Meet Our advocates

---

Hi, my name is Chelsea Spry and my husband is Jason Spry. We grew up in the Germantown/Collierville, TN area and met 12 years ago. We got married in 2015 and decided to enjoy the newlywed phase of marriage before trying for children, but if we got pregnant, then we got pregnant! 

I have always wanted to be a mama and he has always been wonderful with children so I knew that a big family would one day be in our future! However, that has NOT been easy! I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility.

My name is Jorgianna and my husband is Wesley VonBuskirk. We live in Union City, TN.

Hear my heart.

I've prayed about this. I've cried about this. I have been unable to sleep in the middle of the night thinking about this.

 Hi Everyone! I'm Katie and my husband is Andrew and we live in Murfreesboro, TN. We have been married since January of 2017. In the spring of 2019, we decided it was time for us to begin trying to have a baby. We knew it may take a while since I was diagnosed with PCOS in college but imagine our surprise when we conceived in our second month of trying! We were ecstatic and over the moon happy.

At 16 weeks, we found out we were having a little boy who we named Ollie James but our hearts were broken at 22 weeks when we learned our son no longer had a heartbeat.

We are residents of Nashville, Tennessee and are both first responders. We met back in 2013 while working as dispatchers at the same center. We didn't start dating until 2015. Once we began dating everything moved pretty quickly, it was like we both just knew this was our forever. We dated for two years before getting married in 2017.  We agreed to start trying to grow our family after the first year, but we both thought something could be wrong because we had never prevented pregnancy. Since Harley had two daughters from his previous marriage I always thought that my irregular cycles would be the culprit. 

My name is Melissa Salentine, and I met my husband Ben, in eighth grade at Collierville Middle School. We dated all through high school and college, and we were married in November 2009, so we will celebrate 13 years of marriage this fall. Right after our wedding, I decided to go back to grad school for my Master’s degree. With working full time and being in school, we decided it would be best to wait a little while before we started growing our family. After graduation, we knew we were ready and we were so excited to begin our journey to parenthood. The timing seemed perfect. Our lives, up until this point, had seemed to fit into this “perfect timeline”. We graduated from college, started “real” jobs, saved some money, got married, bought a house, I finished my master’s degree, and we just knew we were ready for children.

But, that’s when the “perfect” timeline came to an abrupt halt and we learned that our timing was not exactly God’s timing. 

Hey there! I’m Savannah, my husband’s name is Laine, and we’re the Rounsaville’s. We got married in September of 2019 on our lunch break in a records room of our local Court House.

We were so anxious to get married, start our lives together, and build a family. Little did we know, God would be taking us on a very spiritual journey.

It was a harsh reality, but we were determined to make it happen. My husband re-enlisted so we could afford it and a few months later started IVF. A week of shots and hormones, going crazy we found out I wasn't responding to meds and it was determined that I would not be able to have genetic children.  My entire life and dreams crumbled and I didn't know how I was going to decide what to do next. We could use donor embryos, we could privately adopt or we could foster. We did lots of research, made lots of calls and ultimately decided that experiencing pregnancy was important and went on to find our perfect egg donor.

Megan was diagnosed with infertility as a result of PCOS and started medication to help ovulation while TJ had some testing done. TJ’s test results showed that we were dealing with male factor infertility as well and the medicated cycles were brought to a jarring halt. 

Even after a repair surgery, we were told IVF was our best option of getting pregnant.

We got married on October 19, 2019, and have been together since September 1st, 2015. On December 26th, 2016, I found out I was pregnant. The next month I got scheduled with the OBGYN for an ultrasound. 

When they did an ultrasound I could tell something was wrong, but they just told me to come back in a couple weeks...at that second ultrasound came the words that felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest, there was no heartbeat. I was absolutely heartbroken.

Pregnancy loss was one part of infertility we felt had escaped us. Still, even now it feels surreal writing these words. At our 16 week appointment, we found out we had lost our baby. I don’t want my heart to ache feeling like my family isn’t complete, 

I want my body to work the way it was intended to work. I am sure others look at my family and struggle to understand.. but she has biological children. 

While TJ and I are grateful to be starting our IVF journey this month, it’s hard to shake the thought that money is literally dictating who can have a child and who can’t. And that needs to change.

We have our first appointment at the fertility clinic this month and while we are very excited, we are scared. We are scared about costs, how much longer we must be patient, how much more my body is going to have to endure and ultimately the fear of it never happening.

I have PCOS and Hunter has low count and mobility. We are one in six experiencing both male and female factors of infertility.

