FOX43 FOCAL POINT: INFERTILITY -- Infertility is a struggle that one in eight couples are dealing with. Even though it’s common, it’s still often looked at as a taboo topic to discuss openly.
In our FOX43 Focal Point: Infertility, Lynda Weed hopes to break the silence. She struggled to get pregnant and even suffered a miscarriage during her pregnancy journey.
Our FOX43 Focal Point begins with Danielle and Willis Haring's story. When you meet their son Avery, you would never know what it took to build their home full of love, learning and laughs.
Danielle and Willis are high school sweet hearts and have been together for 21 years. When it was time to turn their family of two into a trio, Willis says they never expected it to be so hard.
“It didn’t happen, didn’t happen.. and didn’t happen. Finally we said, maybe we should get tested.”
Getting tested is not an easy choice to make. The word “infertile” is scary.
The infertility conversation forces a couple to talk about their sex life, their body parts, what’s working and what’s not working.
Dr. Kara Nguyen is a physician at Shady Grove Fertility in Mechanicsburg, Cumberland County. “90% of the time it is usually related to a women. A 1/3 is related to the man and 1/3 of the time it’s a combination of both.”
10% of couples with infertility complications are unexplained. Unexplained means some couples will never know why intimate time at home isn’t resulting in pregnancy.
“Unexplained infertility doesn’t mean that they don’t have a problem." Dr. Nguyen says it's possible the problem could be more subtle than the testing that is available can find.
Dr. Nguyen is the doctor the Haring's credit for bringing Avery into their lives. Danielle needed two surgeries to remove her tubes. Dr. Nguyen then guided Danielle and Willis to IVF or In Vitro Fertilization.
The IVF process can be overwhelming and stressful. Women will need to take self injections at home, pills and attend regular visits to the doctor for tests.
IVF medication stimulates the ovaries and helps a woman produce more eggs. Those eggs are removed and mixed with the mans sperm. The more eggs - the better.
The Haring’s retrieval only resulted in 2 eggs. This is a very low number. Only one egg survived the fertilization process.
Willis says he was nervous about moving forward with IVF but they get lucky.
“We had one egg and it worked the first time. It’s not going to happen for everyone unfortunately. But miracles happen.”
IVF and other infertility treatments don’t always work and very rarely with only a single fertilized egg.
IVF is also expensive and doesn’t always work on the first try. Each cycle can cost about $10,000, not including the cost of medication.
The medication can cost between $1,500 and $3,000 per cycle.
MONDAY (9/23/2019) ON FOX43 News at 10:00PM
Lynda Weed will tell her personal story and the 2-year path she took to get pregnant. Her story includes the pain of having a miscarriage and staying silent during the struggle.
Lynda's sister Heather was dealing with similar trials at the same time. Heather will sit with Lynda to talk about the IVF journey.