Macy Rodeffer struggled to conceive for four years and has finally gotten pregnant with her son following IVF.
Macy Rodeffer is going to be a mom — but it wasn't easy to get here.
As the Danville, Illinois, woman struggled to conceive for four years, she underwent surgery and took medication. Despite those efforts, she suffered three heartbreaking miscarriages.
So when she and her husband, Tyler, finally found out she was pregnant with their first child earlier this year, she wanted to share just how tough infertility can be.
Read: Wife Surprises Husband With Pregnancy Announcement After Five Years of Infertility
In a pregnancy announcement photo she posted to Instagram, Rodeffer placed a onesie and sonograms of her son inside a heart made from the tubes of pills and needles she used during IVF.
The photo has since gone viral and inspired an outpouring of support, she told InsideEdition.com.
"While my hope was to reach people with my story I never imagined that it would reach as far as it has," she said. "There has been so much love and support poured out for us, and so many people now sharing their stories because of it."
Rodeffer first learned she was pregnant in March 2012, but miscarried. Two more pregnancies followed, but each time she lost the baby.
“We found out after a couple of years that we were dealing with infertility,” she said, adding that they later discovered she had severe Endometriosis and needed a large cyst removed.
After rounds of tests, she started IVF in mid-January and got pregnant. Their son is due in October.
While her photo shows piles of needles, they are just from one round of IVF, she said.
"I definitely wanted to include our journey in our announcement somehow," she told InsideEdition.com. "About a year ago there was a woman who did a similar photo with her baby in the middle and that really sparked some inspiration in me. I said, 'yeah that's what I want to do.' For me it was a great way for me to communicate to friends and family who didn't get it.”
By posting the photo, she wanted to highlight a serious problem that is sometimes dismissed, she said.
“What we went through, women everywhere go through. Infertility really is a serious thing. It's not an overreaction or ‘oh I'm sad because I can't have what I want,’” she said. “It truly is a struggle. It's very serious to treat.”
The response to the photo has been “overwhelming,” she said. But while most feedback has been supportive, some people have questioned why, if she wanted a child so badly, she didn’t adopt. She’s thinking about it for the future, she said, but adoption is not an easy process, either.
Read: Deputy Pulls Over His Wife for Adorable Pregnancy Announcement
“With an average waiting time of three to seven years, and a price tag that often surmounts that of fertility treatments, it's a very difficult thing to do,” she said. “We are lucky enough to live in a state that offers insurance assistance with fertility treatment, making IVF a realistic option for us at this time when adoption was not.”
Rodeffer said her mother and cousin were both adopted and she would still like to adopt someday but “unfortunately it will just take more time than we'd like.”
“The bottom line is that we don't know every detail of someone's story,” she said. “When it's not easy for you to have children on your own there's really no easy road to it.”
But one thing that was easy was how to announce the news to their loved ones. And buying the onesie -- which reads "Worth the Wait and Wait and Wait" -- that appears in the photo was a no-brainer too, she said.
“For me when I saw that, I knew that if I ever got pregnant I would order it,” she said. “When you finally get that baby you've tried for for so long, it makes it totally worth it.”
Watch: Mom of 5 Surprises Husband With Pregnancy News On His Birthday Cake
