Courtney Peveril Photography Captured the Luminance and Sentiment of our Fertility Journey

Having conceived our babies through Assisted Reproductive Technologies – IVF, our parenthood journey didn’t come easily or happen overnight. At times we felt alone and disheartened, but our journey also brought strength, resiliency, and connection. While growing our family over the last 4 years, we experienced both challenges and rewards, but the journey has always been our own and we can’t (and wouldn’t) change anything because we were meant to have these exact little boys grace and brighten our world.

Our fertility journey was no walk in the park, but now that we are on the other side of it we look back and say it was all worth the chance of having a family. Although financially, physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually difficult, we waded on. With consultation, we did everything we could to create a positive environment for the best chances of conception, but also knew the outcome was out of our control. Regardless of the outcome, we went into IVF knowing that it’s science, there are no guarantees, and that we would try one round.

Our one round of IVF in 2019 resulted in two embryos. After 16 eggs were retrieved, 9 of the eggs were mature and inseminated through ICSI, four of which fertilized, and two made it to the 5-day blastocyst. We were left with two embabies. TWO. Regardless if the transfers of our embabies resulted in a positive pregnancy or not, our IVF journey allowed my husband and I to create life and be parents to our 5-day old embabies.

We transferred one of the embryos fresh following retrieval, which resulted in a positive beta and the birth of our first son in 2019. The second embryo was frozen and later transferred, which resulted in our second pregnancy. We were shocked and blessed to find out that both of our embryos implanted and resulted in positive pregnancies knowing that our odds were 50/50.

In saying all this, I’m emotional knowing that this will likely be my last pregnancy.  Our Assisted Reproductive Technologies journey is over. We are beyond happy with the outcome of our IVF journey and also wonder how we got so lucky. Our journey will forever be a part of us and will shape us into the parents we are for our two boys. Infertility doesn’t just go away overnight at the birth of a child. The memories of what we went through and the scars we received will always live with us. Our journey made us who are today. We are womb warriors. We are 1 in 6.