It's ironic how something that affects so many can make a person feel so alone. When you see the stats - 6.7 million U.S. women ages 15–44 deal with it- infertility seems nearly as universal as the garden-variety cold.
"It's very common," said Kevin Doody, M.D., of the Center for Assisted Reproduction. "It affects one out of 10 couples." And the odds increase with age, he notes.
Yet despite its pervasiveness, infertility (defined as the inability to conceive after one year of unprotected intercourse or the inability to carry a pregnancy to live birth) is one of those prickly topics folks tend to discuss in whispers.
"It's emotional, exhausting and kind of embarrassing. This [getting pregnant] is supposed to be innate … what we as women were put on earth to do," said Meeghan Hubka, who, along with husband Tim, underwent fertility treatments to conceive son Gage, now 4. "And when you can't do that, you feel like a failure."
Tim, a cancer survivor, banked his sperm before undergoing chemotherapy and associated treatments. When he was officially in remission, the couple commenced the assisted-reproduction process, which in their case involved IUI (intrauterine insemination). "They said it would probably take several attempts," Meeghan recalled, "so we were completely shocked when it worked the first time."
Meeghan is now pregnant with their second child, due Oct. 30. After three unsuccessful IUIs, the Hubkas opted for IVF (in vitro fertilization), which involved freezing Meeghan's embryos and then transferring them to her body. "In January, we started the frozen embryo transfer process, which involved hormone shots and oral hormones as well," Meeghan said. "And then on Feb. 11, we did the transfer and were successful."
The freezing of eggs and sperm is a "huge area" in the infertility realm, said Robert Kaufmann, M.D., of Fort Worth Fertility, as is pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, which involves analyzing the DNA of embryos to weed out any genetically abnormal ones before implanting them. Egg donation is also trending up.
"I am thrilled beyond words to have this beautiful miracle," said Courtney Wemyss, who gave birth to daughter Fiona in January. She and husband Chad underwent countless infertility treatments for five-plus years before finally electing to use a donor egg. "It worked the first time," she said.
The years-long experience put the Grapevine couple through the emotional wringer, Courtney says. "Each time you go through a treatment and it's unsuccessful, you have that heartbreak all over again. You can't really understand the depth of the emotion that goes with infertility until you've experienced it yourself. Not being able to do the one thing you're supposed to do - to bear children - is a hard thing to accept and a hard thing to ask your spouse to accept," she said. "It's one of those things you don't really want to talk about but that you also realize how important it is to talk about."
