Thanksgiving day, we welcomed our daughter, Josephine Robin, into the world! I tried to take notes during labor and wrote up her birth story when it was fresh, but haven’t gotten a chance to post it (#newmomlife). This is going to be quite long, since Josie’s birth was anything but straightforward. Luckily, the birth was the hardest part and she’s an actual dream baby (so far!), but more on that later.

Right before Thanksgiving, we met with our RE for a follow up appointment to discuss our test results and diagnosis and go over an IVF treatment plan. We decided that based on our results, we would go straight to IVF. There are a couple of less expensive and less invasive (and less successful) treatments that we could have tried first, but given the length of time we’ve been trying and the fact that our insurance coverage is great, we’re pulling out the big guns and going for it.

I left off our fertility story after we made our first appointment for a visit to a Reproductive Endocrinologist to figure out why we weren’t having any luck trying to conceive and what our possible options are moving forward. We chose Boston IVF/IVF New England, which used to be two separate organizations, but have merged into one. It’s honestly a bit confusing since there are so many office across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, etc.

It can be relatively taboo to talk about fertility. I know for me at first, knowing we were having trouble getting pregnant felt like a personal failure, like I’d done something wrong or was somehow defective. Then I started thinking about it as any other health issue that you can’t control – acne, crooked teeth, nearsightedness, being left-handed (just kidding), and suddenly it didn’t seem like such a big deal. No one can control those things, and people use medicine and technology to fix them all the time.