Infertility gets its day in the spotlight!
I woke up Thursday morning just as shocked as my family and friends to see Erick and I smack dab in the middle of the front page of The Roanoke Times.
View the entire front page here.
Earlier in the week, I had pitched a story to the paper about infertility for National Infertility Awareness Week. Much to my surprise, they were interested. I couldn’t believe it. Dan Casey, who writes a column in the paper, wanted to meet me for coffee to talk. We met — I talked a lot and he wrote a lot. He was a really nice guy and it went really well. He told me it was one of the best pitches he had read in a long time. I, again, was shocked.
The next day, the sent a staff photographer to come and photograph us.
Then, later that day I heard from Dan several times with questions. He told me it was slated for the front page for the next day, but I figured it would get bumped or if it made it, it would be below the fold. So imagine my delighted tears of joy to see it as the top story on the front page! I felt so validated. This disease matters. We matter. Everyone going through this matters. The Roanoke Times gets it.
Also, imagine my overwhelming sense of holy crap, all of our business is on the front page of the paper. I had sort of a mini meltdown the day before because I was worried about sharing our good news. I have no qualms about talking about infertility or about sharing our past, but it freaks me out to share good news as it’s unfolding. I know that seems strange.
I guess I felt like I would be jinxing us somehow. But, in the end, I gave God my fears and left them at the cross. God doesn’t do jinxes. God has given us a spirit of power, not of fear. So, I pushed my fear aside and decided to rejoice with everyone in our good news and in the amazing opportunity that The Roanoke Times gave to us to get the word out about support for this disease.
I am just so happy that The Roanoke Times chose to highlight this disease in such a prominent way at such an opportune time. I can’t even begin to thank them enough. It ended up being the most read story online that day, too. Wow!
We received hundreds of messages from friends and strangers alike, all with very sweet and supportive messages. Of course, there were a few trolls commenting online, but the community came to our defense in a big way. A handful of women contacted me about joining the support group, which is amazing!
Overall, we are just humbled from the amazing response that we got.
Score for infertility!
4 Comments
Wow, congrats. Once again you are doing a great job representing this community.
I am so tired of the people who do not understand that infertility is a disease! That it requires medical intervention! Here is what I posted in the comments section of The Roanoke Times to the person who doesn’t think that tax relief should be given for adoption…and I’m sure infertility treatments.
Infertility is a DISEASE like chronic lung or heart or kidney DISEASE. Suppose you or a loved one had one of these DISEASES. You would like to have your body fixed, but the only way to get it paid for was to pay for it yourself because most health insurances do NOT cover any expenses related to infertility. Most people, especially young couples, do not have $30,000-60,000 to pay for the needed medical interventions, surgeries and medications to fix their bodies due to their DISEASE. If those same people had another DISEASE like heart, lung or kidney and their insurance didn’t cover it, they would be able to write those expenses off on their Income Tax. What is different about infertility DISEASE that it can NOT be given tax relief? The same for adoption expenses. If couples do not adopt these children and bear the high adoption costs, those children generally end up in Foster care, which costs our government money. The tax relief credit for adoption is significantly less than the monetary cost of government for Foster care. Think about it!
Whitney and Eric……I send you positive thoughts and prayers for healthy twins! And, I HOPE you can get a tax deduction!
I really applaud you. I’m sure it’s not easy to put your business out there for everyone to see, but infertility absolutely affects a certain percentage of the population and I just feel like it rarely gets mentioned unless you go looking for information about it, so kudos to you for pitching your story and being open to sharing and kudos also to the Roanoke Times for giving it front page “in your face” coverage!
All i can say is a thank you to Dr zogo for making me and my family a happy home, i have been married for 2 years without a child and i had 4 miscarriage within this time, i saw a post that says contact Dr zogo for Infertility help, so i did, after he cast a pregnancy spell on me i get pregnant few weeks later after having sex with my partner as instructed by Dr Zogo, and i am 7 months pregnant now without any complications and i will share another post here after my delivering and i will also give out my personal info, watch out for my next post, so i decide to drop this here for any body going through infertility problem to contact Dr zogo on zogospellcasters@gmail.com and you will be happy you did.,