IVF Means…

I can think of no better way to describe IVF than as one of the greatest miracles of modern science. Growing up I always wanted children and assumed I would be able to have them. Getting married in 2009 in my 30s, my expectation for a possibly large family was cut down to the idea that I might only have one or two kids. Then Lisa and I began to go through the infertility ordeal. We met with Dr. Gelety, our reproductive endocrinologist, in early 2011, and he assured us that we would be pregnant by the end of the year. I was a bit of a skeptic up until that point, but when the promise was fulfilled, and Lisa got pregnant through IVF in November 2011, I started to become a believer.

Our struggles had not ended by that time, as that pregnancy ended in miscarriage. With so many obstacles to overcome, I remember one moment of sheer desperation in mid-2012 when I was virtually out of hope and believed I would die without posterity. But through faith, prayers, sacrifices and struggles, we became pregnant again in October 2012, and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in June 2013. This was followed by a frozen transfer that resulted in the birth of our twins, a boy and a girl, in April 2015, and because the pregnancies had kept Lisa’s endometriosis at bay, we became pregnant naturally and had our final child, a boy, in June 2017.

None of this would have happened without IVF. It is astonishing to me that the first IVF baby is the same age as my wife. That means if we’d been the age of our parents, we would not have had the opportunity of raising biological children in this life. Multiplied over tens of thousands of years of human history, it is staggering to think how lucky or blessed I am to be living when I am. I love my family and thank God for providing the science that enabled it to be what it is today.

– Brett