Russ and Alycia

Russ and I met through mutual friends in October of 2008. In June 2010 we were engaged and then married in September 2011.

We started trying for a baby the month we got married. Our journey to parenthood started what seems like forever ago. Looking back to September 2011, we were so excited to start this new chapter in our lives. I remember not having any worries that it wouldn’t happen naturally. That thought never crossed my mind. I remember feeling sad and disappointed when it didn’t happen, but there was always next month. Those months turned into a year. Infertility never crossed my mind. I was so naive to think we wouldn’t have a problem. We found out that my husband has low sperm count and we were told that we were unlikely to fall pregnant naturally.

After months and months of waiting for testing and then waiting for results, we were referred to a fertility clinic, which also took months of waiting to get in to. We finally had our first appointment in September 2014 where we found out about IVF/ICSI and the cost. While trying to save up for the hefty price of treatments, we applied for the government funding that was coming.

The following years looked like this:

2015

• They found a polyp in my uterus that needed to be removed before we could go ahead with IVF

2016

• In February I had surgery to have the polyp removed.
• In July, we started IVF and injections but my body didn’t respond to the injections as they had hoped so our cycle was cancelled.
• In October we started again with a higher dose of injections. We ended up with 10 fertilized eggs, 3 made it to blastocyst
• We transferred one of our embryos, pregnancy test came back negative

2017

• In March we did a frozen embryo transfer, pregnancy test came back positive! I was finally pregnant
• When I was 6 weeks we went for our first ultrasound and saw baby’s heartbeat flickering away.
• When I was 8 weeks pregnant, we went for our second ultrasound. There was no heartbeat. Our baby’s heart stopped beating at 7 weeks. We found out I had a missed miscarriage a week before my 30th birthday.
• In August we transferred our last remaining embryo, pregnancy test came back negative.

2018

• The beginning of April, we started another round of IVF and injections, and didn’t respond again, so cycle was cancelled.
• At the end of April, we were going to start again, but couldn’t because I had cysts on my ovaries
• In May we started injections again, and ended up with two embryos. We decided to freeze them both.
• In September, 4 days after our 7th anniversary, we transferred one of our embryos. The pregnancy test came back positive!

On Father’s day in 2019, our beautiful baby girl was born. She is the light of our lives, and truly a miracle. She will always know how much she longed for, long before she was even conceived.