1 in 10 women have PCOS. Around 50% of those with PCOS have had to visit two (or more!) healthcare providers before being properly diagnosed with PCOS. Megan is one of those women. This is her journey through a delayed PCOS diagnosis, medicated cycles, IUI, and finally, IVF.

Some people dream of having twins. Some even enter into the fertility treatment process hoping for twins. But no matter what, finding out that you're pregnant with multiples is a shock! In this special Illume Fertility family story, Stephanie shares her journey through unexplained infertility, a high-risk pregnancy, and creating her family of four.

One of our favorite things about helping families grow is witnessing the diversity - both in what each patient's version of success looks like, and what each family looks like. No two families are exactly the same, and we believe that uniqueness is part of what makes each story so beautiful. In this blog, former Illume Fertility patient and single mom by choice Alison shares her journey through fertility struggles, an unexpected divorce, and choosing to add another baby to her family as a newly solo parent.

One of the most beautiful parts about family building is that no two stories are exactly alike. There are so many different paths to parenthood: in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, adoption, donor conception, and others. In this story, two dads share the surrogacy experience from start to finish - in their own words.

As I sit here assembling my daughter’s scrapbook with Mother’s Day in the air, the onslaught of picture-driven memories reminds me what a wild year it has been. My daughter, Emily, we’ll call her, is just one year old now, and I think back to last Mother’s Day when I held my teeny, tiny newborn for the first time. A true gift after miscarriage, fertility struggles, and ultimately, IVF. Let’s be clear, here - I am NOT a scrapbooker. This is hard work for me, and I don’t really enjoy the act of it. Do I enjoy seeing the progression of my daughter’s first year of life, from squishy newborn to stumbling almost-toddler? Sure! But I don’t enjoy the stickers and the exclamation points and the glue…in fact, I’ve decided to go the old school route of scrapbooking. I bought the same style of scrapbook that my mother used for all of our scrapbooks. She had four of us, and she managed to create multiple volumes for each child. My mother was the original anti-scrapbooker who mastered scrapbooking. With four kids and a full-time job, she didn’t have time for 3D stickers and fru-frus. She swore by the good ol’ cellophane peel-back style photo books where you slap down a photo and voila, it sticks. You can write a caption...or not. You can add some flare…or not. You can smooth out the wrinkles in the cellophane…or not. She figured it out, so the pressure is on. I only have one child right now, after all.

Like so many things in life, our expectations of what family building is going to look like may differ greatly from our reality. For our patient Angela, even though she knew that fertility treatment was going to be part of her story from the start, there were still some surprises along the way. We are so grateful to Angela for openly sharing her journey and for demonstrating the power of perseverance and believing in yourself. Read the full story in her own words below.

You’re done. Fertility treatments, over. Finished. Adoption is not a choice for you. It just isn’t. Fostering a child, nope. No judgement on anyone who continues, it’s just that you know that you are done. Having a child was a lifelong dream and you’ve accepted, begrudgingly or not, that it’s not happening and that you know that it’s time for you to accept it. But come on, childfree by choice? It wasn’t a choice; it was inflicted on you. You didn’t weigh the options, balancing having a child with not having a child and choose the latter. You didn’t flip a coin and let that make your decision.