With the help of IVF American family blessed times three

27.04.2015

In the summer of 2009, Eric and Melissa Richardson got the news the young couple hoped to hear for years.They were going to be parents. And doctors had even more stunning news: three little ones were on the way.

After five years of trying to have children, the assisted reproductive method known as In Vitro Fertilization — or IVF — had worked, doctors told them. Their life and expectations of parenthood changed that fateful day.

On March 24, 2010, the couple welcomed their triplet sons — Brody, Conor and Logan — into the world. The boys are now 5-year-old preschoolers. Raising the trio is both a challenge and a pleasure, the couple says.

“If it takes a village to raise one kid, it takes a metropolis to raise three of them. We had a lot of help and we still do — and thank God we do,” Eric said. “If we didn’t live near our family, we’d be moving back. It would be impossible to do it by ourselves.”

According to a January report issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, only one in 899 pregnancies in the United States results in triplets. In about 80 percent of triplet pregnancies, the parents used fertility assistance and many specifically desired to have three children, the data shows.

After five years of failed attempts using fertility drugs, ovarian drilling and intrauterine insemination the Richardsons were just hoping for a successful pregnancy. Finally, they tried the last step before adoption, In Vitro Fertilization, an expensive process in which a woman’s egg is fertilized outside the body and then is placed back inside her.

“The boys have made our journey worth every minute,” Melissa said. “If I only knew during those five years of trying that the end of our journey would make us a family of five, I may have burst with excitement.”

Based on: citizensvoice.com