April's Story
by Connie Matthissen
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April Byrnes
Home: Farmerville, Louisiana
Child: Lanyon, 6 months
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April Byrnes and her husband, Robert, began trying to start a family when she was just 21. Robert runs a mechanical contracting business, and April works in the company office. They live in Farmerville, a small town near Shreveport, Louisiana.
April expected to get pregnant right away and was only mildly concerned when she didn't. But as time wore on, she began to wonder what was going on. She went to her doctor and was told that there was nothing wrong with her. Later, she went to two more doctors who also found nothing to prevent her from getting pregnant.
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"I spoke with one woman who spent $30,000 getting pregnant with IVF. But I knew we could never afford it."
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Meanwhile, Robert refused to see a specialist for an evaluation of his own fertility. "You know how men are," she says. "He just wouldn't do it. I guess he was afraid it might be his problem, and he didn't want to find out."
The couple never considered any kind of infertility treatment. "It wasn't an option for us because of the expense," April says. "I spoke with one woman who spent $30,000 getting pregnant with IVF. But I knew we could never afford it."
Since there was nothing else she could do, April says she prayed a lot. But as the years passed, she began to think that it just wasn't meant to be. She and her husband are both from close-knit families, but they didn't tell anyone what they were going through except April's parents. "We kept it private," she says. "Everyone thought we just didn't want to have children."
April held out some hope of having a child and continued to take pregnancy tests now and then when her period was a little late. She recalls, "I used to tell my husband that we should buy stock in the pregnancy test company, because we bought so many of those things."
One day last fall, April got the test result she had been waiting so long for. But at first she couldn't believe it. "I took the test three or four times, and then I went to the doctor to make sure," she says. "My husband and I were ecstatic. It was right around Christmas, so we gave both our families the sonogram for a present."
Seven years after they first began trying to have a child, April gave birth to a boy -- Lanyon. Asked what she likes best about being a mom, April says, "I love it all! Just seeing him grin at me every morning melts my heart."
(information from babycenter.com - http://www.babycenter.com/fertility-success-stories-april)
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