Servy Institute for Reproductive Endocrinology ( S.I.R.E )

Families come in all shapes and sizes, and not all are formed the traditional way. Some are made through adoption, others through blended families. These days, families can also be made through the miracle of egg donation.

Red and Thomas Barrett had dated all through their years at University of Georgia, and when the couple married in 2003, they were ready to start a family. Just three months after a beautiful wedding at her parents’ home in Fitzgerald, Ga., Red decided to go off of birth control.

Tiny Addison is only 12 weeks old, but it’s clear that she is the center of life in this Georgia household. The tiny red-haired infant looks just like her mother, Melissa, but has the red hair of her grandmother….

In the summer of 1997, after more than a year of unsuccessful pregnancy attempts and repeated treatments for recurring pelvic and bladder infections, my local gynecologist referred my husband and I to a fertility specialist in Augusta, Ga.: Dr. Edouard Servy, of the Servy Institute of Reproductive Endocrinology (S.I.R.E.).

Research shows that one in eight couples experience infertility. While I struggled for six long years to have a baby, my friends could sit in a room with their husbands and get pregnant. Obviously, that’s an exaggeration but when you are going through infertility, it sure feels that way. My husband Ryan and I are now the proud (and exhausted!) parents of three healthy boys – but as Maria sang in The Sound of Music, let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start