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Cedar Rapids mothers launch national infertility foundation
Hopeful Mama Foundation will provide educational resources, emotional support and financial assistance nationally
Jun. 17, 2023 6:00 am
CEDAR RAPIDS — For half her 20s, Cedar Rapids nurse Emily Patel wasn’t in a hurry to have children — until she was told that she couldn’t.
“I just thought I always had the choice, I have all the time in the world,” she said. “The moment the ability to make your own choices is removed from you, it creates a sense of urgency that wasn’t there.”
Being misdiagnosed through her teenage years before being correctly diagnosed with premature ovarian failure at 25 — essentially an early menopause — was only the beginning of a difficult journey.
One doctor scheduled her hysterectomy. A second opinion physician told her to cancel it.
After being matched for private adoption with her husband, she drove an empty car seat home two days after the baby they were supposed to adopt was born. The birth mother changed her mind.
By 27, she found herself divorced, unable to have children and alone.
“After holding that little boy for two days believing that child was mine, it was the one thing that made me realize I would do whatever it took (to have children)” Patel said.
Now with two children, it took financial resources, the right connections and finding obscure information and expertise to connect the dots to the other side of her infertility journey.
When Tessa Mills tried to conceive, she discovered health issues that her birth control masked for years. But more than that, her path through infertility as a public health expert helped her discover myriad gaps in the health care system among providers, current practices and general care for reproductive health.
“I didn’t want to feel like a bystander, putting my fertility in the hands of someone else,” said Mills, 32. “I wanted to be autonomous in that.”
It took persistent advocacy for herself with medical providers and an invention from a friend — a $100 intracervical insemination kit — to help her conceive.
Together, Patel and Mills have started the Hopeful Mama Foundation to make sure no other women struggling with infertility have to endure the emotional pain, confusion and lack of education that they muddled through alone.
Want to learn more?
To learn more about support, resources and grants available from the Hopeful Mama Foundation to women experiencing infertility, visit hopefulmamafoundation.org.
In-person support groups are held at 6 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month in the Marion Public Library. Virtual support groups are held the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m.
A new type of foundation
Launched in April, the ambitious Hopeful Mama Foundation is hoping to do more than the typical nonprofits they experienced while navigating infertility.
With local components, the focus of the new organization will be national — not only connecting women from every part of the country, but offering financial support without barriers based on the state or area they live in. Before long, they hope to launch internationally into other countries like Canada, too.
Locally, the foundation will bring unique benefits to the Corridor with educational workshops and support groups that can reverberate further through virtual platforms.
The mission to create an educational support system with funding assistance is perhaps the organization’s biggest distinction among other similar nonprofits.
“We’re not just pushing dollars to cover expenses. We’re creating an educational support system that will prevent them from making the mistakes I did,” said, Patel, founder and CEO of the foundation.
Emotional support, which both women found through social media groups, will be another focus. Mills, a licensed massage therapist and life coach who offers infertility and doula support, brings her experience working with individuals to develop the emotional regulation necessary to traverse the ups and downs of each journey.
“There’s a huge emotional piece to it. It’s a process where you’re literally going through a grieving process every month,” said Mills, a board member of the foundation.
Financial assistance, another component, brings practical relief to those without resources. Fertility treatment and solutions can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and expenses are often left uncovered by insurance.
Grant applications, open to women in the United States starting next year, will assist with in vitro fertilization, intrauterine insemination, the cost of donor eggs and surrogates. Not only will grants be able to reach more women, but women will be able to use grants without location restrictions on their preferred medical providers.
Hopeful Mama will not exclude women experiencing “unexplained fertility” and “secondary infertility” from their grants. At some infertility foundations, a specific diagnosis is required to be eligible for grants. And often, women experiencing fertility issues after having one child are excluded, as well.
That piece was important to Patel, who fell into the former category. Through support groups, she’s seen women who receive no help after multiple grant applications, leaving their dream out of reach.
“Even though I have a medical diagnosis … there’s no reason they can find as to why I started menopause at the age of 16,” she said. “That unexplained portion was so important for me to include because that can be devastating. When you can’t pinpoint what happened, there’s not a sense of closure.”
The foundation hopes to create a community that makes navigating infertility solutions easier, no matter the diagnosis.
"The Hopeful Mama Foundation is going to start building a community as a resource for people who need it,“ Patel said.
Comments: (319) 398-8340; elijah.decious@thegazette.com
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