My husband and I have been trying to conceive for over 7 years now. We have been seeing a specialist for a little over a year.

I have been for every test under the sun, and earlier this year a simple blood test for my husband determined our future. He was diagnosed with Klinefelter Syndrome. Something we have never heard of, and most doctors don’t even seem that familiar with. The option of being able to conceive naturally will unfortunately never be an option for us. Our only option of having a family is IVF.

Luckily, my husband still has some sperm in his samples, most men in his situation don’t. So, he will not need to have surgery to search for sperm. Since he has very few, he has to start freezing sperm multiple times so we can have a solid back up in case they don’t have enough the day of the procedure.

The costs are substantial as I’m sure you can understand. There is no guarantee it will work, but we are hopeful and grateful that there are medical options that can help us on our journey of building a family.

It is extremely unfortunate there is no current funding to help assist people on this overwhelming and stressful journey. My husband and I also both have what we thought were pretty good benefits through our employers, however they do not cover fertility treatments or even the medication needed.

I went for a pre-IVF ultrasound to make sure everything looked good before treatment and they ended up finding a polyp that needed to be removed before treatment. I could have waited months for the “free” procedure or pay for a specialized treatment that they were able to get me in within a few weeks. So, I opted for that, paid out of pocket, and am now recovering from that before we can begin IVF.

All this time spent already has also resulted in missed worked, resulting in reduced paycheques. We are doing our best to save as much money as we can to be able to pay for the treatment but are only halfway there, so we will still have to take out a loan to cover the rest.