The Next Step For Our Family

It's been a while since I've put much in writing about life around here. Things are fine, we remain blessed and lots of wonderful things have happened. However, additional challenges take over my mind often and when it comes to documenting things - I tend to stay away from those areas.

That being said, I decided that it is best to "journal" this latest process that we are going through. This blog is not read by many people so I feel confident that this will remain a relatively private outlet that we can look back on over the years. In addition, I've never been a "closed book" on my private life - If I put it here, I'm clearly ok with people being aware of what is occurring. So, here goes...

We are infertile.

Having a child naturally previously would lead you to believe that we are actually fertile. The bottom line is that Andrew was a bit of a miracle child.

In the fertility world, there are 2 separate distinctions when it comes to having sex. The first is "not preventing pregnancy" and the second is actively trying.. Before we conceived Andrew, we spent 2.5 years either not preventing or actively trying to get pregnant. We knew then that there were issues but we were not prepared at that time to take drastic measures to get pregnant. Surgery for Jeff and a few"double checking" procedures for me were recommended. That was a hard pill to swallow and we decided to take a little break. Voila - we got pregnant 3 months later!

The thing is - once you can get pregnant on your own, it is very easy to fool yourself in to thinking that it is only a matter of time before you get pregnant again.

We have been "not preventing pregnancy" since Andrew was 3 months old and ACTIVELY trying to conceive for over a year. Andrew is now almost 3.5 years old. A month before Andrew turned 3, we decided the time had come to get the doctors involved again.

Our first step was to a male fertility doctor for an updated SA (Semen Analysis). The problems from before were still there. High count but a high morphology and low motility rate. We had what the RE (reproductive endocrinologists) Doctors label MF - Male Factor. Our options were:

1. ICSI IVF - 50%-60% success rate
2. Vericocele Repair Surgery - Possible 70% success rate to repair the vericocele (picture vericose veins causing problems). If the surgery was successful and the repair worked, we would be back in to the "normal" couples probability which is 85-90% chance of getting pregnant when not-preventing-pregnancy over a year's time. The catch though was this - 70% success rate was only if the Vericocele was not genetic. There was no way to know for sure if it was a genetic issue unless you did the surgery and it did not work.  The time for the improvements to be seen in the quality of sperm could be as much as a year. At that point - I'll be 37 or 38...or as the doctors say...your EGGS are 37 or 38. Every year that my eggs age makes it more challenging for us to conceive naturally.

We decided that ICSI IVF was the route that we were going to explore. ICSI IVF is when the sperm is put in to a syringe and put directly in to the center of the egg. It is the best option when you have Male Factor issues. IUI (the "Turkey Baster") would likely not be effective nor would the traditional IVF where the egg and sperms hang out together in a pitre dish and hope that one makes its way in.

We made the decision in October that IVF was our path, but had to wait until January for full insurance coverage. Jeff graduated from Nursing School and was offered a full time RN job with Baylor so we knew our insurance coverage was going to be top-notch and worth waiting the extra months for it to take affect.

In January, we took the steps necessary to get approved by our insurance company to seek reproductive assistance. We met with 2 top-notch doctors in the Dallas area.  They were both similar in their message and protocols. Our final decision came down to out-of-pocket expense due to differing coverages for each doctor. We picked the doctor who worked through Baylor (Jeff's employer) and that has been a great decision so far. We are so blessed to be in one of the handful of states that requires insurance to assist with reproductive problems. Without insurance, this would cost us approximately $15,000 - just for the first try.

And so, we began this process.