Coronavirus Puts IVF Treatments On Hold For Foxboro Couple
FOXBORO (CBS) -- Someday, Courtney and Chris Wesche will tell their son or daughter how loved and wanted they were, long before they were born. It's been a painful journey trying to start their family, including a failed IVF cycle the day before Christmas.
"Once you decide to start trying it's like 'Oh it'll just happen.' It doesn't always happen that way," said Courtney. "There are moments like, 'Why us? Why? This is so unfair. We're good people, we work hard. We're healthy, we take care of ourselves."
They went through a second egg retrieval process earlier this year; it involves many painful hormone injections leading up to the retrieval itself under anesthesia. They were gearing up for a third retrieval then, came coronavirus. Now everything is on hold.
Courtney added, "When they transfer that embryo, we knew the sex. We were like this was our baby. It feels so real. It's hard to not think of names and how you'd decorate the nursery and all these things."
"So much of this process is a waiting game. You're always waiting on menstrual cycles to start injections and everything else. Then after the egg retrieval, it's waiting for a transfer date," Chris said.
The couple is looking on the bright side: knowing the overwhelming uncertainty right now is the last thing they'd need during the stress of IVF.
"If we were going through a cycle right now, our focus is all over the place. Fearing going grocery shopping, our parents' health, our own health. I'm not working right now - when I'm going back to work," Courtney said.
They're focusing on what they do know: they're far from alone in this process, they will be parents, and at the end of each day, they're still right beside each other.
"You just have to say, let go - let God. Whatever happens is out of our hands. If you have to repeat that to yourself 100 times a day, you just repeat it and know we'll get through all of this. There is a plan, we just don't understand it right now," said Courtney.
The Wesches hope by sharing their experience it will make other couples feel less alone. The first time they posted on their own social media accounts about what they were going through, they received hundreds of messages of support and encouragement. Every time they see the crowded waiting room in their fertility clinic, they know their pain - and hope - is shared by many other families, too.
