Life after the birth of our daughter was quite a whirlwind. We set out on our move from the Chicago area to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with a 4-week-old, which I would not recommend if you have the option. In true military fashion, our door-to-door move turned into nearly a month without our household goods. We bought a sleeper sofa because life with a newborn was crazy enough that we needed something resembling a real bed for all the overnight feedings. Plus with the little sleep we were getting, we wanted it to be the best sleep we could get and the floor just wasn’t cutting it.
Once we finally got our stuff delivered we settled into our new normal. His and her school, enjoying family time watching our daughter grow, and I dove into a new volunteer role with RESOLVE. They asked me if I would lead a new committee within the planning team for their Advocacy Day focused on empowering and recruiting the military community to get involved. I was nervous and excited at the same time that this incredible organization and its leadership team for Advocacy Day saw something in me as an advocate and leader that I wasn’t sure I saw in myself. Even as I write this several years later the little devil on my shoulder still whispers that doubt into my ear. I always try to push his words out with those of my mentors in this space, and most days their voices win. But sometimes the doubt wins, and in those early years with RESOLVE it happened a lot.
I knew that the work the volunteers with RESOLVE were doing to help plan Advocacy Day was important, and I knew that getting the military community more involved would only strengthen their efforts. So I let that drive me instead of the fear and insecurities I had. I honestly didn’t understand why they wanted me to lead this new committee. I was just a military spouse, without even a college degree. What did I bring to the table? But I trusted their leadership and belief in me. That year I led my group of volunteers on the Military Taskforce with two things always in our minds, how can we reach more military-connected advocates and how can we help educate everyone on the unique challenges our military and veteran families face with family building? While we didn’t hit all of our goals, we recruited more military advocates and we helped all advocates feel more knowledgeable on military family-building issues. It was a success.
It felt therapeutic to channel all of the struggles I had experienced into helping new military advocates craft and tell their stories to lawmakers. Not being in the thick of navigating infertility at that moment gave me clarity in the bigger picture. I could see the importance of advocacy, but also understood the need for community. I was finding my community in the trenches of advocacy. In the advocacy community, we have bonds that are hard to describe, but that are forged around similar heartbreak and pain that can only be understood by those of us who have been there. There is no one-upping each other because no journey is the same. We learn and grow from each other. The more involved I became, the more I was learning about myself, my journey, and what my future held.
I often think back to a few key moments in my journey that changed the trajectory of my life. Taking on the task of leading the Military Taskforce for the 2022 Advocacy Day was one of those moments. I did it scared, but at the same time hopeful that I could make an impact. I knew that my participation each year in Advocacy Day as an advocate had the potential to create legislative change that would improve the family-building process for all military families. I also knew that I could help inspire and educate other advocates because together our collective voices are much stronger than mine alone. Over the six to nine months of planning and volunteering leading up to advocacy day that year I grew more than I could have ever imagined.
After Advocacy Day I emerged more confident in my volunteer role and was feeling ready to take on the next chapter in our family building and infertility journey. However, the events that June changed the family building landscape in a way that no one could have predicted. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that the Constitution does not grant the right to abortion, and almost immediately fear grew in the family building community about what that could mean for fertility treatments like IVF. Now, I am by no means trying to get political, I want to explain the real fears and implications that this ruling has had for me, and thousands of others.
In the days, weeks and months following that ruling, several states introduced bans and personhood legislation that, depending on the wording, could have made IVF inaccessible to those needing IVF to build or grow their families. I encourage you to go learn more about the science behind IVF and how bans and laws could potentially negatively affect this treatment because although it is important to understand, my purpose with this is to share my story. It just so happened that Pennsylvania was one of those states that was trying to pass new legislation in the wake of the court’s decision. It also happened to be our first choice for our next duty station and where we were moving in just a few weeks.
My heart sank with the news. How could I be living in a world where the treatment for the disease of infertility could be essentially outlawed? Why didn’t people see how this could impact IVF? Juggling all the preparations for our upcoming move and staying on top of all the news was beginning to slowly break me. Just a month before we were so excited to begin the next chapter of our lives and expand our family, and now we began to wonder if we legally could. Things changed in the blink of an eye.
After we moved we just waited. We waited to see how the local and state elections went, and while we waited we got one of the worst calls we could have ever imagined. On the same day our daughter was born, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, and unfortunately, things were not looking good. We hopped on a last-minute 5:00 am flight from Philadelphia to Seattle. We arrived in time to say our goodbyes. I remember taking our daughter in to see her Mimi and even though my mother-in-law was surrounded by all the tubes and wires I could see her eyes light up at the sight of her granddaughter. The joy that our daughter brought her Mimi in that moment is one I will never forget.
Sadly, my mother-in-law passed the next day. The next several weeks were spent with family and friends remembering the incredible woman that she was and helping with all the things that needed to be done. Mimi’s pride and joy was also the star of the show during the funeral, and I know that is exactly the way she would have wanted it. Funerals also have this way of bringing people together that allows space for grief and new memories to be made all at once. Even though we were grieving, as a military family, any time we get together is precious. We cherished the moments we had with our family that month.
After nearly a month away, we came home, settled back into our routines, and continued waiting to see what would happen in each state. Once the election came and went, we knew that we could now safely proceed with establishing care at a new clinic. I had tried to avoid going down the rabbit hole of all the what-ifs leading up to the election, and I finally felt like I could breathe again. We could finally plan for what was next for our family without fear that it could all be taken away. Don’t get me wrong, there were still a lot of scary what-if scenarios, but where we were stationed at that moment felt safe.
It took nearly two months just to get my new PCM to correctly submit the referral to TRICARE. Have I mentioned that we were stationed very remotely, in a small mountain town, and my PCM knew nothing about TRICARE? Long story short, they kept trying to refer me to their reproductive endocrinologist using an internal referral, even though I told them I needed a referral submitted to my insurance to a different fertility clinic that was in TRICARE’s network. Then once that was finally straightened out, we had to wait another two months before we could be seen for our initial appointment.
Our first appointment seemed to go really well, we liked the doctor, the plan moving forward seemed simple, and she understood our timeline since we would only be there another 14-16 months. We were told that it would take about four months for our new clinic to review our records, approve our embryos to be transferred, and for our embryos to be transferred from our clinic in Illinois to the clinic in Pennsylvania. Both of the clinics were part of the U.S. Fertility network and used all the same policies and procedures so our doctor assured us that this would be an easy process. Somehow it wasn’t, and it turned out to be a 10+ month ordeal that seemed like it would never end.