Hi, first of all I would like to say, I am proud to announce that I am the mother of a beautiful 4-month-old baby boy. My husband and I thought that there may be something wrong because of the texture of his sperm. It was very thin. I asked him many times to ask the doctor if there was something wrong but he never thought it was a big deal. Before we got married we both went to the doctor to make sure everything was ok. That's when our journey started. My husband went for a semen analysis and the test showed that he did not have any sperm. We thought this was crazy. He was only 24 and he never had an illness or an injury. We decided to wait until after we were married and ready to start a family before we pursued it any further.

When we were ready to start a family we were referred to an excellent doctor for my husband to go to. At our first meeting he seemed very optimistic that we would be able to have children and that he was sure that my husband was able to produce sperm. They went into the examining room and when they came out he said that my husband had an absence of the vas deferens which is usually caused when men carry the gene for cystic fibrosis. He recommended that we both be tested for the gene, and he said again I am sure that your husband does produce sperm, but he just does not have a way to get it out. That was one of best things I had ever heard in my life. I wanted to hug the doctor, because it was our first ray of hope. The results came back that he did carry the gene, but I did not. He then did a needle biopsy on my husband to see if he did have sperm. Just as the doctor thought my husband did have sperm. Not only did he tell us, but he showed us the sperm swimming on a slide under the microscope. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw (until my son arrived).

I was sent to a doctor that would assist us in getting pregnant. He talked to us about the success rates of IVF and we left the clinic very upset thinking it would never work. I was sent for all the tests to make sure that everything was working fine with me. When the tests cam back clear we were ready to start our cycle. We were so excited. I was so happy to just start taking prenatal vitamins. Then came the needles. We were lucky that most of the drugs were cover by my insurance company. We just had to pay for the Lupron and the needles. At first it wasn't so bad I did most of them myself until I couldn't reach the ones that I had to do in my behind. Then my husband had to help me. The day came when I went for the ultrasound to make sure I was stimulating properly. The doctors were happy with my response but they decided to lower the dose of my medication. I was told to come back in 2 days and when I did they said to lower my medication again. I was producing lots of eggs. Then we got the call that I was ready to take my hcg. Thank goodness because I had soooooo much pressure it felt like my ovaries were going to explode!!!!!!!

The day came for me to have my egg retrieval and for my husband to have his sperm taken out. I was in the operating room first and he was scheduled to go in after me. He walked me down to the O.R. with the nurse and we kissed good bye. I woke up in the recovery room and asked how it went. They said very good you have 38 eggs!!!!! No wonder I felt like my ovaries were going to burst!!!!!! When I was able to get up, I went to see my husband who was still waiting to have his sperm retrieved. I decided to go home to lay down because I wasn't feeling that great. When I was feeling better, I went back to the hospital to see him. He started crying when he saw me. He scared me because I thought he was going to say that they weren't able to retrieve any sperm. Fortunately he was just crying because he was so happy. That night we got the call that we had 12 embryos already and that they were going to try for more. In the end that's all we did have. I went in 2 days later and they put 3 embryos back in. The laying there afterwards was so hard, but well worth it. I stayed in bed for 3 days. Twelve days later we had our first of three blood tests. Those were the longest days of our lives waiting for those results and it was also the happiest!!!!!!! Three weeks later we had an ultra sound to see how many embryos there were and we got the first picture of our beautiful boy!!!!!!!!!! It was a stressful experience but it was all worth it for us...good luck my e mail address is rada5@cheerful.com if you would like to ask me anything, just state IVF on it.