BRANDON, Fla. — The last full week of April is National Infertility Awareness Week. And it's something that impacts far more people than most realize. The World Health Organization estimates one in six people are impacted by infertility.
When Sara Durante took a pregnancy test in 2014, she was so excited. She and her husband were discussing baby names and making plans to decorate the nursery. When she went in for an ultrasound, everything changed.
"They said, there is no baby, you have ovarian cancer. So it was a double whammy," Durante said.
She says she'll never know if the pregnancy was a false positive. When she had her ultrasound, instead of a fetus, doctors found a 20-centimeter tumor.
"It was heartbreaking," she said with a sigh.
Durante underwent chemo. A year later, she resumed her journey to motherhood. In 2019, she reached out to a fertility clinic for help.
Her doctor, Dr. Shayne Plosker at Shady Grove Fertility Clinic, started Durante with intrauterine insemination. Testing was conducted, and the results came back normal.
"We went through many embryo transfers without success," Plosker said. "We ended up really having to pull out all the stops."
That didn't work. Then, the journey with invitro fertilization began.
"The first one that we did did not work. It was, we had an implantation failure. And then we did another back-to-back, and we had the same result," Durante said.
Durante was getting ready to call it quits. Giving herself shots and home, and dropping everything to make it to appointments more than an hour away, she said this process was weighing heavily on her.
"It can be frustrating because as much as you don't want something to be wrong, every test you do, when it comes back normal, you're like, man, I wish something was wrong, so I had an answer," she said. "As much as I want a baby, it's not worth it to be unhappy every day."
After a whole lot of tests, including genetic testing of the embryo, and seven rounds of IVF, Durante got pregnant.
"We finally got our positive pregnancy test, and it was unreal," she said. "The last embryo. The very last try."
Durante's son Myles is now 2 months old.
"I still can't believe that he's here," Durante said. "Myles is two months old, and he is the love of our life."
Now, Durante is sharing her journey of infertility to let others know, it's not only okay to talk about it, it's encouraged.
"Yeah. I think the hardest part, and the reason a lot of people don't talk about it is because when you're going through it, you question if you did something wrong. If you could have, you know, ate more pineapple core, because that they say that helps, or, you know, kept your feet warm, or, you know, put your legs up, or, you know, some crazy thing," she said.
"So we blame ourselves a lot of times, even though it's not our fault. There's nothing we could have done, but we do blame ourselves. And I think that's why we don't talk about it as much," she added.
Over the decades, fertility specialists have seen more and more people seek treatment.
"There was a time maybe 15 or 20 years ago where there were maybe 50,000 IVF cycles a year in the United States," Plosker said. "It's probably now closer to 250,000 cycles a year."
Plosker said oftentimes, people don't go to a specialist because they assume it's not an option they can afford. His office and many fertility clinics work to make options that are affordable and search for what could be covered by insurance.
"Go see a fertility physician because a fertility practice is going to be set up to be able to explore benefits, give you a fully comprehensive answer to all these questions," he said.
In moments when the journey to motherhood feels hopeless, Durante's advice is to not give up.
"It can happen, even if you think that it will not. I would have never thought that after seven transfers it would finally happen for me, and it did. So just keep trying, keep looking for answers, and advocate for yourself," she said.
Malique Rankin is a general assignment reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. You can email her story ideas at mrankin@10tampabay.com and follow her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.