04/24/2026
Introduction to Surviving Infertility
My daughter is now 28 years old and my fertility journey started over 30 years ago.
Rick and I got married in 1992 and moved out to Thousand Oaks in 1994 to start our family. We had already been trying to get pregnant for two years with no luck. My regular gynecologist suggested some basic tests for Rick and I after multiple UI’s (uterine injections), where they inject my husband s***m into my uterus during my fertile cycle.
We did about six months of those and had gotten the results already that we were both going to have problems. We first found out that Rick, who only had one testicle, also had a low s***m count. We didn’t know yet that I had problems as well, we were still waiting for my test to come back.
Where can I talk about options? We really wanted to start our family so we decided to explore a s***m donation. We went to California Cryo-Bank Center in Westwood Village to pick a donor. As we poured over dozens of possibilities, we were very hopeful; little did we know what was to come. We were looking for someone tall, intelligent with dark hair and dark eyes because we thought that would be easier and give us more options. It reminded me of playing pick a date when I was a little girl: you would roll the dice and if you got the right number, you got to open the door to your Magical date. That’s what I was looking for, a magical s***m date that would solve all our problems and start our family.
The odds were against us when we found out I had major problems as well. We had already started injections to stimulate egg production. The previous test showed that I was perimenopausal at 35 years old. It is not unusual to be heading towards menopause at this age, but we didn’t realize how close I actually was. We got the test results back that my hormones were very low and that I was probably closer to menopause than perimenopausal. I called my mom to ask if that made sense to her. Her initial response was well, I had all my kids in my 20s, but I do remember my gynecologist being surprised that I was starting into menopause in my early 30s. I already knew that when you hit 30 your fertility had a big drop and another drop at 35 .
True love had not found me in time and I was already past the second big fertility drop at 35. We were married in 1992 and already had two years of no pregnancies when we moved out to the suburbs of Westlake Village. We were hopeful with a new doctor we found, realizing that we were going to go through infertility if we wanted to start our family.
We started on the shots. I would meditate before each one to create calm safe space.
We did the first month of shots with no success. Our infertility doctor recommended upping the dose because I had not responded well to the shots, I had no viable eggs. So we continued for the next few months with the shots and finally my body responded, and I had two viable eggs. Everything was ready. We had picked a s***m donor. We were going to pick up the s***m and inject to hopefully create our baby. The doctor wasn’t helpful. Usually when people have the shots they get multiple eggs, way more than I did.
I went to pick up the vials in Westwood and drive them to the doctor for our appointment. When I got to the clinic, they informed me that my s***m donor had been pulled because he had some kind of genetic disorder.
I had no idea what to do now.
I called the doctor’s office and told him what it happened. The nurse called me back and said there was no point in coming in that we might as well go ahead and go home have s*x, cross our fingers and hope for the best.
At this point I was in tears. It felt like everything was against us having a baby the natural way. I was tired of the shots, the money, the frustration and sadness every month when it didn’t work. It was devastating to get my period every month knowing that nothing had worked.
My dad even said at this point, don’t you think you want to give up and try adoption because what you’re doing doesn’t seem to be working.
This got us to the next phase of infertility which is: when do we give up?
It seemed like the universe was telling us. This wasn’t the way we were going to create our baby via science. Science didn’t seem to be working for us. We were both ready to move on and start our family.
Our journey towards adoption began. I went into that famous bookstore again this time looking for books on adoption.
We have adoption all over our families and many stories of how it came about. My mother was adopted in the 20s from Louise Wise Jewish Adoption Agency in New York City. My grandparents struggled with infertility as well, but they never discussed it. The family never heard the story of why they were adopting. They had already adopted my aunt five years earlier and decided they wanted another child. They went back to the agency in New York because they wanted Jewish children. There had been many immigrants that came over from Europe to settle in America.
So my mom was adopted, and the mother is known now as a closed adoption because they thought that was better at that time for all families just to move on. It is interesting to me that my mother never really wanted to find her birth family, but my aunt searched for many years without success to find her birth family.
The other significant adoption in our family was Rick‘s older brother, who was adopted at birth. It was a very interesting story because his parents were well-known in the community. His mother went away for many months, waiting for the birth mother to give birth.
When their mom went home with a new baby, there were no questions or discussion about whether the baby was adopted.
My husband appeared 10 years later when his parents were in their early 40s. The medical community designated Rick‘s mother as a high-risk pregnancy due to her advanced age. The gynecologist said that the birth was the easiest birth he had ever attended and now their family was complete with two sons and a big secret.
