Our journey to parenthood is one we’ll never forget. Just a few years ago, we were both working professionals during the hey-day of the Silicon Valley. Fast-forward to today. Our work lives remain busy, albeit the settings have changed. We’ve said “so long” to the corporate life and “hello” to the entrepreneurial world and life as parents of four. We owe all the changes to parenthood, and frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We were married in 1992 and, at the time, were very much intensively focused on our dual career tracks so family building was simply not a big priority. Someday, if we were going to be parents, we wanted to have both adopted and biological children. We would have a nanny and a housekeeper to make sure things ran smoothly. However, we could see life without children very easily. However, in the late 1990s, we decided we wanted to be parents. We tried on and off for a couple of years, working around our work/travel schedules, but being fairly serious about the effort.

December of 2001 saw us going to India for a family wedding and as we were traveling a lot, we decided to look into adoption and visit several orphanages. At our first one, we had a very emotional time and left knowing that we wanted to be parents and that something would be missing for us if we did not follow that path. We came back and threw all the balls in the air, starting the adoption process and being “very serious” about trying to get pregnant.

The adoption route went much faster than we anticipated. Just two months after starting the process, we were able to get foster custody of Samir who was 10 weeks old at the time. Four months later, we adopted Samir (now 4.5) from Sisters of Charity, a Catholic orphanage near Bangalore, India. When we set out to be parents this time, we were not kidding around any more!

The biological route wasn’t as simple. We tried for several months but to no avail. Initially, we attributed this to stress. After all, with Samir we were embarking on parenthood for the first time. Sridhar started consulting. We also had to move out of our new home so the builder could address some major issues. We seriously tried to get pregnant for about 6 months and then decided to seek help.

We first learned about Pacific Fertility Center through a friend who referred us to Dr. Carl Herbert. We were impressed with his compassion and appreciated his candor. He didn’t pull any punches or provide false hope, which proved refreshing and uplifting. Dr. Herbert told us during our consultations that, regardless of the outcome of our infertility treatments, “we were going home to Samir” and that took a lot of the pressure off. Dr. Herbert was just one of many caring medical professionals that we dealt with along the way. We had glowing encounters with Dr. Chenette, also from the Pacific Fertility Center, as well as Dr. Laurie Green, Gina’s OBGYN at CPMC. They made us feel like individuals, not a number.

Our infertility treatment began with IUI cycles and Clomid which were unsuccessful. We did some basic testing but there were no explanations as to why we were not conceiving. Dr. Herbert suggested that we could try an IVF cycle, as it would address a number of factors, rather than do further testing. We decided to go for it and had success on the first try! Of the four embryos that were transferred, two implanted. Those two embryos resulted in our twins, Sanjeev and Serena, now 2.75 years old. One would think we were done, but we didn’t stop there. In Feb 2006 we adopted our fourth child, Sophia (1) from the same orphanage that we adopted Samir. We love them all equally and cherish every stage of their development.

It’s amazing how quickly things have changed for us. We went from two corporate professionals with our hands full with meetings, presentations, and reports to two parents with our hands full with diapers, toys, and baby clothes. Our vocabulary has changed as well. The corporate jargon now has to make room for occasional baby talk. (When speaking to our children, of course.)

The joys of having children cannot be understated. Whether it’s “soaping up” our kids in the bathtub or reading a bed time story, the little moments are precious. They seem to grow so fast, in every way that it is hard for us to keep up with the changes, so we try to enjoy the moments as they come.

This isn’t to suggest that life outside of parenthood is mundane. Work is as hectic as ever…but it is quite different. We no longer strive to climb the corporate ladder. I (Gina) stepped off it to stay at home and raise our children. I (Sridhar) did a complete 180 and am now the head of my own consulting practice. The beauty with this career move is the flexibility it affords in terms of raising the kids, which, as you can imagine, keeps us plenty busy.

– Gina and Sridhar

Tags: IVF - In Vitro Fertilization, Patient Stories, Treatment Options, Unexplained Infertility

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Patient Odyssey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.