Dr. Phillips couple shares infertility journey, road to parenthood

DR. PHILLIPS  When Matt and Brianne Terry married five years ago, they decided to start a family right away. They didn’t know that, five years later, they would have gone through an uphill battle with infertility, miscarriage and the loss of a child. Despite it all, though, the couple’s message to others and mantra for themselves is the glue for their marriage: Choose love. It is also now their theme as they embark on a different route to parenthood, through domestic adoption. 

“Part of our pastor’s message to us when we got married was ‘choose love,’” Matt said. “Through the tough times, our relationship couldn’t be any stronger than it is because of what we’ve gone through.”

THE STRUGGLE WITH INFERTILITY

The road to parenthood began shortly after they married, when Brianne went to see a doctor before they began trying to start a family. Her doctor told her to go back and see him if she wasn’t pregnant in eight months. 

"We didn’t expect to go into our 21-week ultrasound and find out our little girl didn’t have a heartbeat anymore." - Brianne Terry

When nothing happened, Brianne went back for testing and found out she had blocked fallopian tubes and was not able to naturally get pregnant.

The couple then went to Dr. Milton McNichol in Maitland, who looked over their records and decided to do surgery to attempt to unblock her tubes, but it wasn’t possible, so he removed them. Tubal factor infertility accounts for 20 to 25% of all cases of infertility, and one way to get past it is through IVF.

“IVF was the route we needed to go to be able to start our family,” Matt said. “We didn’t have insurance, so we had to pay everything out of pocket. After the four years we’ve gone through it, we’ve spent well over $30,000 to $35,000 on treatments.”

The couple has since done seven cycles of IVF. The first three were unsuccessful, and a fourth ended in a miscarriage at nine weeks. The two after that were chemical pregnancies.

“At that point, we were consulting with Dr. Sher in Las Vegas,” Brianne said. “He’s one of those guys who thinks outside the box and will do anything he can to help you get and stay pregnant.”

They found a webinar Sher was doing on an autoimmune disorder that involves elevated natural killer cells, which Brianne has. Although there was a three-month waiting list for a consultation with Sher, the Terrys were able to get in to see him in a month. 

Sher made some tweaks to Brianne’s protocols on going forward with the cycle, and it worked. Brianne got pregnant with a baby girl, who they named Whitney. 

But in November 2015, the couple got devastating news at their 21-week ultrasound that Whitney no longer had a heartbeat. Brianne then gave birth to their stillborn daughter.

“We didn’t expect to go into our 21-week ultrasound and find out our little girl didn’t have a heartbeat anymore,” she said.

The loss was devastating and forced them to look over their remaining options and reconsider ways to start a family. Surrogacy was an option, but they were afraid that it would end as it did with Whitney.

“We looked at adoption and said, ‘There will be a happy ending,’” Brianne said.

THE ROAD TO ADOPTION

The grieving process has not been an easy one for the Terrys, but they have found much comfort and made many connections through RESOLVE, a National Infertility Association support group. One friend in the group connected the two to Gift of Life Adoptions in Tampa.

“I scheduled with them on Feb. 11, and we met with them and were given the process and statistics,” Brianne said. “We felt at peace in a way that the stress was lifted off of our shoulders. That night, we filled out paperwork, and she sent back an application and additional documents.”  

Shortly after, they got word that there was a birth mother in Maryland who was looking to give her baby up for adoption. It was the perfect scenario, and the Terrys went through the legal and financial processes. On March 22, they received a call that the birth mother was in labor and needed an emergency Caesarean section. Within 52 minutes of the call, they were on their way to Maryland.

However, the baby boy was born with a severe form of gastroschisis, a birth defect of the abdominal wall in which his intestines were outside of his body. Surgery helped, but doctors did not give the boy many years to live, and the Terrys were forced to make the decision to not go through with the adoption. They lost all of the legal and adoption fees they’d paid in the process.

“Ever since we decided to adopt, we started praying hard about it,” Matt said. “There were signs everywhere that adoption was the right thing. I think my faith has gotten stronger going through that failed adoption, because I was seeing that there were answers and things were happening as I was asking for them. The one thing I think we’ve come to realize in the adoption process is that God is in control.”

Now, as the Terrys move forward and wait again for a child to call theirs, they are tasked with raising the funds to pay for another adoption. Working through an agency, fees can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $35,000.

They have a YouCaring fundraising site and also have held two yard sales with donated items. 

“We’ve been so open about our journey, and it’s a lot of things people don’t talk about,” Brianne said. “There’s no reason to hide behind it because it happens. DNA doesn’t build a family; love builds a family.”

Contact Danielle Hendrix at [email protected].