The Ups and Downs of IVF; One families journey to parenthood
Lets be straight, in school your basically taught that if a boy sneezes on you, you’ll fall pregnant.
And its not until later in life that when the people around you are trying to start families, have experienced loss, heartbreak and difficulties that you realise it really is far from easy, and actually the few that do get pregnant with ease are the very lucky ones.
I’ll be totally honest and call me naive, but it wasn’t until my late teens that I found out you could actually only really fall pregnant on specific days of your cycle, which is far from what is drilled in to us in our school days.
Now years on I’m meeting expecting mums & brand new parents every single day of my working life, i’m understanding the process and how complex this whole baby making thing really is.
It sounds cliche but every single story I hear is different, everyone has their own struggles, obstacles and trials and I find great interest in hearing everyones individual journey to parenthood.
The commonly sad theme I’ve noticed though is that these testing journeys aren’t spoken about enough. We somehow still have this crazy stigma around pregnancy, IVF and loss. We don’t share the difficult times that could and definitely would help another couple going through the same, we just share the good bits, much like the social media world we’re living in.
In January 2018 I met an amazingly refreshing couple at the start of their IVF journey, unfortunately much too soon after our first conversations, they devastatingly lost their first baby.
We stayed in contact, a few messages here and there until I got that extremely heart warming message, (to this day feels like only yesterday) announcing they were pregnant again.
One of my 2018 highs was following these two through their IVF journey to becoming parents. I went on to photograph their announcement, I was with them when they found out the gender of their baby, we photographed the growing bump, I was invited to the hospital to meet their brand new baby girl and of course photographed Ayla Grace at just HOURS old, and again at her newborn shoot.
The feeling of being chosen to capture such milestones is indescribable and to be with a couple along such a journey is one I will definitely never forget.
I’ve asked Emmy & Adam to share their IVF journey, in the hope that it might reach just one person who is going through a similar situation and can take comfort in knowing there are other people who have been down that very same path.
So without anymore rambling from me, here is Emmy & Adam’s journey from IVF to baby Ayla Grace.
‘‘There is something so presumed about the natural stages of our lives, in that when a couple are on that path - the courtship, engagement, marriage, buying their first house, the endless list of stereotypical stages that we can tick off the “to do” list, that it only seems right that when that couple is ready to want to extend their family, that the process of having a child would easily follow, right?
But for many, including our own journey, that stage just didn’t follow - we lost count of how many times we were asked or bombarded with the comments of “when are you starting a family?” Or “another year and still no grandkids for your parents?” Or the one that really used to get us down, the big assumption that because we married so young, there should have been children soon to follow.
We would answer with vague replies such as “when the time is right” or make up excuses that “we [were] way too busy focusing on growing our business” - little did people know, that we were wanting to start a family, and as each month turned into another year, the indescribable sinking feeling set further and further in.
Each time another family member or friend fell pregnant, only made it harder - as those people are zooming past the milestones in life, and you’re left behind longing for that missing piece.
It can’t be explained how overwhelming the feelings caused by infertility can be for couples. For us, our grief after each miscarriage, the loneliness and isolation you feel, the constant topic of conversation, the guilt for our families at not being able to give them what they and we so desperately wanted. The weeks turn into months, and months into years and before you know it, so much time has passed and you feel like it will never be your time - it will never be your chance to be the parents you so long to be.
For us, we knew starting a family would not be so straightforward due to my own health conditions, and that pushed us into our decision to start trying for a family so young - a decision that we still don’t regret to this day, because it was another 5 years until we would finally meet our miracle baby girl.
We knew we couldn’t qualify for help until 2 years had passed, and they were truly the longest and most difficult years we faced together as a couple.
We were very lucky in that we had faced so much hardship around health and life in the time we had been together, that this journey simply felt like another hurdle we just had to jump.
We were both so determined that instead of it tearing us apart, it truly did bring us closer.
That being said, it wasn’t without hard times - it becomes so very tiring and draining even when you begin that long process of seeking help - because it soon takes over every conversation, every plan you make, it becomes your world for both you and for your partner.
I had little faith in the help we would receive, due to so many bad experiences with our local health service. However I did hold faith in the fact that we had a fantastic GP, who agreed to refer us for investigations in order to start the process to treatment.
There was something so refreshing, and exciting too, about knowing that what felt like the impossible, was becoming a very real possibility for us.
Naively, you think that once that referral is made, everything will follow suit and that you’ll be on your way to finally becoming parents.
Sadly, it is only the start of a very long continuation of our journey.
Eventually after several months, we got our referral to the hospital, where they ran tests on both of us, and it was decided a laparoscopy operation to remove endometriosis would be the best place to begin our treatment process.
Unfortunately for us, this meant our journey was over a year longer than it needed to be - as every surgeon refused to operate due to my other health complications.
I would finally receive a date for the operation, and we would both get our hopes up, only for us to come crashing back down to reality when it was cancelled yet again.
The upset and frustration of knowing you can’t move forward until you’ve jumped this hurdle, but being stuck and let down over and over by our local service, is indescribable.
However we would later realise that this was simply fate, because it brought us to our wonderful IVF doctor (although we did not know this at the time), who came forward to operate when no one else would.
