By Jaisyn Hough

Let me preface this by saying that I was the absolute last person who wanted to do IVF.
In fact, I had my life planned by the time I was 16 years old. I had been fortunate to grow up with loving parents, a brother and a sister, and had an amazing childhood spent playing endless hours with babies (where I learned to be a pretend mama). From a young age, I had a dream placed in my heart to be a mom one day. One day I would graduate college, marry the love of my life, and have three kids. Easy! Or so I thought.
I always thought having kids would be easy. After all, my parents had three of their own with no problems. At first, life went according to (the first part of) my plan but came to a screeching halt when my husband and I made the decision to start a family. As each month passed and I began to see a drawer fill with negative pregnancy tests, I knew something was not right. My body was failing me and I couldn’t quite understand why.

I wish I could tell you I was smart enough to get on the phone and reach out to a fertility specialist. Instead, I spent two years thinking I could fix myself. It wasn’t until I noticed a change in my mental health that I knew it was time to take matters and put them in a professional’s hands.
I wasn’t okay. I didn’t feel like the young carefree girl that I once was at the age of 16, who was excited about her future. I was scared about my future as a mom and if pregnancy would ever happen. It wasn’t until one night I was home by myself that I drew a bath to relax and decided to have a conversation with God.
I felt a pressure knotting up in my throat as I admitted out loud that I could not do this by myself any longer. As I continued my conversation, I fearfully asked Him to give me an obvious sign if He wanted me to pursue IVF. Needles were a fear of mine from a young age, so the thought of multiple injections was terrifying. I left it all on the alter that night.
Not even 24 hours later I had my answer.
As I stood in my kitchen with my parents making breakfast, my mom, not having known about my conversation with God the night before, lovingly came up to me and said, “I just want you to know if it comes down to it, Dad and I would like to help you with IVF if that’s something you want to do.”
I was like a deer in headlights. At this point, I hadn’t seen a fertility specialist nor had I muttered anything about IVF to anyone but God. As I felt the knotting pressure return to my throat, I managed to squeeze out a response that I couldn’t talk about it right now. I could not believe that God had responded to my prayer with the speed of an Instant Message.
I’ll be honest: It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but I knew that I had my answer.
As my husband and I set out on our journey on the road toward IVF, we discovered a lot of disappointment. My husband and fertility doctor convinced me to try several months of other fertility treatments first before moving towards IVF. Against my better judgment (and exercising my free will), I gave in and pursued the other options.

The decision to try other treatments led to months of disappointing no’s and even a hopeful yes that resulted in an early pregnancy loss. I could have resented my doctor, my husband, and even myself for the delay, for losing the pregnancy, for going against the sign I had from God.
I didn’t, and here’s why.
Those months leading up to IVF were the most life changing. The delay they provided was necessary for me to gain the strength and endurance I would need to be ready for IVF. Through the trials, I began to understand the fertility world better and what it meant to fight for a miracle I didn’t even know yet.
When my husband and I finally submitted to God’s will for our future family and embarked on our IVF journey, our experience changed dramatically.
From day one of starting IVF, we got what I like to call green lights.
We were able to start IVF immediately. Before I could allow myself to even second guess my decision, I was already receiving calendars and prescriptions from my IVF nurses to begin the process.
As we began injections, I said to my husband, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if God had us go through IVF ultimately to create more healthy babies than we needed for ourselves so that we could give other people the opportunity to have a family who couldn’t make their own?”
Little did I know the results that were on the horizon.
As I was discharged from my egg retrieval surgery, they told me that the doctor had extracted 40 eggs from my body. To keep things in perspective, in a normal month a woman (who doesn’t suffer from infertility) typically releases one egg. So, my number was outstanding. The doctor would be in contact with us over the course of the next month letting us know how we were progressing.

A new green light came during each phone call. I couldn’t believe it. I had never been on the receiving end of good news for the past three and half years. My husband and I ended up with 23 embryos (babies). 23! We had planned on having three children if we were fortunate enough, which now meant that we would have an abundant number to donate to embryo donor lists.
After going over our results, our doctor informed my husband and me that our fertility issues were inconclusive and, in fact, placed us in a high fertility category that they see only in egg and sperm donors. Which, as a woman of faith, means only one thing to me.
This was God’s will for our life. This was our purpose in His overall plan.
As we continued to follow God’s plan, we conceived our daughter on January 17, 2022. She is due on October 5, 2022, unless she decides to make her debut sooner. I am currently 36 weeks pregnant, and God has blessed us with a pregnancy filled with many green lights.
I know this story is about IVF, but the truth is that my personal story with IVF is about faith, obedience, and a growing abiding relationship with God—trusting that His plan may not always seem clear while going through a trial but having the faith and endurance to see it through.
I look forward to the day that I get to look in the eyes of the miracle that we fought so hard for these past 3 1/2 years and say to her, “Welcome to the world my precious angel baby. You were worth the wait.”