An IVF Patient's Testimonial

Lene' Larson: We ended up having the final procedure was in vitro. In vitro is the last step in your chance besides surrogacy, finding a different parent to carry a child for you. So it's much more emotional than a physical thing, There's a 50/50 chance of getting pregnant with in vitro, but what they do is they get you all geared up, retrieve as many eggs as they can, take the semen from the husband, put them together, grow them for a few days, then put it back into the woman's body. Now, within this process - I made that sound really simple - but there is a huge emotional roller coaster that goes into the in vitro process because first of all, you don't know if your eggs are going to be any good. Are they going to get any eggs? Are the eggs going to die before they're harvestable? There's a lot of steps there. And then you have the husband's semen. And how many live semen are there going to be, and was it a good take? And then you wait for the days that the embryo is growing, and each day one could not make it, or all of them could not make it. And then there's the process of actually putting it into the woman, and then seeing if it even takes then. And fertility is just really an emotional thing, period. Quint Bowsman: It seems like the in vitro process was all about timing, down to the absolute minute. We would get a call that it was time to come in, and we would have to go right then, which was really exciting because you know it was game time. So it was hope and opportunity. Lene' Larson: I'll tell you for a very emotional and uncomfortable thing, so to speak, you won't find a better place than Heartland to do it with. Each and every staff member from the front desk to when you walk in, to every nurse, to Dr. Maclin, and her partners, they are with you in the mud every time you're in the mud. And they feel, you can feel their joy and their pain every time you have it. They're really tremendous. And Dr. Maclin is such an incredible surgeon that you don't know she's there. She's really, really good. Really good. They become your family during the process. You get to know what's going on in their lives almost as much as anybody in your own family. They know everything that's going on with you, I guess, especially if you're a person like me who's an open book. But yes, the bonds are dear. Quint Bowsman: We ended up at Heartland because we had heard great stories about Heartland, and our experiences with the first round of fertility with our first child were not all positive, and so we decide to try Heartland. And we would never go anywhere else if we had the choice. And we would've done it both times here for sure. Lene' Larson: Yeah, they are something special. The staff is just a class act through and through, and they know what they're doing. They understand the emotional compass of it as well. Dr. Maclin is a woman of grace and a class act and a terrific, terrific medical doctor. I don't think it's often that you find all of those qualities in one person, a physician in particular, and she's got it all. She's world class. Dr. Maclin is world class and we're so, so grateful to know her.