Finding hope after loss – Chris & Tara’s effortless IVF ™ journey

Chris and Tara focused on pursuing their education for the first part of their marriage – but when they decided they were ready for a baby, things didn’t quite go as planned. Instead, in the span of three years, Chris and Tara faced multiple miscarriages and six failed rounds of IUI.

Tara shares how she and her husband overcame the odds to build their family with effortless IVF ™:

The first few years of our marriage, one or both of us was almost always in school working on a degree. Finally, in 2013, we were both done with school. We decided to stop trying to prevent pregnancy, and were fine with whatever was brought our way… until a certain point. Nothing was happening!

Finally, after years of trying, I found out I was pregnant in August of 2017. But at six weeks, I miscarried. Then, four months later, I found out I was pregnant again. And four and a half short weeks later, I miscarried again.

We spent the next year navigating our losses and trying to conceive again, with no luck. In January of 2019, my OB/GYN referred us to another fertility doctor in town to try IUI. 

After four rounds of IUI proved unsuccessful, the doctor suggested a laparoscopy – and that’s when we discovered I had endometriosis. 

He removed what he could and I was put on medication for several months to help make sure it didn’t return. During the months that I was on medication, we were unable to try to conceive. We waited for the day we would finally be able to try again on our own. And when we could, still nothing happened. 

After talking with our doctor, we decided to try two more IUIs, and if that didn’t work, we would try IVF.

By this point, I’d heard about effortless IVF ™ from a friend, who heard about it from someone else. We did some research, and it was the reduced cost compared to traditional IVF that interested us most. 

So in August of 2020, we started our effortless IVF ™  journey with our first telehealth consultation.

The clinic is a six-hour drive one way for us, so it’s nice that we didn’t have to drive anywhere to meet our new fertility doctor and decide if this was the right option for us. And Dr. Kevin Doody was able to determine from our medical histories that we would be ideal candidates for effortless IVF ™.

So on Wednesday, November 4, my husband and I drove the six hours to my egg retrieval procedure. Nine eggs were retrieved. The following Monday, we were excited to find out that we had four viable embryos! We had the highest quality one transferred and froze the other three. 

Then, on November 18, we found out our cycle was successful! Cameron John Fraser was born on July 21, 2021!

Even though the clinic was a bit of a drive for us, it was absolutely worth it! Fortunately, effortless IVF ™ requires fewer appointments than traditional IVF, so the distance was less of an issue than it would have been otherwise. And Dr. Kevin Doody and the rest of the staff are fantastic! I’m so glad we found out about effortless IVF ™.

Going into it, though, I had several worries. While effortless IVF ™  is a more affordable option than traditional IVF, it’s still a lot of money, especially given everything we’d already tried. Not only were we worried about IVF being unsuccessful, we worried that even if it was successful, the pregnancy could still end in miscarriage. 

It was probably natural for us to worry, given all the infertility and loss we endured over the last three years. 

I am so thankful for all the support we received from family and friends throughout our journey. 

There were so many people who reached out to see how things were going and were there to talk when I needed them.

I am also thankful for the local infertility support group that I’m part of, as well as support groups on Facebook. It is so nice to be around people (or even just talk to people online) who understand.

Infertility has definitely changed us. While our journey has been a challenging one, in many ways, I think it made our marriage stronger, especially after our miscarriages. Chris was my rock.

If I could go back in time and change anything about our infertility journey, I’d have looked into fertility treatment options sooner. 

While we’re not old – I’m 34 years old, and Chris is 35 – we’re not exactly young in the infertility world, either. However, being a Christian, I truly believe that Cameron came at the exact time God intended.

My advice for couples struggling with infertility is to trust God. I believe that He is in control no matter what. 

Towards the end of our fertility journey, our elderly next-door neighbor, who we had become close to, passed away. She knew about our struggles and shared them with her family because she had a family member struggling with infertility. When her kids were going through her house after she passed away, her daughter brought over a wall hanging that she said she thought her mom would like us to have. It said, “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still. Exodus 14:14”. The Lord did, indeed, fight for us.