Mary & Rickey

Mary Ward’s daughter, Hannah, was the first recipient of the SGF Scholarship Fund. Mary and her husband, Rickey, had twins after a successful 2^nd round of IVF under the care of Dr. Art Sagoskin. Hannah will be using her SGF Scholarship to transfer to Towson University to study nursing. In her application for the scholarship, she wrote, “Compassion is not only a core value of Shady Grove Fertility but of the world. The world could use more compassion.” SGF is proud to award such a bright young woman this scholarship and to share her mother Mary’s fertility journey. SGF miracles aren’t just babies. They grow into truly amazing adults.

Mary and Rickey’s story

My husband, Rickey, survived kidney cancer and we were told we would never be able to have kids, but then we quickly got pregnant with our first daughter, Shannon. I wanted more children and thought it would be easy since I got pregnant the first time without a problem. After three years, I went to my OB/GYN for help. I did rounds of Clomid and IUIs and still wasn’t getting pregnant. Finally, I was referred to Shady Grove Fertility.

It was a real struggle for me during this time. My sister-in-law had six children and had then found out she was pregnant with twins naturally. It was devastating to watch everyone get pregnant so easily and even worse, to watch the news when there were kids in the world that needed parents and love. I thought if IVF didn’t work, I would become a foster mother.

Unfortunately, our first round of IVF failed. Treatment was hard emotionally because no one talked about infertility during the 90s. You’d see the words “test tube babies” splashed across the news, so I was hesitant to tell our friends and family we were going through IVF. I didn’t know anyone at the time that had infertility, but I stayed strong because I knew I wanted more children.

Our second round of IVF with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) resulted in four good embryos. We transferred all of them and two of those little embryos turned into my double blessing, Hannah and Ross. The twins were born on November 26. My water broke at 36 weeks on the night before Thanksgiving. We had a lot to be thankful for.

My advice for women that are currently struggling trying to conceive is to find someone to talk to! This journey is too hard for you to keep it all in. Take advantage of all the support groups out there. SGF has support groups in the offices and their social media pages are a valuable resource to connect with others. When I went through treatment, these resources weren’t available so you should make the most of them. Also, don’t listen to everyone around you with their bad advice. People would tell me, “You already have one baby, why do you need to try for more?” NOT helpful when you’re going through IVF.

Just take care of yourself and be as healthy as possible. I’m praying for you on your journey.