The cherry wood table and multi-colored dining chairs were no match for what was inside the brown paper bag. Cher Kimbrough tips the bag on its side to expose the contents – dozens and dozens of needles and hormone injections she uses daily.
“This is all of my treatment medication,” she said. “I’ve never been afraid of needles, but even if I were, the pain would be worth it.”
Kimbrough is one of many women in the US who struggle with infertility, defined as not being able to conceive after one year of unprotected sex, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and will go great lengths to become a mother.
Kimbrough, 40, said she’s wanted to have a child since her early 30s, during her previous marriage.
“I just assumed once I was married, I would start having kids but he wasn’t ready to have kids. He knew I was all about kids but when we were going to have one wasn’t discussed,” she explained.
She said she remembers being upset when friends became pregnant, which led her to question her then husband about her aspirations to become a mother. Despite her desire, the couple never tried to conceive and eventually the marriage ended.
At age 36, she met her current boyfriend, Samuel Hahn-Conti and the couple attempted to conceive.
“I just thought, you had sex and you got pregnant. I remember thinking the first month, ‘yes, this is going to happen,’ and then it didn’t. The second month the same thing happened and after a year went by, I knew something was wrong because we weren’t doing anything to prevent it,” she noted.
After initial concern, the couple decided to focus on addressing possible issues with Kimbrough’s reproductive system such as completing different medical tests and a laparoscopy surgery in December 2014 to rid of the light endometriosis she experienced. After more attempts to conceive without success, in October 2015, Hahn-Conti was seen by medical professionals to check fertility.
“It was a very difficult experience for us. He is a good man. A good overall human being and we just really wanted everything to work out,” said Kimbrough.
The couple attempted intrauterine insemination (IUI), the injection of semen into the vagina or uterus other than by sexual intercourse, in November and December 2015 without success. Right before the December procedure, Kimbrough decided to take a break from her medications and doctor’s appointments because she knew if the procedure didn’t work, it would be tough, due to the upcoming holiday.
“I cried so bad. He had to pick me up from the floor. That’s how upset I was that I still wasn’t pregnant,” she explained. “You go through the routine month after month and that hurts but when you take an extreme measure like we had, we’re talking $4,000 twice on a pregnancy that hadn’t happened…it was hard.”
Soon after the couple discussed In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), the process of fertilization by manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish, and then transferring the embryo to the uterus.
According to the American Pregnancy Association, “In the United States, the live birth rate for each IVF cycle started is approximately 33-36 percent for women ages 35 to 37. Although the procedure is growing in popularity, the average cost for this procedure is $12,000, which was something Kimbrough, a schoolteacher and Hahn-Conti, a landscaper had to consider when making their decision.
“All of the loans I could have taken out, I did and they were used for the pregnancies that didn’t happen. I knew we needed $20,000 and that’s when I came up with the idea of fundraising,” she told the Recorder.
Kimbrough completed two walks: Baby Steps for Fertility and A Mother’s Waiting Heart, two garage sales, which she referred to as The Lost Stork and an art show, all within three months. By May, the funds needed to complete the IVF treatment was raised due to the couple discovering a doctor who agreed to perform the treatment at a lower price.
CNY Fertility, a facility she discovered through her social media following, located over 700 miles away from Indianapolis in upstate New York is where Kimbrough chose to have her IVF procedure completed.
Before heading to the big apple, she wrote messages on her car windows reading, “Traveling over 700 miles to see the stork” and “Pray that we soon have a baby on board.”
“I did all the writing on my car because I wanted to scream out about what women are dealing with. I wanted to be a voice for those women who are dealing with this and not speaking out,” she said.
During her two-week stay, 38 of Kimbrough’s eggs were retrieved, she was given the brown bag of medications, and intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a single sperm injected directly into an egg, was performed.
Of the 38 eggs retrieved, four of them were fertilized.
“It blows my mind,” said Kimbrough with a big smile. “Right now they are frozen. They watch them for three days and on the third day they do a final report. The doctors told us they were going to transfer three eggs the next day.”
The doctors decided to do a frozen transfer versus a fresh transfer. The frozen process allows for the fertilized eggs to be inserted whenever Kimbrough is ready. The doctors wanted her to settle back in at home, allow stress to rid the body and her cycle to begin before the transfer.
Along with her journey to motherhood, Kimborugh is pushing state legislation to learn the importance of health insurance covering expenses such as IVF and IUI. She said it’s not that Indiana is unable to accept insurance for these expenses; it hasn’t happened because women aren’t speaking out about their struggles.
“You have to come out of your infertility closet because we have to get insurance mandates so other generations won’t have to deal with this,” she said. “Another part of this is, Midwest Fertility Clinic is located at 126th Street and Meridian, where everyone in that area can afford treatments. They planted themselves in a million dollar community but what about the rest of us? It insures the wealthy class gets lucky on this journey.”
Dr. Robert Kiltz is the founder and director of CNY Fertility, Central New York’s first successful IVF center said his center is built around affordable treatment along with high quality service.
“Everyone 18 to 30 years old probably says they don’t want to have children, but when they get in their 30’s a light bulb goes off. By the time both men and women are ready for children, you find that 15 percent of the population is infertile, either they can’t get pregnant or are getting pregnant and miscarrying,” he said. “About 85 percent of them don’t have access or don’t seek fertility care for reasons that are probably diverse but there is very little fertility coverage for those facing these devastating circumstances. For some reason, people don’t think being infertile is a disease.”
He said most people can’t afford the price tag for the IVF treatment which limits the help people receive. This is one of the reason’s Kiltz has kept his prices affordable over the last 20 years. The average cost for an IVF treatment at CNY is $3,900, according to Kiltz and that includes available financing with no acquired interest. He noted that his clientele is very diverse, attracting cultures from all over the world.
Many patients find no need to actually come into the facility because they’ve been coached over the phone or over video chat on improving their diet and incorporating holistic remedies into their lifestyle.
“I’m convinced our high carbohydrate diets are causing people to develop inflammation, cancers, heart disease and infertility,” said Kiltz. “We don’t turn anyone away due to their race, gender, marital status, size or their income.”
Currently Kimbrough’s cycle has begun and she has started taking medication to prepare her body for the transfer, but she isn’t exactly sure when it will take place. By her calculations, she said the transfer could start sometime this week or next week.
“The publicity part of this was hard,” she said. “I did not want to go public with this because its very personal but for me, I knew if I wanted to raise money, I was going to need my community to help me.”
As for the future, Kimbrough said she is thankful to have gone through her infertility challenges as they have helped shape her outlook on life.
“I’m going to be such as awesome mother, and I don’t think I would have been if I would’ve gotten pregnant the traditional way. Dealing with infertility has striped away a lot of things that needed to be stripped. I’m very humble and patient, where I wasn’t before. I understand something that I didn’t before and that only happened through the struggle.”
To follow Cher Kimbrough’s journey to motherhood, follow her on Instagram @prayersforbaby.
