Megan & Michele
Infertility Diagnosis
- Premature ovarian failure
- Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
- Recurrent miscarriage
Treatment(s)
- Donor sperm
- Embryo Freezing
- Frozen embryo transfer (FET)
- In vitro Fertilization (IVF)
- Intrauterine insemination (IUI)
Location(s)
- Syracuse
Physician(s)
- Robert Kiltz, MD
- David Corley, MD
- Grace Michel, NP
Megan & Michele's Story:
My wife and I always planned on having children. I loved working with children, and my wife as a dance teacher worked with children. We were excited to finally feel like it was the right time. We began trying to conceive in 2011, doing home inseminations with donor sperm. After four attempts and no positive, we decided to get some help.
We were lucky to find that CNY Fertility was actually somewhat local to us, and we made a consult appointment. After meeting the wonderful Dr Kiltz, we decided to try IUI’s. We did 2 rounds and were heartbroken over the negative beta results. We decided it was best to take time off and enjoy life a bit before trying again. Our journey started again in 2016. We attempted six more IUI’s, dealt with one chemical pregnancy, and the rest were negatives again.
We finally decided to look further into what could be keeping us from building this family we’d always dreamed of. After appropriate in depth testing, I was diagnosed with PCOS, and my wife was diagnosed with DOR. We finally decided to take the leap into IVF. The perks were that we could use one vial of donor sperm for more than one retrieval. In fact, we ended up doing five retrievals between the two of us. We want at least 3 children, and we wanted to be able to transfer 2 embryos (one of each of ours), which was recommended due to my wife’s advanced age and our embryo quality.
We did 3 transfers. All BFP’s, but sadly all miscarriages. We dug deeper and decided to discuss everything with Dr Kiltz. We decided to do Keto for 2 months prior to our last retrievals. Not only did we lose weight, my PCOS was becoming better controlled, and we felt wonderful. We also had our best retrievals after that. We chose to do a fresh/frozen Day 3 transfer (one of my wife’s fresh embryos, and one of my frozen embryos) in January of 2018. We got our BFP, and delivered our perfect little girl at 36w1d. She’s such a gift, and 21 months old now. We’re also 6w1d with baby #2! We are beyond thankful for Dr K, Dr Corley, Grace, Bridgette, Lou, Michele, Ashley (our transfer nurse), and many others who held our hands, answered all of our questions, and got us our rainbow, and a little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
Helpful resources Megan & Michele found:
Keto
Acupuncture
Unique Moments:
*We always got BFP’s with our IVF transfers. Our first transfer resulted in 2 sacs found at our first ultrasound. We were over the moon that both of our embryos (one of each of ours) had stuck. Sadly one became a blighted ovum, and then we lost the other baby at 9.5 weeks.
*Became pregnant again and again and miscarried.
*We were exceptionally thankful that we were able to transfer one of each of our embryos. Being LGBTQ, we knew our family would appear different to various people. We love that we have that perk of not knowing exactly which one of us is bio mom to our babies. It also prevents others from treating our children differently based on biology (if they knew who bio mom was). This just makes them OUR children.
Hope, Inspiration and Advice:
Join the support groups! Either through CNY, or on social media. So many of us fertility warriors are on there to help others through this journey.
Don’t give up hope.
Go with your gut!
Ask questions.
There is never a stupid question!
We all have the same goal. To get our THB’s (Take Home Baby/babies).
