Dad-to-be reveals how heartbreaking it can be trying to conceive in raw, emotional Facebook post
For millions of Americans, getting pregnant isn't easy.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in nine couples struggle to conceive.
Dan Majesky and his wife, Leah, were a part of that statistic for a long time.
But after more than three years of trying, the couple is finally expecting.
Majesky took to Facebook to share a photo of his wife's sonogram. "We are pregnant. ... Arms and legs and moving around," he wrote. "We're very excited, but I'll be holding my breath for 26ish weeks."
He described the rounds of medical visits, different hormone therapies, failed pregnancy tests and the emotions that came with each step.
One of those emotions — jealousy.
"So you wait. And it's negative, but you hope, and you see your friends getting pregnant, and you get a little sad," he wrote. "But you get mad at yourself because you want to feel happy for other people, and that's not fair to them. And then the 17-year-old across the street gets pregnant, and you get a little sadder. And your cousins get pregnant, and you get a little sadder."
Perhaps the most devastating part of the process for Majesky and his wife — hearing a heartbeat one day, and not the next.
"People lose babies all the time. Miscarriage. But no one talks about it," he wrote. "No one gets on Facebook and tells their friends."
The dad-to-be's sincere honesty could be why this Facebook post has blown up over the past few days.
Since being posted on May 20, the photo has been shared over 5,000 times and has racked up nearly 40,000 likes.
Some commenters have even opened up about their similar stories in the comments.
"Just found this through a friend," Ryan Phillips wrote. "Other than the miscarriage (I'm so sorry you had to go through that, and I can't even begin to imagine how hard that is), your story is eerily similar to mine. We too struggled with fertility for just over 3 years."
"It's not often that we hear hear about miscarriage and infertility...let alone from a male perspective," commented Andi Ploehs. "But I love that you can be so honest. We also have been trying to get preggo for 22 months and have unexplained fertility. After our first IUI we got pregnant but miscarried. After our second we got preggo and miscarried again. Two miscarriages in four months."
Majesky acknowledged many couples have faced even tougher obstacles in their quest to start a family and said, "I hesitate to share this because I don't want anyone to read this and feel what we felt, watching others' dreams come true."
But thankfully, for the Majesky family, that dream is coming true — it's a girl, and she's due in November!
Learn more about the history of IVF:
