Former Miss USA says she and her husband have spent over $50,000 on fertility treatments. It's been a 4-year journey, and they're starting again.

• Tara Conner said she and her husband, Eli James, have been trying for four years to have a child.
• At a recent event, she shared how much support matters during infertility.

When Tara Conner and her husband, Eli James, started trying to have a baby almost four years ago, she had no idea the journey she was in for.

"I've done every procedure in the book, including IUI, medication, egg retrievals," Conner, who was Miss USA in 2006, said at a recent Pregnantish event in Los Angeles offering resources and support to women struggling with infertility. She added that it was nice to be there "because we can relate to each other in a way other people can't."

Conner and James, who have been documenting their journey on Conner's Instagram, are now starting a new embryo transfer.

Finding the reason she couldn't get pregnant cost a lot of money

At first Conner tried noninvasive options to get pregnant, including the medication Clomid and intrauterine insemination, or IUI, before moving on to in vitro fertilization.

Conner said that throughout the process she was left in the dark by her doctors about what was going on in her body and why she was unable to conceive.

"We are around $50,000 invested at this point…that's testing, 4.5 Medicated IUI's, medications, genetic testing, retrieval," Conner wrote in an Instagram post in December.

In another post in January, she said: "I can't believe that we have had to pay over $50,000 to get a clear idea of what is holding up our process. This needs to change. This isn't fair."

Conner said that during a cycle of IVF she was able to collect four embryos but lost three because of genetic abnormalities. Still, she continued testing in hopes of implanting an "embaby," as she calls it.

Conner recently underwent endometrial receptivity analysis, also known as a hysteroscopy. The genetic test takes a small sample of the endometrial lining to determine the best day to transfer the embryo during an IVF cycle.

She said in January that her protocol included birth control, a drug called Lupron to suppress ovulation, steroids, vaginal progesterone suppositories, and more. She said later that the Lupron injections alone cost $2,850, adding, "My insurance wouldn't cover it even after having it prescribed through my OBGYN."

Conner said in January that while collecting the biopsy, her doctor took a few extra samples to test, which led finally to a diagnosis of endometriosis.

"I'm angry at our healthcare system. It took THREE YEARS to diagnose this major roadblock for fertility," she wrote on Instagram.

But Conner said her uterus was found to be receptive to implantation, meaning an embryo could implant, and this month she was cleared to begin a frozen embryo transfer.

She says she's found a supportive community

Conner said that infertility was "a bad club, but the best one" she's been a part of, adding that since beginning her infertility journey she'd found a lot of information through social media.

"There is a wonderful community of powerful, strong women who are going through the exact same thing," she said.

Conner compared getting questions like "When's your next kid?" or "When are you going to get pregnant?" to her experience at the beginning of her recovery from alcoholism and addiction in 2006 when people would ask if it was OK to have a drink around her.

"I was very ostracized, because that was also very isolating," she said, adding: "We need that community. We need to be able to feel like we're not alone and that we're not a leper."

Conner joined the pregnantish event on Sunday, March 27th, to kick off their National Infertility Awareness Week 2022 "The Reality of Infertility" programming in April featuring reality stars and public personalities who struggle with this disease.