Calling All Prayer Warriors

We got the call today. They thawed our 7 precious embryos to perform a test on them called CCS. After our miscarriage in December and finding out our little one had chromosome abnormalities, we had a decision to make. Transfer again and take a gamble that the embryo/s they picked were normal or take a gamble and thaw our embryos and have them tested for chromosomal abnormalities.

Rob and had it down to two choices- we were either going to transfer 2 or do the test. We were very close to just transferring two but something didn’t feel right. We know we do not want another set of twins but even more so, we want to avoid another loss if at all possible. So we decided testing would be the best route.

This was not an easy decision, there are financial implications but also it’s putting our babies through an extra procedure which has risk in itself. I haven’t talked about the financial side of IVF in a long time so let me just lay a few things down. First insurance covers ZERO. Not a penny of fertility treatments. They consider it elective and it is not covered- it’s disgusting and I can’t believe in the year 2021 we still don’t have coverage.

That said between the meds and the transfer this fall that resulted in losing our baby we spent $7,000. CCS testing our 7 embryos cost $6,000. Our next transfer will cost with meds $7,000. And finally, because insurance does not cover fertility treatments, none of that will count towards our deductible. If we are lucky enough to bring home a baby we will have our out of pocket costs to cover for the birth. All said and done IF we have a normal embryo and IF it works this next time we will in total have spent $30,000 just to have a baby.

Being an infertility warrior means carrying so many burdens. The burden of loss- the loss of the family you dreamed of, the loss of control, the loss of money, so many losses. So many burdens.

I called this blog, calling all prayer warriors because we need your prayers. I just heard from our embryologist at CCRM; of the 7 embryos they thawed to test, 2 of them are not doing well. Five of them did great- they have already been biopsied and are already re-frozen. They will watch the other 2 over night and if they survive they too will be biopsied and re-frozen. Please pray for all 7. Please pray that God gives us several normal embryos. Please pray.

Okay I’m going to drop a bomb now. When God talks, you should listen. We felt called to test and there’s a great reason why. The 2 embryos that are not doing well were the next best 2 that we had left. They would have been the 2 we would have transferred and we likely would have lost both of them. We probably would have had back-to-back miscarriages. We would have been out another $7,000. We would have had no idea what to do. We would have been buried under burden, loss and grief.

The path he chooses for us doesn’t always make sense and we don’t always understand it. All you can do is listen and believe his way is so much better than anything we could imagine for ourselves.

He chose for me to have twin boys- of our top 5 embryos only 2 were good-they are our Cooper and Oliver. He did that. He gave me a greater gift then I could have ever given myself. Trust. Breath. Wait. Pray.

I will be holding my breath until we have our results back and trusting God’s plan.