When Tiffany Rex and her husband announced they were expecting a baby thanks to the help of IVF, they didn't know how many people in their lives had gone through similar journeys. Once she posted the news on Facebook, there was an outpouring of women sharing their stories, and Tiffany was inspired to share more of her experience in order to lift the stigma around IVF. "So many people have confided their journeys to me after our announcement, and I wanted to share more detail on the long road we faced to help give hope and strength to others," she wrote on Facebook. "I am so grateful to be where we are today, and pray every day for those still on their journey."
Tiffany shared details about the shots, procedures, and emotions that she endured before conceiving her daughter, Avery.
Tiffany's collection of candid photos brings both reality and a sense of humor to the entire ordeal. The pictures begin the day before she started getting shots.
It all started when her husband, Mark, baked Tiffany a pink cake with a thoughtful message: "I'm sorry I have to poke you."
Just to get the process started, the couple needed an abundance of hormones and supplies.
"And this was only the ones that weren't in the fridge," Tiffany wrote on Facebook. "Wrapping our heads around how to work them all and when to inject was so overwhelming."
Tiffany also shared the difficult and painful aftermath of daily injections.
"That's what 50 shots in your tummy over 14 days looks like!"
After the hormones stimulated her ovaries, it was time for egg retrieval day.
They had 17 follicles which turned into 13 eggs. Of those, 11 eggs successfully fertilized and three of them would ultimately be options for transfer.
Getting hit with the bills and doing the math on how much just the medicine costs was a serious shock.
"The meds cost how much???" she wrote. "Okay, time to dive into every military relief program under the sun!"
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Before they could transplant the fertilized egg, Tiffany needed a second surgery.
"Went in for a minor polyp, and found that half my uterus was dead and deformed," she wrote. "Well that explains it! Dr. A fixed me up, and Avery got a couture home!"
It took a master spreadsheet to keep all of her medicines and directions organized.
"I had a million of these direction sheets for meds throughout IVF, and threw most of them away," she wrote. "So glad to not look at rainbows anymore!"
Tiffany also needed to go through a second round of shots for more than three months.
"These are the dreaded progesterone," she wrote. "I ended up needing one a day for 14 weeks. About 70, 4 inch needles. Ouch!"
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Once they were officially approved for the embryo transfer, Tiffany and her husband were nothing but smiles.
"Transfer day! This is it! I will actually have one of our babies in me today, and we might actually end up pregnant!" she wrote.
Inside the transfer room where her procedure was done, the embryo waited in an incubator.
"Mark got to see Avery with his own eyes for the first time in there!" Tiffany wrote.
Six days later, Tiffany's pregnancy tests started coming back positive.
"I needed to be really sure!" she wrote. After bloodwork confirmed her pregnancy, she was finally able to stop getting all those shots!
The fertility clinic gave them a graduation blanket before they left.
"My graduation blanket! I saw so many girls leave with these in my year of treatments, and always choked back tears of frustration and jealousy. I almost fainted when I finally got mine!" she wrote. "I can't even count the number of hours I spent [at this fertility clinic]. I'm glad to graduate out, but so grateful to have found this place and this staff!"
After all this work, Tiffany and Mark were thrilled to finally share the news with the world.
"The pregnancy announcement," she wrote. "I dreamed of this for so long."
