by Melissa Willets posted in Pregnancy

Over the next 11 weeks, we invite you to come along on an IVF journey, step, by intense step. From making the decision to go forward with in-vitro fertilization, to the meds involved and what they're really like, to finding out whether this emotional and sometimes painful roller coaster ride has yielded the results we dreamed of, and prayed for. BabyCenter blogger Melissa Willets will be documenting every detail in a series of blog posts.

Before I underwent IVF, I knew no one who had gone down that road. Very few people talk about IVF, outside of private, anonymous chat rooms.  By sharing my very personal experience, I hope to  help shatter the stigma surrounding assisted reproduction. Speaking my truth might shed light upon what can feel like a dark, lonely, shame-filled place that, for reasons I'm yet to understand, is shrouded in secrecy. Before my husband and I met with a reproductive expert at a highly-recommended IVF clinic in our area, I'll admit I knew very little about in vitro fertilization. And I venture to guess you don't know much about it either, unless you've been through the process.

Sure, most of us understand generally what happens when a couple goes through IVF. The egg gets some help meeting the sperm, and an embryo is created. Then, that embryo gets transferred back inside the woman, and you hope a pregnancy results. Well, yeah, that is what IVF entails. But there is SO much more to the process than t...