Our daughter, Ava, was born on February 11, 2015. We were standing in the hospital room and watched as another woman gave birth to her. Ava was placed immediately into our arms and we started our skin to skin contact.
After almost a year of peeing on ovulation sticks, perfectly timed sex in those optimal baby making positions, we were not pregnant. It felt like all of our friends just smiled at their husbands and got pregnant. So, why couldn’t we? Were we just destined to not have a child? We literally contemplated this each month… for three years.
The journey was a long difficult one. I had hundreds of vials of blood drawn and vaginal ultrasounds, was put under general anesthesia several times, had biopsies, clomid attempts, IUIs, IVF cycles, failed IVF cycles, egg retrievals, embryo transfers, a hsg procedure, a colposcopy and a hysteroscopy, three times weekly doctor appointments, and had more hormone injections, suppositories, pills and vitamins than I could even count.
My husband, Gregg, was my nurse and gave me two-four shots per night. He hated how much my body had to endure. It was so hard for him to watch me physically and emotionally struggle month after month after month with no positive results. He wanted to fix it all. He wanted to take away my sadness and hopelessness, but truthfully I know he was also feeling these things.
We found ourselves running out of options. Our insurance covered nothing. We were burning through our savings. We kept thinking IVF had to work. This is what people do who can’t get pregnant. We had no idea that IVF doesn’t always work and that our infertility journey would lead us to surrogacy. We worked with an agency and found the most incredible woman who was willing to carry our baby for us.
February 10, 2015 was the 10 year anniversary of my dad’s death. Ava was born at 12:28am on the 11th – 28 minutes later.
After three years of trying to have a baby this is when our daughter was born. She is named Ava in memory of her grandpa.
Our surrogacy journey went amazingly well. It was very different than what I had experienced. Watching Ava being born was the most surreal moment of my life. I was in shock. I could not believe she was ours and that I was finally a mom and that my husband was finally a dad.
Our surrogate, Melissa, her husband and her two kids have become family to us. We love them. I have lots of pictures of them in my daughter’s room. I want Ava to know her birth story and to be able to be close to all of them. We are thankful every single day for the amazing gift she has given to us!
Gregg and I felt a strong calling to give back and started Field Fertility. Gregg is the third party reproductive attorney and I am the business and client manager. We are so excited to be able to lend our professional and personal backgrounds to help couples create and grow their families.
