Having a Child Wasn't as Easy as We Thought

Our journey started about six years before I sat down to write this. At 33, I assumed getting pregnant would be straightforward. It was, in a sense — I conceived without much trouble — but I lost that pregnancy twice in a row. The first time, we'd already seen a heartbeat before the embryo stopped developing. The second time, we lost it before a heartbeat ever showed.

After those losses, we had diagnostic testing done, and the results weren't encouraging. With age working against us, we decided to move to IVF. At our first clinic, we cultivated six embryos in total, but none of it went our way: the first transfer (two embryos) failed outright, the second (two embryos) ended in miscarriage, and the third (two embryos) didn't succeed either. We were discouraged enough to step away from treatment for a year. It was a friend's recommendation that eventually brought us to Stork Fertility Center.

Complete It, or Do It Well? Finding My Own "P-Code"

I was 37 at our first consultation. The question our physician asked us wasn't what I expected: did we want to simply complete a pregnancy, or did we want to do it well? He walked us through what Stork calls a "P-Code" — a personalized pregnancy code that estimates, from a patient's age and ovarian reserve, roughly how many eggs it realistically takes to bring home a healthy child.

He also raised something we hadn't considered: if we wanted two children, coming back for a second retrieval later, once I was older still, would likely be harder than doing the groundwork now. His suggestion was to collect enough eggs for two children in this same stretch of treatment, rather than facing the same uphill climb twice. I'll admit I was skeptical of how confident he sounded, but we decided to trust the plan and go for two.

Can One PGT-A-Screened Embryo Really Be Enough?

Because I was under 37, our physician recommended egg pooling — collecting eggs across more than one retrieval cycle and fertilizing them together in a single batch, which helps keep lab costs down compared with treating each retrieval separately. Over about six months, we gathered the number of eggs he'd recommended and ended up with 11 blastocysts.

Given that I'd already had three miscarriages, our physician recommended PGT-A screening (preimplantation genetic testing for chromosomal abnormalities, sometimes still called by its older name, PGS) before any transfer. We sent our three best-looking blastocysts for testing, and all three came back chromosomally normal.

Even so, I kept asking to transfer two embryos at once — I was afraid one alone wouldn't be enough. Our physician held his ground: according to Stork's in-house data, PGT-A-normal embryos succeed on the order of 70–80% of the time, and for my particular case, transferring a single embryo was the safer choice for both of us. It took some convincing, but we went with his recommendation.

The first transfer used a single Day-5 PGT-A-normal blastocyst graded 5AB. It worked, and at 38 I gave birth to a healthy son. Eight months later, we transferred our second blastocyst — another single Day-5 PGT-A-normal 5AB. That pregnancy, too, succeeded, and we welcomed a healthy daughter.

Two Embryos, Two Healthy Children — Completing Our Family at Nearly 40

I still find it hard to believe that just two embryos gave us both children, and that we reached 好 — the "good," complete family — right around my 40th birthday. Looking back, what stayed with me most wasn't any single procedure, but how Stork's staff treated us throughout: patient, warm, and genuinely present in a way I hadn't experienced at other clinics. Every question got a real answer, delivered with a smile, and that steadiness mattered as much to us as any clinical result during a process this emotionally demanding.

I also want to mention the ground-floor gallery space at the clinic, which doesn't feel like a waiting room at all — more like a small museum. Sitting with exhibits that often featured mothers and children gave us a quiet place to breathe between appointments, and it deepened our own sense of what we were working toward.

Six years is a long time to carry this kind of hope. If you're still in the middle of that journey, I'll leave you with what our physician told us: "As long as you don't give up, we won't give up either."