Journey To A Family

By Jessica Humphrey-Cintineo

Floods of holiday cards framing picture-perfect families arrived in our mailboxes daily last Christmas. For many, it’s “the most wonderful time of year,” however, there’s equally as many that welcome the season with a renewed sense of isolation and loneliness. “During Christmas, when everyone was sending the Christmas cards, I could not open the envelopes,” shared a slightly embarrassed Dominique Racanati Macri. “I couldn’t open them and see all the families – something I wanted so badly.” Macri, 33, of Lyndhurst, is just one of the many women throughout Bergen County and beyond that is experiencing infertility. She’s also part of the three-fourths of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America’s participants that reported feeling more anxious and/or depressed during the holiday season. Last Christmas she was gearing up for her fourth frozen embryo transfer after recently completing an endometrial receptivity analysis (ERA), a test that evaluates over 200 genes that play a role in the endometrium becoming receptive, thus determining the optimal time for embryo transfer. After 4 years of trying to conceive naturally juxtaposed with her in vitro fertilization (IVF) journey, Macri finally received a diagnosis other than “unexplained.”

“The ERA was my doctor’s Hail Mary. He [My doctor] was grasping at straws,” she explained. “The result was that I was early receptive, meaning [I was transferring too early and] I needed 12 more hours of progesterone.” With a “real” diagnosis, Macri and her husband Angelo, also 33, headed into their fourth frozen embryo – their last embryo left from their initial egg retrieval. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m at the end of my story,’” recalled Macri. “Wouldn’t that be cool to get pregnant with my last embryo?” As the world learned on 9 Months with Courteney Cox, a Facebook Watch series that features 13 new families – including Macri – that share their extraordinary journeys to and pregnancies, their fourth frozen embryo transfer did not work. “It’s really hard to have someone else tell your story,” said Macri of the show, which has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Short From Daytime Non-Fiction Program. “There’s so much more to my story than what has been told.” For example, Macri has endured countless injections, pills, doctor visits and blood draws. She’s suffered a miscarriage, polyps in her uterus and being diagnosed with COVID-19 during a cycle. In the 15-minute episodes, Macri’s story is told in short segments on 9 Months with Courteney Cox. New episodes are released on Facebook Watch every Sunday and Thursday at 2 p.m. PT. Macri applied to be on the show, during one of her lowest moments, after learning about it in an infertility support group on Facebook. “I was in bed and just crying to myself,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘I’m just going to record myself and just send it in.’ It was literally just me, being me going through what I was going through.” Following a few Zoom interviews, her and her husband were cast on the show. She has a producer who she meets with from time-to-time; however, a vast majority of the show’s content is filmed by herself and her husband.

“This show has been an outlet for helping me get through this, and now that we are wrapping up, my anxiety is through the roof,” she said. 9 Months of Courteney Cox is scheduled to air its finale on July 15. At press time, Macri was scheduled to meet with her producer in early June. A fourth season of 9 Months is anticipated; however, Macri did not know if she’d have the opportunity to continue her story. But this is her life – not just a TV show. “This is my life. This is what I’m living,” she said. “It’s me trying to manage my IVF/infertility life with regular life. It’s hard to manage. Trying to live as normal a life as possible while going through this. That’s been so difficult.” Macri recalled attending a baby shower hours after learning her third frozen embryo transfer didn’t work. She remembers doing a trigger shot during her sister’s engagement party in the restaurant bathroom, where she ended up having a mishap with the medication that led to an hour car ride at 10 p.m. to a pharmacy that re-opened for her so she could get the proper timely medication. “I’m just sad. I’m depressed at times, but you know the world is still spinning and life is still going on and you just have to suck it up,” she said. “You can be so happy for someone but sad for you and sometimes that sadness can overwhelm you.” Macri has come to realize now more than ever that her marriage is her “saving grace.” “Angelo has been so supportive and even him just saying, ‘If it’s just me and you, Dom, I’m content with that.’ He literally would just be happy with me,” she said of her husband of 5 years. “That’s a hard thing to wrap my head around, that he’d give up having a child. This has really strengthened our marriage.” Unfortunately, COVID-19 has made it so that Angelo attends doctor’s visits via FaceTime from his car, if at all. For Macri, the unknown is the worst part. “Will I have a child?” she questioned. “I just don’t know what is in store for me.” Despite it all, Macri is proud to represent the one in eight couples that suffer from infertility in the United States – that’s about 6.7 million people each year who have trouble conceiving, according to the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth. “Doing this show and even speaking to you [Editor’s Note: Jessica Humphrey-Cintineo endured a fertility journey and is ultimately an IVF mom to two boys.] helps me have another purpose,” Macri shared. “To bring another life into this world is one of the most important things in this world. To think I can’t do that. It makes me wonder what my purpose in life is. Speaking out helps me deal with it and makes me think it’s not all for nothing.” “Overall, I just want people that feel those emotions [of feeling sad, defeated, lonely, triggered, etc.] too to know they aren’t the only ones struggling,” she concluded. “I hope to look back and have a happy story to look back on.”