Personal Narrative: The Birth Of A Child

Two of the most significant and life changing events that can happen to a person are death of a loved one and the birth of a child. Everyone experiences death throughout life, whether of a gold fish you won at a fair when you were a child or death of a close and valued loved one. But not all people get the joy of experiencing having a child. For me, that has been the most enjoyable thing in my life. But I’m not writing about the birth of my son. I am writing about the journey my wife and I went on to have him. My wife and I got married in October of 2011. A year after we were married, we decided it was time to have children. We began the old fashion way, she got off her birth control and spoke with her doctor. This went on for about 6 months,
My wife’s doctor suggested we see a fertility specialist. We were apprehensive at first, we knew that the fertility specialist was going to be able to help us, or we weren’t going to have our own child. If he couldn’t help us, our options were; not have kids or adopt. We discussed adoption in the past and didn’t think it was for us. After careful contemplation and lots of crying, we decided to see the specialist. At our first visit the doctor explained the process and our options. He said he had to run some genetic testing to see if we had certain genetic modifiers. If we did, he couldn’t help us have a child. After the results came in we met with him again, and he informed us that all test came back clear and he could start treating my wife. He found that my wife has polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), causing cysts to form on one of her ovaries. The doctor suggested the first thing we should try is a “hormone cocktail”, pretty much pumping her full of estrogen to force her ovaries to produce healthier eggs. We did this treatment for about six months. At which time we decided to go back and talk to the doctor about other options. My wife wanted to have an intrauterine insemination (IUI), which is a procedure that while the female is ovulating the male sperm is injected directly into the uterus. After speaking with the doctor, he convinced us to try one more “cocktail”. We tried these new meds for another four months or so, with the same results. The side effects of my wife taking all of these hormones was not good at all. My wife is normally a very easy going person. These meds made her very emotional about everything, and this put a strain on our marriage. At this point we disappointed. We knew our only options were to keep doing hormone therapy and possibly hate each other by the end of this, give up on our dreams of becoming parents, or tell the doctor we wanted to try the IUI procedure, and not take