Post One: The Halfway Point

We’re at what feels like the halfway point. The space between years of trying on our own and whatever comes next.

The years behind us were filled with month after month of disappointment. The year before IVF was the hardest yet. Two rounds of IUI. One canceled after making it all the way to the trigger shot. Countless blood draws and ultrasounds. Hours of driving to and from the clinic. First, bad news about my husband’s numbers. Then, bad news about mine.

We worked with the most expensive clinic in the state, and somehow it still felt impersonal. Cold. After multiple things were found to be “wrong” and we were told the doctor would follow up, she never did. It began to feel like a toxic relationship. The kind where someone does nothing for you but knows you need them, so you keep coming back anyway.

At the end of 2025, I looked back on the last few years and thought, wow. We went through so much for so long. We wanted desperately to believe we’d be one of those couples who would eventually get their miracle baby without intervention. Natural conception for us wasn’t impossible, but with my low AMH, it wasn’t something we could afford to wait on. Standing still wasn’t neutral anymore.

When IVF entered the conversation, it felt like there was only one path forward. And we weren’t prepared for it.

The night we decided to pursue IVF, I sobbed and told my husband, “I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to deal with those people again.” In our minds, IVF meant completing one final IUI to qualify for insurance, spending over ten thousand dollars for the first round, and then over twenty five thousand dollars for every round after that. It meant debt piling up quickly. It meant being treated like a number. Like a body moving through a system built for volume, not care.

By the end of it, we weren’t out of hope.

We were out of blind trust.

We knew something had to change.

We just didn’t know yet what that would look like.