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Once they found each other, Rebekah and Rachel knew they were meant to be, and wasted no time beginning their new life together. But when they decided to start a family a few years into their marriage, the stars did not align quite so quickly. After 6 failed IUIs and a chemical pregnancy, the couple finally got the family they desired with IVF.
Here’s their story, in Rebekah’s words:
Rachel and I met in April of 2013. I had just gotten out of a bad relationship and decided to try out Match.com. Shortly after joining I came across Rachel’s profile. I sent what you called a wink, which basically tells the other person, “Hey, I’m interested.” I was living in Austin at the time. She lived in Fort Worth, and had on her profile that she was looking for someone within a 45 mile radius. I was obviously well outside of that, so I thought I would get no response. I was really shocked when she messaged me! From that first message, we talked for hours and hours every single day. We met after talking for only 2 weeks and that’s where our story begins.
After meeting in person, we both had that feeling of “this is it.”
I moved to Fort Worth after dating her for only 3 months. We were engaged after 7 months of dating and then married in October of 2014. We knew we both wanted a family, but wanted to enjoy some time with just ourselves for a bit.
In early 2017, we decided we were ready for that next chapter – to start growing our family.
We found a donor that we loved through Fairfax Cryobank. He had everything we were looking for as far as health and education background. But the icing on the cake was how much he and my wife favored each other. We knew it was meant to be. So we bought 6 vials up front to start our fertility journey.
We first started with another fertility clinic in the DFW area (we did not know about CARE Fertility at that time) and did 6 medicated IUIs over the span of almost 2 years. Unfortunately none of them were successful. We did get pregnant once, but it ended with a chemical pregnancy.
It was HARD. We had other family members getting pregnant, my best friend got pregnant (we both did IUI on the same day, her 1st cycle and my 4th cycle), and multiple other friends getting pregnant. And even though we were so excited for them, we were hurting on the inside, yearning for our own child to celebrate.
What got us through this difficult time was definitely the love and support from our family and friends. I created an IVF instagram page to document our journey, it was very therapeutic for me. And of course, it helped just talking to other women and families going through the same thing, because we could relate to one another.
After our 6th failed IUI, we decided to look for a new fertility clinic and that’s when we found CARE Fertility.
I am so happy we switched clinics. I had a consultation with Dr. Kathy Doody and she suggested we skip IUI and go straight into IVF since I had so many failed cycles already. So at the start of 2019, we jumped right into that process, with my egg retrieval and first embryo transfer in early February.
For the week and a half that followed, we prayed hoping that the transfer would be successful. Then, on my wife's birthday, we got the best call of our lives. Our transfer was successful and we had a great beta number of 133. We were beyond excited, but naturally nervous as well.
In September of 2019, we welcomed our beautiful baby boy 6 weeks early.
Griffin came into this world weighing 4 lbs 1 oz. He was the greatest gift we could have asked for.
After our son turned 1, we started talking about the idea of another child and when we’d want to start that process. Thankfully we had 3 frozen embryos, so we knew it would be a little easier this time, since we only would have to do a transfer. In 2021, we decided we were ready and did a frozen embryo transfer in June. We found out that our transfer was successful and we were beyond excited!
We welcomed our beautiful baby girl (also born 6 weeks early) in January of 2022.
Lillian graced us with her presence weighing 3 lbs 8 oz. And although both of our kids were early, they were NICU rockstars! Griffin only spent 9 days in NICU and Lillian spent 13 days.
We are so unbelievably blessed by our two kiddos and we are so thankful for Dr. Kathy Doody and her team at CARE Fertility.
Without them, we would not have our beautiful little family. To those also going through their own fertility journey, our advice is to just trust the process, lean on your family and friends because it’s an emotional journey, and keep your eye on the big picture. Know that every poke and every needle is 100% worth it.
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