Rebecca & Ryan

When my husband and I married and talked about starting a family, we knew we would need assistance and genetic screening due to my husband having cystic fibrosis. We certainly weren’t prepared for the road ahead of us.

We completed research on fertility clinics in the Northern Virginia area and had heard commercials for a few different clinics on the radio. After discussing our options, we felt that Shady Grove Fertility was the best option since they accept some insurances and have such high success rates. Our consultation with Dr. Levens was overwhelming at first but he and his team guided us through the process and supported us every step of the way.

Beginning IVF treatment

IVF was really the only treatment for us. Men with cystic fibrosis will always need assistance and sometimes don’t even have the ability to have children of their own. So, we began our IVF journey with the injections, which weren’t too bad. I was grateful that my husband could give them to me since I was too chicken! Our retrieval was a rollercoaster of emotions, watching to see how many embryos would grow into blastocysts.

Fortunately, from our first cycle, we had three embryos. We did not do preimplantation genetic testing since I was not a high-risk carrier and we did not want to know the gender of the babies. So we transferred one embryo and then waited the longest 2 weeks EVER to receive the news that we were pregnant!

The excitement of the news ended 8 weeks later. We received a call where we were told that my numbers were not rising appropriately. We went in for an ultrasound and they could not find where it had implanted. The team ruled it to be a possible ectopic pregnancy and we had to terminate it for my safety. This was one of the most difficult situations we have ever been through.

Starting again

We took a bit of time off from the process as we lost my father 4 weeks after the ectopic pregnancy. When we were ready, the team at SGF was positive and encouraging and supported us, so we decided to use the remaining embryos and do a frozen embryo transfer. This time, we transferred two embryos (we were hoping for twins)!

When I got the call telling us that we were pregnant again, we were of course excited but also cautious after having been through a loss before. Things moved along and one night, I woke up with bleeding. Sitting in the bathroom sobbing, we phoned the after-hours number and made an appointment to come in first thing in the morning. Bracing ourselves for the worst, we went to our appointment and they saw our baby immediately and verified that everything was ok. It appeared I just had a small blood clot pass. Talk about PANIC! My pregnancy was wonderful and thankfully uneventful and we now have a beautiful and healthy baby boy.

Thinking about baby #2

We are gearing up to start another round of IVF for baby number two and wouldn’t think of going anywhere else but right back to Dr. Levens and the Annandale team. It can be a long, tough road and there can be bumps along the way. We would encourage couples to keep love in their hearts, support each other, and don’t give up on your dreams of starting a family.