Visiting with Dr. Stillman!

Last week I received a call from the marketing division at Shady Grove Fertility Center informing me that they had this new website where doctors and patients can share their "joy" stories of successful treatments within the past twenty years, since they are celebrating 20 years and 27,000 births!!!  And the best part of all, Dr. Stillman decided that our family was his "joy" story for the past 30 years+ of his practice in infertility! I was so thrilled and so honored!

If you haven't heard the story of how Dr. Stillman is a legend in our family, here is the gist:

It took my parents 13 years to conceive a child; me. My mom had many surgeries with severe endometriosis, lots of reconstructive work and a very small chance of ever having a child. Of course 25-30 years ago, technology was very different than today, especially when it came to IVF! IVF was just in the very, very beginning stages. Dr. Stillman was still a surgeon then at GW, and preformed my mom's last four surgeries to clear endo out and to try and fix all of her issues. And so my mom was placed 4th on the list with Dr. Stillman for IVF, and she miraculously got pregnant the month prior, with me. She had a less than 10% chance of ever having another child and five years later my sister was born.  So we would not be here if it wasn't for Dr. Stillman.

And then 5 years ago, after an appendectomy, I was diagnosed with endometriosis also. After a surgery in 2009, I was told I had a semi-good chance of having children, even with having stage-IV endo, but it needed to be right away and my best chances would be after I had surgery each year to clean the endo out. Well, when Tim and I got married in May 2009, I had been off of birth control since January and so we started "trying" even before we were married, and in July 2009, we went to meet Dr. Stillman. Since I already had a severe diagnosis, I didn't have to wait the normal amount of time before seeing a fertility specialist. Dr. Stillman was speechless, a patient of a patient! It was really awesome to meet the man who helped my parents and little did I know how much he would help my own possibilities of a family. Dr. Stillman said that our best chance of having a baby would be to do IVF. It is the best approach with dealing with the pain of endo and surpassing all the issues that endo creates when trying to have a baby. Little did I know, how right he was. After many, many failed attempts at IUI's we finally decided to go for IVF in April/May 2010, and with two embryos and a 1% chance of triplets....here we are today with our three beautiful 7.5 month old little girls, plus another miracle surprise baby on the way! I'd say we are quiet the success story too!

Needless to say, Dr. Stillman will be forever a part of our family! I am so honored he chose our family story to be his "joy" story! We were invited to come and take a picture with him for the website and it will be posted at Family Day 2011 in September!

Thank you for all the wonderful help in our family, Dr. Stillman!!!

The girls were of course the highlight of the marketing office! Everyone was so sweet!! So here we all are, with our NEW stroller too: