Aspen & Sam

Aspen & Sam's Story:

My husband and I started our journey on March 1st, 2020. Due to our age, my OBGYN stated we needed to wait a year before they would do any type of testing.

Before we knew it, March 21' was here, and I was having irregular cycles. March 21' I went in to get an HSG done, and my husband did a semen analysis. Both results come back great, with my tubes being open and my husband having no semen issues.

At that time, my OBGYN prescribed me Provera to jump-start a period so I could get blood work done. That following cycle, I was diagnosed with insulin resistance, PCOS, and anovulation due to these issues.

The following month, I was prescribed Clomid to see if that would help me ovulate. We had high hopes as a friend of ours also dealing with infertility got pregnant with her first round of clomid. When we went in to confirm if it worked, we had the devastating news that we still didn't ovulate; we were crushed!

The following four cycles we increased Clomid and confirmed ovulation and still nothing. In Sept 21' we moved to Letrozole with the hopes this would work better. That cycle, we confirmed ovulation and two days before my missed period, we got a faint positive! We thought this is it, but unfortunately that ended in a chemical pregnancy.

In Oct 21' we moved to a local fertility clinic (not CNY) where we did two rounds of timed intercourse that involved monitoring appointments and trigger shots, both of which failed.

Dec 21' we decided to move to IUI and hoped this would be it. Unfortunately, we did 3 IUI's, all resulting in failed cycles. That's when we decided to look into IVF. Discussing it with our clinic at the time, they expressed that I needed to lose a ton of weight before they would even consider moving us to IVF. It just felt like another huge block in our way.

We heard about CNY through TikTok, where Dr. Kiltz said they would help anyone get pregnant as infertility treatments shouldn't discriminate based on race, weight, or the money a person has, and he believed everyone deserved a chance.

We scheduled our consultation for April 22'. After our consultation, we found out we were pregnant after having my first natural cycle without any medications. That was, unfortunately, also short-lived and resulted in our second chemical pregnancy.

We took a much-needed break and followed up with CNY, and started stims on Sept 22'. During that cycle, we had only one fair day-3 embryo, and we transferred on Nov 22' which failed.

We had to go back to the drawing board and improve those odds. We started priming with omnitrope and increased CoQ10 to help with egg quality.

On March 23, we went in for retrieval and came out with 11 day-3 embryos, most of which were good grades! The second transfer took place on April 23, and that unfortunately failed as well. We took a few months off, changed up our transfer protocol, and transferred two embryos at the end of June.

On July 4, we tested and got our very first positive! Our journey to our daughter came full circle when we delivered her on March 1st, 2024. It was exactly four years to the day since we began our journey.

Photos by Rikki Shepherd

Favorite Team Member at CNY:

For our final transfer we had Nurse Ashley and Dr Corley. They were both so sweet and encouraging. After transfer they both took the time to pray with us. I believe that prayer brought us our little girl.

Helpful resources Aspen & Sam found:

I found that making a tiktok account surrounding my journey was the most helpful outlet for me. I found out I wasn't alone and connected with others experiencing the same thing. It became almost like a video journal of all the things I experienced and what I was feeling.

The Moment:

I will never forget the moment we found out we were pregnant. I remember calling my husband into the bathroom balling and saying "It worked, it actually worked! We are pregnant." In that moment we were feeling all the emotions, happy, excited, and nervous/anxious for what was to come.

The moment we heard her cry in the operating room the world stood still and in that moment it was just me, my husband and Arabella. My husband and I balled. She was finally here and worth the hard journey. We would do it all over again to experience that moment.

Hope, Inspiration and Advice:

Something that I wish I knew beforehand and would love to share with others is, don't afraid to advocate for yourself.

No one knows your body like you do. Don't be afraid to ask questions and try different things. Without advocating for myself and asking questions regarding changing protocols for both my second retrieval and third transfer I would not be holding my double rainbow baby.