Campaign Story

I am 29 year old women with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and PCOS. I live in NYC with my my husband and we have been married for 7 years and are the only one from both sides of our family that hasn’t had children yet. Despite having an autoimmune disease that literally eats away at my joints, I’ve never stopped working and gotten my masters degree and kept pushing myself to work for my future. My husband and I have been trying to have children throughout our whole marriage, but after many failures, we finally took further steps to see a fertility specialist. We felt so hopeful and they started ovulation induction and I was responding well. Despite me responding well, we did three IUI procedures consecutively, all without any success. Turns out we have male factor infertility as well! After many monitoring visits, with bloodwork and ultrasound scans, we weee told that IVF is the only option. Our insurance covers a portion or the procedure, but yet we being billed 1000’s of dollars every month. This is the first time in my life that I have felt a struggle to afford something, and it is a costly and heart wrenching procedure: To see people having children by accident, and to be the ones paying over $18,000 for just a chance to be parents with no guarantee is painful, and emotionally draining. We are near our first egg retrieval and I remain hopeful that one day we will have a little one of our own.