When the coronavirus pandemic cancels your IVF treatment: 'It was really heartbreaking'
Sarah and Kevin Shockley were anxiously awaiting their final chance at IVF, but they never could have predicted that a global pandemic would cause it to be postponed.
Video Transcript
SARAH SHOCKLEY: Many of us in the infertility community thought 2020 will be the year that we become parents. Now with the pandemic and the cancellation of our fertility treatment, it's for sure that we won't become a mom in 2020 anymore. We have, like, everything we need. But the only thing we're missing, obviously, is a baby.
My husband, Kevin and I basically started trying to get pregnant since our wedding day, which was back in 2016. We thought we would honestly be pregnant within a few short months after our wedding day. Sadly up here, Mark, we discovered that my husband had testicular cancer. He had to have surgery and he had to do radiation treatment. It was also around the time that I discovered I was pregnant, and I was having a miscarriage.
My doctor actually diagnosed me with PTOS, and she told me that I don't ovulate. So we kind of decided to start saving her money and start preparing for IVF. After the egg retrieval, I was really sick. I was throwing up. I was in quite a bit of pain. My doctor let us know that of the embryos that we had remaining, neither of them tested normal. They were both abnormal, and it would most likely end up in a miscarriage.
Me and my husband kind of talked before, and kind of agreed that our second round was most likely going to be our last round. Financially, one, it's super expensive. But also, physically and emotionally, it's so much to go through. We were supposed to get started with our IVF cycle today, actually, but because of the coronavirus, we decided to cancel it. Having our cycle postponed, it was really heartbreaking, because we prepared so much going into it that to kind of have it ripped away from us at this point, it was really tough.
There's been a lot of jokes and memes on social media about the baby boom that's coming in nine months and all the quarantine babies. And I mean, I get it. It might possibly be true for a lot of people. But, for those of us that are struggling with infertility, just seeing it, it's just kind of sad and brings us anxiety and gives us another reminder that we're not able to conceive. But also, that we don't know when we're going to be able to pursue treatment anymore.
Me and my husband, we've been together for a really long time, just so in love with each other. And we just really want to have a baby. So that's kind of what keeps us going. Even though we're in a holding pattern now, I think we're just trying to keep looking towards the future and thinking about our family and knowing that one day it's going to happen. Even with the coronavirus, it's going to happen. At some point, we will get to resume treatment, and we will get to keep trying to create our family.