet when it comes to IVF, Fertility, and especially male infertility.
Hearing the words “you will never conceive on your own” we’re some of the most gut wrenching words to ever hear. Immediately I thought Stephen is going to feel like this is all on him, and I never wanted that. It was a very touchy topic so we didn’t talk about it for a while because I knew how bad he was hurting from all of this. I didn’t want to pressure him into any decision or make him feel like this was an ultimatum. When we finally did talk about it I made it known that I married him for HIM, not to have his children. If this wasn’t in the cards for us then we would make the best of it. He wanted to explore the option of Fertility treatment and IVF so we went to see our first IVF doctor. We never got a diagnosis for Stephen it was like no one could give us any answers. We felt like we were in a huge bubble of medical terms and a lot of “we’re not sure if this will work”.
First, the doctor brought us in and explained the process of IVF, all the testing I would need done, and then sent us on our way to the financial department. That in itself was devastating. Here we are at 24 and 26 just bought our first house, and they hand us this paper with the explained costs of what all we had to pay for in full before we started, and needless to say we had sticker shock. I thought to myself ok so this is our ONLY option so this is what has to be done. I checked into Fertility assistance, but because this was male infertility we couldn’t get ANY assistance, that’s another topic I’ll touch on later. So we moved forward. The next 2 months would be some of the hardest months of our lives. When they tell you IVF is one of the hardest things your body could go through they aren’t lying.
In the next post I will take you through our egg retrieval, Stephen’s second surgery and our next steps we took to get us to where we are today!
Xoxo-
Macey
Macey Buquoi 