We had now been actively trying to get pregnant for nearly four years and unofficially for seven years before that. Nothing we had tried so far had worked. The acupuncture was the only thing that even produced a noticeable physical difference. Sure, we could keep trying and I might get pregnant naturally. There was nothing stopping it, according to my fertility doctor.

I had a cousin who tried for 13 years without fertility treatments and eventually became pregnant naturally (and promptly had her tubes tied as soon as her son was born, because it turned out she hated being pregnant). However, she was 34 when she got pregnant and I was closer to 40 than I wanted to admit. I needed to get pregnant now if I was going to do it. And that left one thing...IVF (in-vitro fertilization).

IVF has very high success rates up until about age 42 for women, when it drops off considerably. I still had a few years before I reached that childbearing plateau, and I didn't want to wait till the last minute to do it. However, the impediment to IVF remained the same as it had three years ago - it was really, really expensive and insurance didn't cover it.

Through my fertility doctor's website, I discovered there are a few financing programs for IVF. After calling and talking to a couple of them, however, I knew that wasn't going to work for us. Our debt to income ratio was too high for them to fund us. That didn't deter me, though.

My mother always said I had a way of being able to make seemingly impossible things happen through sheer resourcefulness. Friends have commented on how I have produced money for much-needed projects seemingly out of thin air many times in the past. Surely I could do that again. After all, being a mother was the most important thing in the world to me. That alone would be my motivation. I would come up with the money. How? I didn't know yet. But I would do it.

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