Had anyone told Jennifer and Drew Bennett seven years
ago that they would one day soon be juggling two corporate careers and four young children, they would have said that was an impossible dream.
“I had spent so many years sad, trying to be happy at other people’s baby showers, but hurting inside,” recalls Jennifer. “After three years of trying, we turned to fertility treatments. In our case, we had no option but to proceed directly to IVF [in vitro fertilization].
“It was one of the most difficult times of my life, but
the one thing that gave us comfort and relief was that it [the cost] would be fully covered by my amazing company, Novo Nordisk,” says Jennifer, who is a senior manager, strategic staffing, for the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical and biotech company. “I remember
meeting other couples at the clinic who were taking
loans and making monumental financial sacrifices to
pay for the same procedures. I felt blessed.”
Drew is vice president, operations and training, for bridal gown maker Priscilla of Boston. The couple lives in Pennsylvania near the New Jersey border. Their dream was always to have two or three children. But after Drew was diagnosed with male factor infertility, the couple was told their chance of conceiving naturally was “one in a million.”
The couple used ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is inserted into an egg) to create embryos for IVF. Despite a caution by the fertility specialist that her two viable embryos were of poor quality and that success with this first go-round at IVF was unlikely, Jennifer surprised everyone by becoming pregnant and giving birth to a baby girl on January 16, 2003. They named her Brooke and called her their “miracle baby.”
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