Overcoming infertility means having the right people in your corner: One family’s journey

Overcoming infertility means often means adding new terminology to your personal lexicon. Chemical pregnancy. Clomid. PCOS. HSG. IUI. IVF. Terminology Leigh Ann Geiger and her husband Will Geiger are all too familiar with. The journey can be long and arduous, so it’s critical to have the right support—especially when it comes to your fertility specialist. Fortunately, the Geigers found Dr. Long to assist them.

After about a year of trying to get pregnant, several Clomid cycles, countless trips to her regular OB, and two chemical pregnancies, Leigh Ann’s friends urged her to contact Dr. Long.

“The people in my life who had used Dr. Long as their reproductive specialist were insistent about us using him. Some even offered to contact Dr. Long for me! That was definitely a good sign,” she said.

Valentine’s Day of 2018 was the date of her first appointment at ACRM. “Dr. Long was different from the very beginning—he made us feel so comfortable. There was never a sense that we were being rushed and we felt comfortable immediately, which is definitely a testament to how incredible the experience was at his office.”

Through testing, Dr. Long determined that Leigh Ann’s fallopian tubes were both completely blocked. During her procedure to remove the blockages, Dr. Long discovered that Leigh Ann had Stage III Endometriosis.

“I had no symptoms of Endometriosis, so I was grateful that Dr. Long was able to go in during that surgery and help my body get to a place where it would be able to conceive,” she said.

After she healed from her surgery, Leigh Ann had her first IUI in May of 2018, then another the following month. She became pregnant, then suffered a miscarriage. The next step was to begin INVOCELL, a fertility treatment option where eggs and sperm are combined in a state-of-the-art, FDA-approved INVOCELL device. The device is then placed inside the vagina, allowing for fertilization and incubation to occur. After this incubation period, the device is removed from the body and the quality and quantity of the embryos that have developed are examined. Embryos are then transferred to the uterus for the highest possible chance of success.

By July of 2018, Leigh Ann had started on the medication used to stimulate the growth of multiple eggs for the INVOCELL treatment. “We moved fairly quickly—going from one option to the next as we needed to. Dr. Long is so good at reading his patients, seeing their process, and really understanding their timelines. It can be emotionally and physically exhausting, but every step of the way my husband and I felt so supported and so heard.”

Leigh Ann had a positive pregnancy test in August of 2018. On April 10, 2019, at 11:57am, she and her husband welcomed their son, Wilson Price Geiger, into the world.

The gratitude Leigh Ann and her husband feel toward the team at ACRM is immeasurable. “Infertility is a really hard journey. I can handle the ‘no’s,’ but the ‘maybe’s’ and ‘yes’s, then no you’re not’s’ felt really impossible,” she explains. “It’s important to have the right people in your corner. Dr. Long and Karen and the entire staff were just so supportive and accessible. They understood what we were going through, and they have truly become our family through this process.”

Leigh Ann stands in awe of her son daily. “He was so very wanted, and I can’t help but look at him and just think, ‘I can’t believe you’re mine.’”

After having experienced fertility issues personally, Leigh Ann urges women to advocate for themselves. “I wish I would’ve realized that you don’t have to wait a certain amount of time before contacting a reproductive specialist,” she says. “You always hear that it has to be a year’s worth of trying before you can seek out fertility treatment, but there really is no magic number of months to wait. Be your own advocate. Find an expert that suits your needs—seek out a specialist, ask questions, and don’t be afraid to make the medical professionals explain things to you.”

She is also emphatic about finding outside support to help you move through your fertility journey. “It’s so important to find a support group or a church group full of people who understand what you’re going through. You don’t have to go through it alone.”

If you’re ready to take the next step in your fertility journey, please click here to schedule an appointment or call 205-307-0484 today.