Making Baby Phillips (IVF)

Hello Friends & Family, 

My name is Kirsten & I am a good friend of Ryan & Hannah's. Their story touches a special place in my heart, as I too have struggled with infertility. My husband & I tried for years before finally settling on IVF ourselves, which gave us beautiful boy/girl twins who are now almost 3yrs old (Praise God!!).  Its a rough journey you guys, with doubt and pain and insecurity. But there is also so much beauty in it, especially on the other side. I am honored to be able to help our dear friends as they start their own journey into parenthood. Unfortunately, it's not easy, and its not cheap. If you are able to help lighten their load, I know that anything you can give would be so appreciated. 
I asked Hannah & Ryan to share a bit of their story which you can read below. From someone who truly gets it, I say thank you in advance on their behalf, and I encourage you to be there in the moments when they want to talk about it, or in the moments when they just need a hug. These two are destined to be parents and I am so excited to watch their story unfold. 





"Life can be hard. Sometimes it can throw things at you, you don’t expect, things you don’t understand, or challenges you aren’t sure how to face. Growing up I had lots of dreams;  to find my soulmate, get married, make a home together, and one day fill it with little ones. I was 21 when I met my soulmate, and we were 23 when my dream of getting married came true. We both agreed that we wanted to wait awhile before starting a family. We were still kids ourselves, and  we wanted to travel, to be more financially stable, and be more emotionally mature before taking on such an important responsibility. It was 2014 and we were 28 when we decided it was finally time to fill our tiny home with little ones. We were both excited to start this journey. We talked about kids’ names, what their personalities might be like, and what we thought they’d look like. We had everything planned out. Well, almost everything. It turns out that unfortunately, life doesn’t always happen the way you plan it. Sometimes your dreams stay dreams. Over the course of the next few months our excitement faded as the reality that this wasn’t going to be easy for us set in. Growing up, I was always told by family and friends that I would get pregnant right away. They just knew it, and I believed them. I believed it was going to be easy. I was in for a painful reality check. Our first month trying to get pregnant, no luck. Second month, no luck. Month three, four, five, six, and then a full year, no luck. And then a second year, no luck. Those that have been through this know how emotional it is. The anticipation, the anxiety, the hours spent crying on the toilet over negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test. It’s discouraging, it’s painful, and it’s exhausting. I started to believe it would never happen for us. I put on a smile for countless pregnancy announcements, baby showers, and gender reveal parties. I was happy for them, but devastated it wasn’t happening for us. I think the hardest part was having to hold in the pain, and giving generic responses when people would ask when we’re planning on having a baby. It’s hard enough to handle the pressure we’ve put on ourselves, but the pressure from others was the hardest. I started to feel like something was wrong with me. Why is it not happening? Why us? Why is God not answering our prayers? Why does it have to be this hard? I didn’t understand why my body wasn’t doing what it was created to do. I started to question myself and questioning whether we were meant to have kids, but we still tried everything. We went to church for prayer, used ovulation trackers, took supplements, had numerous acupuncture sessions, and still nothing. It was a tough decision, but we decided it was time to seek medical help. So we made an appointment with a fertility doctor. After some poking, prodding, bloodwork, a slimy wand-looking thing, the doctor said everything looked good for me, but for Ryan it wasn’t quite a clean bill of fertility. For the most part his numbers looked good, but there was one that came back low. It’s called morphology, and it’s the percentage of sperm that are shaped correctly. According to the fertility doctor this wasn’t an infertility diagnosis, but it would likely be much harder for us to get pregnant naturally, and that IVF would be a good option for us. At the time my emotions were out of control, and my stress level was through the roof, so we decided to take a break from trying. We took a little over a year off, but agreed we wouldn’t prevent it from happening if it were to happen. At the beginning of this year we both decided we were finally ready to start really trying again. Now here we are. After 10 more months of trying and still not getting pregnant, and after lots of prayer, we’ve decided to move forward with the IVF process. I know we are both meant to be parents because we believe that God gives you the desires of your heart. We’ve worked hard to save money for this process, but we are still quite a bit short of the approximately $30k we’ll need. Neither of us are the type to ask for help when it comes to anything so this is really difficult for us, but we could really use the support financially and emotionally. We will be beyond grateful for anything you feel inspired to contribute;  whether it be a prayer, encouraging words, a dollar, fifty dollars, or whatever you feel. We know that God has a plan for us and our future baby, and even if we don’t see it now, our future is in His hands. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and thank you for going through this journey with us. We love you all." 

-Hannah & Ryan