We have our first appointment at the fertility clinic this month and while we are very excited, we are scared. We are scared about costs, how much longer we must be patient, how much more my body is going to have to endure and ultimately the fear of it never happening.

We endured 18 medicated cycles and 3 failed IUIs. After our last failed IUI, we took a break from treatments and began to truly think about our options ahead. We were told that IVF would likely be effective, but the cost of it deterred this teacher and police officer from pursuing it. 

Because Tennessee's insurance companies are not mandated to cover infertility costs, we were going to have to pay for IVF completely out-of-pocket, after already spending tens of thousands of dollars on treatments thus far. 

I could really go into detail but it will be so much more about the frustration regarding the ups and downs and the heartache at times. We know that we cannot give up and we must continue to walk this walk. 

That is why my heart is to be an advocate for women who are going through the same process, heartache and who cannot afford even the things that we have been able to afford this far by the grace of God. For the other women and the other couples that cannot afford any treatment, I want to be a help to those women in any way that I can...

After one month of thyroid meds, I had my first confirmed OVULATORY cycle! We were over the moon! As I tell people about our story, they circle back to adoption. Usually the conversation goes like this, “So you’re trying to conceive but also trying to adopt?” Or, “Are you still going to adopt if you get pregnant?” To those of you that may be thinking this as well, we want you to know that adoption is NOT less than pregnancy. We absolutely will pursue both. It is our family! We pray that pregnancy is an option for us. 

In February 2019 we had our egg retrieval, where they retrieved 14 eggs,  5 of which made it to be frozen. In March we had our FET, transferring 2 beautiful embryos. In April, we FINALLY got that positive test, and blood work confirmed. I was pregnant! I developed a subchorionic hematoma that landed me in the ER. I was bleeding so much I thought I was having a miscarriage. It was there, at the ER, that we found out both embryos took, we were pregnant with TWINS.
Today, we have a beautiful 17 month old daughter, Rowan. Rowan’s twin, Harper, passed away shortly after birth. My girls were born at only 23 weeks.  It took 8 long years, but our dreams finally came true.

We were both extremely overweight. We tried anyways. We had no luck. We assumed I was the problem. You don’t really hear about male infertility. So we assumed. Well you know what they say about assuming. I did numerous tests and took numerous rounds of clomid. Still no luck. We got referred to a urologist. My husband had a sperm count of zero. We were crushed. We decided to take a break for a while from trying. My husband decided to have weight loss surgery. He was over 600 pounds. He had his surgery in May of 2018. We started going to the fertility specialist about six months after his surgery. They did a sperm count. He had a count of 100,000. 

I understand that most posts about fertility/infertility are typically from a female perspective and that is just fine with me. But I’m going to switch gears and speak from a new view - mine 

Within the first year of our marriage, we noticed we were not getting pregnant. I made an appointment with my OB/GYN. That is when the journey began...

We feel grateful to be able to sell our house and use the funds to pay for IVF. We also feel angry and frustrated that we do not live in a state that requires insurance coverage for IVF. 

We've been waiting and preparing to hold our baby in our arms for 7 years. We have a history of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies resulting in the loss of both fallopian tubes, elevated antiphospholipid antibodies, and pericentric inversion of chromosome 9.

We married in 2017 and have been battling infertility for a little over 2.5 years now. After a year of trying, we were referred to Fertility Associates of Memphis and haven fallen in the category of unexplained infertility. 

We endured two nonviable pregnancies and one failed embryo transfer. We discovered that Sarah is on the fence for antiphospholipid syndrome, so treatment for that was added to our protocol. We watched our siblings’ and friends’ families continue to grow. 

Walking into this physical he was the healthiest person I knew – even that day his labs looked perfect, he looked great, felt great, but his doctor quietly palpated a mass in his abdomen. An in-office ultrasound turned into an emergent CT...

I never had regular cycles my whole life. We decided in 2013 that we would "see what happens", which is funny when you don't have periods. In the spring of 2014, I talked to my OB at the time and she casually mentioned that I might have PCOS. 

Almost a year after being married we began trying for a family, but things just weren’t right. After 8 months of TTC and numerous pregnancy tests, we were still at square 1, so I began “the conversation” with my doctor

We’ve been together since 2006 and have been married since 2012. Kyle and I struggled with infertility for 4.5+ years and will continue to struggle to complete our family.

We decided we would wait a few years before we started trying to have a baby. Within 2 years, we were ready to start trying. One year went by - two years went by...

Two and a half years after we married we began trying to conceive. After an early miscarriage, in October of 2014, Andrew was referred to an urologist where he was diagnosed with varicoceles