I’ve known Kelcie for 13 years. We used to play games together on Sundays when we were both newly married and I helped watch Jason for her when he was a baby before I had my own children. Kelcie and Dalton Checketts have been married for seven years and they enjoy parenting their son Jason that Kelcie gave birth to in her first marriage. Kelcie and Dalton enjoy living in a more rural area and Kelcie truly
loves tending to her 20+ chickens. She works at a local flower shop; her personality is as bright and beautiful as the flowers she takes care of. Dalton enjoys working with his hands, learning new things, and carrying out different projects. Right now, he is interested in learning about greenhouses. Kelcie and Dalton planned to have children
after they were married, but they have been unable to get pregnant. Though Kelcie and Dalton’s experiences are unique to them, they also represent an entire community of others with shared or similar experiences. In an article detailing infertility in the United States, we learn, “…after 1 year of having unprotected sex, 12% to 15% of couples are unable to conceive, and after 2 years, 10% of couples still have not had a live-born baby. (In couples younger than age 30 who are generally healthy, 40% to 60% are able to conceive in the first 3 months of trying.)” ("How Common is Infertility?", 2018). Based on these statistics, there are more people struggling with the invisible problem of infertility than one might think.
Kelcie had no problem getting pregnant with her, now, 11-year old Jason, so she thought nothing of it when she and her husband Dalton wanted to have children of their own. After trying for a year naturally with no results, they began to wonder if something larger was at play. “In March 2015, Dalton went in for sperm testing,” Kelcie reports, “and we found out that he had low sperm count, and low motility. Essentially, the few sperm that were there didn’t swim very well…”. After two years of waiting and testing, the Checketts’ and their doctors had a plan to move into the future with. The results of their testing helped them determine they did not need to try using hormones. Instead, their action plan began with an IUI (Intra-Uterine Insemination) in October of 2017. An IUI allowed a sample from Dalton to be placed through Kelcie’s cervix and into her uterus with the goal of being as close to the fallopian tubes as possible. Kelcie remembers from her experience,
“We used a few medications to help my body ovulate a few extra eggs, and a trigger shot to make sure they ovulated at the right time. Trying to remember back, we think Dalton’s numbers were around 1 million sperm (average is around 20 million). No luck”. Kelcie said going into these interventions, she really tried not to get her hopes up. She reflects, “I didn’t want to have my heart broken, but it happened anyway and there was nothing I could do to change that”. Although she tried to build walls to protect her from feeling the pain, grief would companion Kelcie and Dalton after each unsuccessful attempt at becoming pregnant.
The next month at the doctor’s office, completely prepared for another IUI, Kelcie mentioned to her doctor that she had some neck pain. Women trying to become pregnant are constantly aware of health issues because their health can also affect the health of the fetus. Kelcie says, “He took a look at my neck, right as we were walking down the hall to do the procedure, and he said I had shingles. Normally this is a condition that happens in people over 50, but it can be brought on by stress, lucky me. The doctor told me to go get tested immediately, and I was instructed to be very careful NOT to get pregnant that month. Shingles could cause birth defects, and we were devastated. No IUI” The order from the doctor was painful. “Being told not to do something that we were actively trying to do and paying money to do and then we couldn’t do it, it was a huge slap in the face”. They longingly waited for the next cycle. In addition to mourning the inability to become pregnant, the amount of stress they felt with their IUIs and the pressure to perform well was added upon because Kelcie’s mother had breast cancer. Understandably, Kelcie was increasingly concerned about her mother’s health and wanting to spend time with her. Surely, Kelcie's shingles was an indication that her stress had risen to an unhealthy level.
Unfortunately, the next month was December and Kelcie’s cycle lined up with having the IUI performed on Christmas Day and the office was closed. The Checketts’ waited yet another month. In January, after some time being seen by an acupuncturist, Kelcie was tested to discover her thyroid’s functionality. She was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and later Hashimoto's disease. The Checketts’ realized that Kelcie’s thyroid had played a part in becoming pregnant as well. They took a few months to learn Kelcie’s new health issues and focus on finding a medication that helped. During this time, Kelcie’s mom, Teri, became increasingly ill and the time soon came to say their final goodbyes. Kelcie and her father and three brothers rallied around each other as they spent their last moments with their mother.
