Let me first introduce myself. I will be 48 when my first biological child is born later this year and my wife will be 43. We will have been married for just over two years at that point. My wife has a daughter from a previous marriage and I love her as if she was my own biological child. For the longest time, I focused on my career but have always longed to have children of my own.
When I initially thought of documenting this journey and sharing the lessons that this new dad, old dad learns along the way, we were nearly through the first trimester. I wish I had started documenting this when we first decided to try and have a child as I know there are things that I have forgotten about.
Our journey to having a child started with numerous IUI’s in an attempt to get pregnant. Due to our ages, we thought this was the most likely way that we would be able to get pregnant. We suspect that one of the IUI’s led to a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage a year ago. After this, we began to work with a fertility clinic to begin the IVF process.
We had our initial meeting with the fertility doctor and a plan was developed that we would follow. As part of this phase of the journey, we decided to get genetic testing done to help us to know if we would have any potential genetic issues that prevented us from conceiving. We were fortunate to find out we had no genetic conditions that would pose problems for us. A word of warning with the genetic testing. If you are using insurance for the fertility treatments, the genetic testing requires pre-authorization and will most likely be denied. In our case, our clinic had an agreed upon price with the genetic testing company but for several months before we got a bill for the testing, the only thing we had seen was what was submitted to insurance. The explanation of benefits showed the genetic testing company submitted bills to insurance for nearly $14,000 for each of us. Needless to say, when we saw that, we freaked out as we had not budgeted more than what we saw from our clinic and didn’t get billed for 6-7 months after the testing was done. When we got the bills, the amount was for what was stated by our clinic but it was very stressful when facing that kind of bill. Granted, IVF is an expensive process but when you are not expecting to see bills for what was submitted to insurance, it adds to the stress that you experience and is not helpful to the process.
So, back to the plan that we set out upon with the fertility clinic…. We decided to follow a duo-stim process which just means they do two rounds of egg retrieval which reduced the amount of fertility meds that were needed for this part of the process. If you have never gone through the IVF process or looked into it, there is an incredible amount of medication required to stimulate the female body to get to the point of being able to retrieve the eggs. I consider my wife a saint for what she put her body through to give us this opportunity. In a nutshell, there were multiple injections of fertility drugs every day for several weeks. The injections left numerous bruises on my wife’s stomach from all of the needles being inserted through her skin. I know I don’t give this part of the journey the full extent of what was required but that goes back to not starting this from the very beginning. If you are going through this part of the IVF process, make sure you tell your wife/partner how much you appreciate her! I’m sure that is something I could’ve been better at as well. I can’t stress enough how much she had to go through just to get to this point and how stressful it is on her body and mind.
For now, I am going to stop the story here and will continue in the next post. I hope you find what I share here helpful in your own journey.