Infertility Success Story With In-Vitro
Mom Shares Her Story About Getting Pregnant With Fertility Treatment
Nov 25, 2008
In a 2008 interview with Suite, Dina Capuano shares her story of the infertility treatments she and husband Chris went through to have their family. In the end, it was in-vitro with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) that worked for them.
What Was Getting In-vitro Fertilization Like?
At the time all I remember is thinking I would have never expected to be sitting in my living room, drawing medicine from bottles and injecting it into myself to try and get pregnant. It was about a 2 month procedure that involved injections everyday (sometimes twice a day) and numerous visits to the doctor’s office.
Retrieval day, when they removed my eggs, really wasn't bad at all. I was put under anesthesia for a very short time and came out of it without any problems. My ovary with the cyst was completely useless. Our doctor was only able to get 6 eggs from the other ovary, but we were still very hopeful.
Two days later they called us and said we had 3 very good embryos waiting for us. We went in to have them inseminated, and then went home on bed rest for a week. We had to wait two weeks to go in for blood work to check if we were pregnant.
After the In-vitro, What Happened?
The day we were going to get the phone call with our results, I had to tutor some students. I knew if I had gotten the call I would never have been able to continue working no matter what the outcome would have been. So I asked them to call my husband with the results.
I was pulling into our driveway and there was a pizza delivery man there. I figured Chris must have ordered dinner so I wouldn't have to worry about making it being that I was probably going to be upset about the results. I opened the front door and there was a changing table filled with baby stuff and my entire family was there to say congratulations.
I was completely shocked. I couldn't stop crying and shaking. The thought that I had a baby growing in me at that very moment was more than I could ever imagine. Once I had calmed down I found out our hormone level from the blood work was very high, which usually means multiples. Two weeks later we went in for our ultrasound and saw two little spots with two very strong heartbeats. The next 30 weeks I did nothing but take care of my babies.
How Long Were You in Fertility Treatment Before You Actually Got Pregnant?
Three years, and looking back I believe only because we went straight to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) after trying Clomid. Because we both had infertility issues, I believe doing the IVF with the intracytoplasmic injection is what helped us get past our problems.
What Was the Hardest Part of Infertility Treatment?
For me the actual treatment wasn't that bad. I handle pain very well so anything that might have been painful wasn't a big deal at all. Very quickly I got over different doctors and nurses having to perform procedures on me. I wasn't working at the time either, so I didn't have to worry about constantly leaving my job to get to appointments. I would imagine that would have been a very difficult part, especially if I had still been teaching.
Were Your Infertility Treatments Covered By Insurance?
You know, it was the strangest thing. All of my diagnostic procedures were covered under the insurance, but when it came to actual procedures to try and help us get pregnant, they would only cover up to $5,000. Which, don't get me wrong, we were very thankful for any amount of help we could get. But it just never made sense to me that the insurance company would allow me to find out why I wasn't getting pregnant, but would not fully cover us to try and get pregnant once finding out we had something wrong.
Read more about the Capuanos’ story, including what they went through before IVF and the emotional side of infertility treatment (including a second pregnancy).