On July 10, 2018 Kelcie’s mom passed away. A whole new wave of grief washed over the Checketts’ and continues to do so as they feel her absence. She and Dalton were very invested in Teri’s well-being and fertility wasn’t really on the radar for quite a while. The day before she passed, Kelcie had a loving conversation with her mother. Kelcie says it was, “…about going and finding my babies and sending them to me because they were taking too long.
Now I am not even sure there are any up there. Ugh… I’m crying, and it’s hard.
I hate uncertainty so much, and this is just another thing that is hard to know exactly what is right for our family”. With her new perspective however, Kelcie recognizes, “Had we gotten pregnant in November when I had shingles, I would have either been very very pregnant, or had a newborn at that time [of her mother’s death], and there was no way I would have been able to handle anything else. We were extremely grateful for Heavenly Father’s hand in preventing us from getting pregnant when we were trying everything in our power to do so”.
In September of 2018, Kelcie and Dalton finally felt ready to try again, but without luck. Kelcie remembers, “In October, we gave it our biggest best shot we could. Dalton was about to lose his job, so our insurance was about to be gone. We knew it would be our last chance for a long time. Dalton was on clomid to help his numbers, I had been given all the same medications to help my body ovulate a little extra, and I was also given progesterone just to try absolutely everything. Dalton’s numbers were the best we had ever seen, four million sperm and swimming great! We were so hopeful and excited that this was finally our time. I took pictures with my favorite nurse on the day or the procedure thinking that it would be so cool to have in the baby book.
I took pictures of giving myself shots, and I shared a ton on social media. I was trying to remember everything we did so I would have a great infertility success story. I even recorded myself when I finally took a pregnancy test just so I could look back on that memory.
But we were not pregnant.I thought we had been devastated before.
We updated anyone who had been following us on social media, and asked for respect and not to say something about miracle babies or waiting for God’s Plan. We just wanted support”.
Following that experience, understandably, the Checketts’ needed time to heal. For those that have never struggled with fertility, understanding how difficult it really is when a pregnancy is so desperately wanted and the desire is not met could be a challenge. "This was our last chance," Kelcie describes, "this was all that we could do without spending tens of thousands of dollars...Ok, then we’re not meant to have this happen in this way or maybe not at this time. I feel like I just closed a chapter….and just moved on. I don’t think about it much anymore because my heart just keeps breaking," she says tearing up. Kelcie and Dalton considered using donor sperm for future IUIs, but donor sperm would cost $2,000 per treatment and their insurance had changed and would no longer cover the procedure. Considering IVF (In-Vitro Fertilization) was even tougher. Each cycle would cost between $20,000-$25,000 and also included various invasive procedures. Either way, there was no guarantee that a pregnancy would follow. After discussing, Dalton and Kelcie realized that these options (though they may be the best they had) would force them to use up their mental, emotional, and financial resources with no guarantee and no refunds. In May of last year, the Checketts’ attended an infertility conference. Kelcie reports, “During the conference, the clinic who was putting on the event had all the couples enter to win one round of IVF, free of charge. We did not win. Since then, we have not given fertility treatments another thought. We are now working on enjoying the time we have just the 3 of us, and appreciating our family now, instead of wishing for something different”.
Kelcie and Dalton are incredibly grateful for Jason. Kelcie is always making sure that her decisions about potential siblings for him are what is best. She includes him in her thought processes and wants to know his opinions. Kelcie and Dalton talked in depth about how their experiences with their large families drives their desire for more children and for Jason to experience the bond you have with siblings. When they began trying to have children, Jason was just four years old, and then he continued to get older and older. Pretty soon they recognized that there would be ten years between him and his potential sibling and the bond they had hoped for would be different than if they were able to be closer in age. Still, they are appreciative of the time they have with him and believe that God has a plan.
A challenge they have faced with infertility is understanding just what that plan is for their family. The uncertain and uncontrollable nature of infertility causes Kelcie and Dalton to question whether or not they were even supposed to try for another child, if they are supposed to have more children, or if there is someone already here on Earth meant for their family. They also have a curiosity about what Dalton's child would look like, so even with a sperm donor, they feel it wouldn't really satisfy the desire to have their own child. For Dalton, he has felt strong emotional and mental stress, "I have thoughts that 'I am broken', 'it’s my fault', or 'what’s wrong with me'. I have taken a back seat through a lot of this, other than having to provide the sperm for the IUI’s, it has just been moral support for Kelcie. Being with her for the appointments, holding her hand during ultrasounds, and being the shoulder to cry on when treatments failed". Although I don't want Dalton to feel negatively about himself, I do think that it's important to note that Dalton is not alone in his feelings. These thoughts are commonplace with others that experience infertility.
