Amanda & Sean

In 2019, Shady Grove Fertility proudly celebrated 85,000 babies born. That’s 85,000 stories that were finally told. One story we are especially excited to share is Amanda and Sean’s story because their baby boy was the first Fredericksburg baby born. Our Fredericksburg, VA office opened in the summer of 2018 to offer expanded fertility care to Virginia. We’re now celebrating one year and our first baby born! A huge congratulations to Amanda and Sean is in order, and a big thank you for sharing their story with our community.

My husband, Sean, survived bi-lateral testicular cancer before we got married. Luckily his oncologist had him freeze three sperm samples before his treatment. Those samples remained frozen for 10 years before creating our little miracle. It really is amazing how far science has come.

Because of Sean’s cancer, we always knew we’d need IVF treatment to complete our family. My sister works in the medical field and she heard that Shady Grove Fertility was opening an office in Fredericksburg, so we booked our consultation with Dr. Eric Levens.

I wasn’t nervous for our first appointment because I’d done my research and knew what to expect. I honestly felt more excited to get the process started. What I was nervous about was all the needles! I am terrified of needles so my husband did all my shots for me. Sean was the BEST and all the shots of IVF ended up not being too bad. If you’re afraid of needles, I’d recommend not looking. Not ever looking at the needles really helped me!

After our egg retrieval, we ended up with three good embryos. We did a fresh transfer of one and unfortunately, that didn’t work. I was disappointed that our first cycle failed but happy we still had two embryos left. Dr. Levens allowed us to transfer our remaining two embryos and it worked. We were pregnant. We also have an 11-year-old son and it was so amazing to tell him he was finally going to be a big brother! We were so blessed and excited to welcome our beautiful baby boy in July.

Shady Grove Fertility was so good to us. All the staff at the Fredericksburg office are the sweetest. Thank you to Dr. Levens, Dr. Nancy Durso, and everyone at SGF for just being so nice.

If you’re going through the IVF process, my advice would be to just take it one day at a time. Try not to think too far down the road. Treatment can feel overwhelming so focus on today. You can do this!