Our Story

Our New Year Resolution for the millennium was to start a family. I decided to go off the pill and we began our journey to becoming parents, little did we know that the journey ahead would be so long and difficult.

After several months of trying to conceive we were becoming a bit concerned. I had read a few books about how to become pregnant and after following body temp charts, eliminating all caffeine and alcohol from my diet and eating well, I still was not pregnant. I decided to visit my gynecologist and get a pre-pregnancy consultation. My Doctor spoke with me about starting a family and ran a few blood tests. The results from my blood test showed that I had a very low progesterone level, so low in fact that I was not ovulating and therefore not getting pregnant. My Dr. gave me some natural progesterone pills to take to see if they would work in increasing my levels. I continued to take them for several months and finally after our 8th month of trying to conceive the pregnancy test came up positive! We were so excited and immediately told friends and family. I went to the Dr. to confirm that I was indeed pregnant.

The first 2 months I was walking in the clouds and dreaming of all the joys that come with raising a child. The holidays were among us. Then, four days after New Years all my dreams came crashing down around me. I was three months and one week into my pregnancy and I had a miscarriage. I was devastated. I couldn't believe after all our efforts it was over.

I became very depressed as we tried once again to conceive. I had blood work done again and once again my progesterone level was low. My Dr. suggested that I try Clomid a common fertility pill that may help me conceive. I decided to give it a shot, but the drug had many negative side effects, such as dryness and mood swings and it still did not fix my progesterone level.

After five months of taking Clomid I decided I did not want to take it anymore. I had had enough. It was making me feel terrible and I read in several books that it should not be taken for more than three consecutive months. I told my Dr. this and she said, "I better have another plan, because I was not getting any younger". Her comment angered and stressed me out. I was only 31 at the time. I decided to get a second opinion. That is when I was referred to Dr. Zouves at Zouves Fertility Center. I first checked out their web site at www.goivf.com. The office offered a free consult with the Dr. I was very excited about this new avenue and felt hopeful again. I called the clinic and they sent me a packet with a very long health history portion to fill out and return to them. They also sent me a long list of blood test that I needed to get done prior to my phone consultation with Dr. Zouves. Finally after the first step was completed I was able to talk with the Dr. Zouves. Immediately I could tell that he was a very knowledgeable and wise man. He went over my tests results with me and told me that I had PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), a commonly misdiagnosed syndrome. He also told me that I would be an excellent candidate for IVF, since PCOS is very easy to work with and that I was still very young. Also, the fact that I had been pregnant before was helpful. I was so happy to hear that my chances of having a child were very high. The only down fall was that the IVF procedure was costly. My husband and I talk about this possibility and agreed that we would do whatever we could to have a baby. We applied for a Home Equity Line of credit with our bank, which we later called the Baby Line of Credit and started our long IVF process.

The first step in the process was to start my body from ground zero, by taking birth control pills. I thought it seemed weird to take birth control when I wanted to be pregnant. By doing this, however, makes the fertility cycle predictable and controllable. After two weeks of the pill I stopped and started the fertility drug injections. For approximately two weeks we mixed and injected several shots a day into my stomach and arm. At times it was painful, but thinking about what was going to come out of this process made the pain disappear.