Brittney & Vic

Brittney & Vic's Story:

Vic and I met in middle school. We started dating when we were 13, so now we are 28 and have been together for over half of our lives. It was never a question that we wanted to have a family together.

We got married in 2014 and began trying shortly after. I came off my birth control, but had already been diagnosed with PCOS when I was 16. We knew this would possibly be a hurdle we would meet in getting pregnant, but still we tried naturally for a while.

After a year and only negative pregnancy tests I went to my OB. They knew I had PCOS so they put me on clomid. It seemed to work every month, but still negative tests for the next 6 months. Finally, we tested Vic. That’s when we found out we had 2 hurdles to get through to get pregnant, my PCOS and a low count.

We went to our first RE January 2018. We were told IVF would be our only option. This was a shock. We were only 26 how could IVF be our only option?! After meeting with their financial advisor at that same appointment, who told us to ask family/refinance our home/get a credit card, we never set foot in that office again.

Time for our second RE. She wanted to try to fix the low count. I started meds and saw a urologist. After no change there it was again “IVF is your only option for biological children”

Heartbroken, I dove into a support group on FB. That’s where I stumbled on CNY. This RE office that had amazing prices and took travel clients. I called and the wait for a consult was 5 months. I made an appointment and hoped.

It was the only option we had that we could afford to begin the IVF process. I saw CNY did monthly giveaways and began to follow and comment to put our name in the drawing for these monthly giveaways. In October I commented on the Instagram giveaway like usual and didn’t think anything about it. A couple of weeks later I get a message on Instagram saying we won the October giveaway! We were shocked! Our consult call was just a few days after we found out we had won the giveaway!!

January 2019 we were ready to start! All our meds were in and monitoring was set up. Then we were told I had a cyst on my right ovary. I was so disappointed. It felt like another set bac, delaying it again. I went on birth control for a couple of weeks to try and shrink the cyst. When I went back it was collapsing, so we got the green light to start our stim meds!

February 14, 2019 we flew out to Syracuse! February 15 was our egg retrieval. We got 14 eggs, 9 were mature and 6 made it to day 3. We made the decision to push to day 5. We got the call on day 6 that they were only able to freeze 2 and they were both fair quality. I was a little disappointed, but Vic always was persistent that this was going to work.

March we did our first FET. 10 days later we got the dreaded call...not pregnant. After years of seeing that single line, it was a little harder having an actual person telling you it failed. Time to regroup.

April was our second FET with our last embryo. I was so stressed out going into this. I knew if this transfer didn’t work we would have to start all over again. Again, Vic was persistent...this was going to work. We decided to do PRP in Atlanta before transfer because it was close enough to drive. And we made the flight to New York for a third time.

Then . . . “Congratulations your beta is positive, you’re pregnant. That may be one of the best phone calls I’ve received. For sure the best in regards to infertility.

We welcomed our son Victor Paul Connelly III (Tripp for his nickname) on December 20, 2019. We are forever grateful to CNY for enabling us to have this blessing. He is now 2 months old, and incidentally, his 2mo “birthday” falls on the exact date he was frozen one year ago!

Hope, Inspiration and Advice:

I wish we had done more testing on Vic before we did. Infertility is commonly perceived as only a woman’s issue, but that is not always the case.