Dalton shared with me that his family members were all supportive of his and Kelcie's treatments, but none of them had trouble with their own pregnancies so they aren't able to fully understand what they were experiencing. Kelcie and Dalton relived with me the timeline of four of the children in Dalton's family(including Dalton) getting married within five months of each other. Soon after, they would celebrate when one of his siblings would be expecting, but then they would be expecting again, and Dalton and Kelcie were still waiting. It was painful not to be able to share the same news. Though it isn't the case with Dalton's siblings, Kelcie laments, "It does feel unfair because people who should not have children or who don’t want them in general, have them and then we end up with people in the foster care system or abuse, or all of those things". As someone who has struggled staying pregnant, I have certainly felt that way as well and have wondered why a child cannot be placed with me instead.
Though they aren’t actively using medical interventions to become pregnant, the pain and emotion of not having more children is still tender. Kelcie says that she still thinks about what is best for her family often. They have discussed all the options that there are, including adoption. They shared, “As of today, in June 2020, our current thought is that if we were to adopt, we would look for a child that is closer to Jason’s age (he is currently 11) and most likely school age. I am really trying to focus on my job, where being with the flowers makes me happy. Since with adoption we would get to choose, having a child that could be at school while I go to work is something we are considering. But adoption is so daunting because that route [can be] sprinkled with trauma and uncertainty, so we are hesitant to move forward, not to mention the financial things that come with adoption”.
How to Help
With this particular challenge, the people experiencing the trial may not even know what would be helpful. Many people, though good-intentioned, may not realize how they add to an internal battle with infertility. Kelcie advised that there are some couples that feel comfortable talking about their struggles, but there are many more that may not. Respect those that do not want to answer questions. Asking questions about when someone is going to have kids or more kids can sting for the couple that has done near everything in their power to have children. Kelcie adds that it's important people understand that becoming pregnant is largely outside of their control. In addition, Kelcie shared a few other things that can cause unnecessary pain. She implores, “Never make a joke about being pregnant when you are actually not. Those jokes are not funny, and most of the time they bring up pain that is just not necessary. I understand that it’s never intentionally mean-spirited, but DON’T DO IT!” Agreeing to this request indicates a level of consideration for those around you, especially those that may be suffering in silence. A friend that is willing to listen and understand is valuable, but a friend that is willing to continue friendship without needing to know all the details of a trying experience may be even more valuable. Kelcie continues, "When talking with someone who is experiencing any trouble adding children to their family, be kind. Please understand that telling them about the time your sister or your aunt or best friend got pregnant after they took a certain vitamin, ate a certain fruit, or even how often they had sex is not helpful. Telling that person that their struggle is not as bad as someone else's is not helpful. Telling someone who miscarried that 'at least you know you can get pregnant' or 'at least it was not that far along' is not helpful. Please validate their feelings, and just listen if they are up for talking. If they are not ready to talk, don’t push the issue. Just let them know you are a trustworthy friend and ready when they need you... Grief has many forms and people grieve for many reasons. I hate when I hear about friends who have had miscarriages and they are told to get over it. NO! You are allowed to be upset for as long as you need!". Her advice can be carried into many circumstances, not just with infertility. Allowing someone to grieve may be uncomfortable for you, but helps the sufferer feel validated and eases the slamming door of acceptance.
As they have accepted their own experiences, Dalton and Kelcie have had the opportunity to teach more compassion to those around them. Regardless of what the Checketts' have in store for them, sharing their experiences helps bring more awareness about issues relating to infertility and decreases the stigma that can be associated with it. Their courage can help others remember they aren't suffering alone and that there is hope for happiness even when the ideal situation is not possible.
References
How Common is Fertility?. (2018, February 8). NIH. Retrieved from https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/infertility/conditioninfo/common#:~:text=Studies%20suggest%20that%20after%201,had%20a%20live%2Dborn%20baby.&text=(In%20couples%20younger%20than%20age,3%20months%20of%20trying.5)
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