Suzanne's Infertility Journey

This is the story of one of the amazing women of the Resolve boards. Her story is about a couple facing both male and female factor infertility.

I guess in the back of my mind, as soon as my husband and I decided to start trying to have kids, I always I had a feeling that it was not going to be easy. I don't know why, but I just had this feeling- like, how could something so wonderful be so easy for us? Well, it turns out, I was right.

We had been married for 4 years when we decided to start trying to conceive. I had stopped birth control pills a long time before that and we were being "careful" up until that point. After the first few months of no success, I started trying different things. Relaxing more, timing ovulation, etc. On a routine visit to my GYN I mentioned that we had been trying for 6 months. She was not overly concerned, but decided to do a pelvic ultrasound just to make sure. Everything checked out, but my husband and I decided that it was time for him also to have a sperm count done, just to make sure that everything was ok with both of us.

I remember so vividly sitting in the urologists office, and having the doctor come in and drop a bombshell on us. Turns out, the analysis yielded a count of zero sperm. Yes, zero. I had prepared myself that SOMETHING could be wrong, but not for THIS.. We had repeat analysis and got the same results. So, the next step was to have a biopsy to see if he was making sperm or not. The results were good- he was making sperm but the doctor could not tell why it was not coming out in his semen.
So off to a specialist in NYC. We really had no choice who to see, because NOBODY at that level of specialty took insurance except Dr. Paduch. And you know what- if I had to do this again and even if they all took insurance, I would never go to anyone else. He is such an awesome doctor. He recommended microsurgery on my husband to try to fix his reproductive tract.

The day of the surgery, we had been prepared that it would take 1-2 hours. 7 hours later, Dr. Paduch came into the waiting room to tell me that he had never seen anything like that before in his career. But he was optimistic that he had fixed it. So after much pain (I mean this IS the male reproductive tract we are talking about) he healed, we tried a few more months to conceive, and still nothing. Turns out the surgery had worked, but as he healed scar tissue formed and created a blockage.

We had no other choice but to try IVF. Dr. Paduch had cryopreserved some of the tissue from the surgery that contained sperm to use with IVF. We saw one reproductive endocrinologist (RE) who basically told us that she did not think IVF would work for us using a sample that had been frozen and that we should just go with donor sperm. That was devastating to me- I remember going out to lunch with my husband after that appointment and sitting at the table crying uncontrollably because I thought we were never going to have a biological child together.

On the recommendation of a good friend, and Dr. Paduch, we decided to get a second opinion. And thank God we did. Because the second RE, not only gave us hope that my husbands sperm would work, but he found that my ovaries were acting like they were 10 years older than the rest of my body- ovarian dysfunction. So now we had combined male and female infertility- just great. But at least they found it and were able to adjust the medication for the IVF so that I would get the right dosage.
On March 15th, 2008 - two years after we started trying to conceive, I had my first IVF. And on November, 19th 2008 my sweet daughter Abigail Cecelia was born. In May 2010 we decided to go back to the RE to see what it would take to have another baby. We had one embryo frozen from the 1st IVF. In August 2010, we did IVF with the frozen embryo it worked! Charlotte Grace was born April 27th, 2011.

So here I am 5 years after this journey began, and I feel complete. The pain of infertility is one that will never, ever go away. You feel so robbed because your body cant do the one simple thing it was meant to do- create a child. But, I found a wonderful group of women who helped me through this, through RESOLVE. I thank God for them every day because they saw me through some of my worst days, and have been there with me to celebrate the good days too. Now, I am at the point that I believe I was meant to go through the years of infertility because I was meant to have these two beautiful girls. But, my heart also breaks for those who go through the journey of infertility and never get their dream fulfilled.