Campaign Story

My name is Sharene. My husband and I are both carriers of the beta-thalassemia trait. We have a 1 in 4 chance of having a child with beta-thalassemia major, which is a pretty tough condition to live with. 4 years ago, we had a daughter. We didn’t know of our conditions before the pregnancy, but found out as a result of our genetic testing that we did during the pregnancy. My daughter, Bana, was lucky enough to just be a carrier of the trait. I have always wanted a sibling for Bana, but we knew we didn’t want to do that the natural way, because of the risk of a baby having the misfortune of being born with beta-thalassemia major. We finally found ourselves in a position to try to do an IVF cycle along with the genetic testing of the embryos, and so that’s what we did. We financed the IVF package that we neesed. We will be paying off the loan for the next 5 years. I found out today that my cycle was unsuccessful, and none of my eggs were successful fertilized. We are heartbroken, to say the least. We are still wanting to try again, but we have decided to look into adoption too – which we found can be very expensive too. We have a happy home and a sweet daughter that would make a great sister to another child.