Once the laparoscopy was out of the way, we then had to begin the process of fighting for what we were told “would be [our] only chance of having a child” and we knew this would be our biggest battle to date.
We spent many appointments (spread months apart) begging for a referral for our IVF to be granted, but each appointment we left feeling so deflated, when we’d return home no further forward.
Eventually our wish was granted, after seeing a colleague of our future IVF doctor, and the process of enquiring for if we would qualify for PGD (genetic testing) to eliminate the chance of inheriting my diseases, then began.
Sadly we didn’t qualify for this, but in hindsight this was a blessing, as it meant we were able to be put forward for IVF locally instead - and the process of over another year long wait to begin treatment, was no longer a worry.
I remember that appointment so vividly -the fear, the worry, and the pure anxiety that they would reverse their decision to grant us IVF after our PGD was denied. We were down to see a different doctor at the hospital clinic, and I was petrified they’d refuse us the hope we had been holding onto.
Sure enough, the lady strongly disagreed with the previous Drs opinion, and her outlook was exactly as expected - not to put us forward for any treatment what so ever (almost four years into our journey).
After many years of fighting our local services on different medical failings, I was adamant that we deserved this chance of IVF funding - it was the only thing giving us the hope of having our own child, and both my husband and I weren’t prepared to give up.
We fought our corner, and through tears and frustration we heard the words we had been so longing to hear - she would grant us our chance at IVF, and we would be given the choice of two local clinics.
After that appointment we sat down with a nurse, who began to run through the two choices with us - but we had already made our decision, and we knew the place for us was the clinic ran by the Dr who took on my case almost a year before.
We were extremely lucky, and were able to begin treatment within a matter of weeks and subsequently completed our first round in November 2017.
We were told our best chance of a successful transfer would be to undertake a frozen cycle - where we would freeze our embryos and return a couple of months later to complete the treatment/medications and transfer.
However, on expecting a phone call to update us on our embryos development prior to freezing, we were surprised with the chance to be able to transfer that very same day.
So at 12pm on November 29th 2017, we transferred our very first embryo, whilst we were lucky enough to have 3 remaining to freeze.
Whilst we always viewed our first cycle as a trial, and not for one minute did we believe it may result in a pregnancy, we both couldn’t help but get a little bit excited, and after much research I made sure to follow all the “top tips” for after transfer - the pineapple, the pomegranate juice, the hot water bottles on your feet, the resting, the vitamins, no baths, Brazil nuts, cut out all caffeine ... the list goes on.
We were so determined, and yet filled with so much fear and anxiety, that when we tested early, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing - there was the second line, a very strong second line, and I didn’t know whether to cry with fear or excitement, because everything that we had fought so very long for, was finally becoming our reality.
The one thing only few will understand, is that when you’ve been through pregnancy losses and the years of being unable to conceive a child, the happiness of seeing that positive is overpowered by the fear of something going wrong, yet again.
For us, that became reality when we lost that pregnancy too, several weeks after seeing our babies tiny heartbeat at our first scan.
Our only focus keeping us moving forward, was to put all our thoughts and energy into going for our second round of IVF.
This time we were adamant we didn’t want to risk disappointment for our family once again, and so it felt only right that we would keep our second round a complete secret.
This was easier said than done when we both work for the family business, so making it to appointments meant we had to come up with an entire array of excuses! But we kept to what we had told our family, in that we couldn’t re-start our treatment until 3 months following our loss.
We restarted IVF just over one month on, and It was decided that I would undergo a different protocol this time, whilst also adding in blood thinning injections and steroids - in the hope that this would counteract an auto-immune and blood clotting response thought to be the reason we could not carry a pregnancy.
We soon found ourselves falling straight back into the habit of nightly injections and medications, and regular trips for scans and monitoring. So before we knew it, transfer day had come around once again.
With no one being aware, it meant we had to continue our daily lives as normal. Instead of following every tip under the sun for a successful transfer like our first round, my husband went back to work as normal, and I attended a concert that very night with both our mums - and they were completely unaware.
As the days past, we continued our insanely busy schedules, and time passed extremely fast this time around. That being said, it still didn’t take away our eagerness to test prior to our given date.
This time I felt weirdly relaxed, and yet entirely different from our first round.
With that pregnancy I had suffered every symptom you could think of, and was so poorly even so early on. This time, despite the constant fear that it simply had not worked, my gut was telling me that it had.
Sure enough, just over a week past transfer, there were the two very strong lines appearing in front of us, and the fear and anxiety, mixed with much joy, came flooding back once again.
This time something felt so different for both of us. We had transferred embryo number two at the exact time that we should have transferred embryo number one - had we stuck to the original treatment plan.
There was something about this second round that just felt so right, and my husband held so much positivity through out, even on those days I still showed doubt.
Once we got our positive, we phoned the clinic, and then awaited the 5 week scan at our IVF clinic.
This is when the weeks and the days began to drag - but we kept busy with work, and continued to carry life on as normally as we could.
A week before my scan was booked, we experienced a massive scare, and whilst I lost all hope and feared the worst, my husband continued to tell me this was our time - and that this baby was healthy and would be absolutely fine.
It was too early at this point to see baby’s heartbeat, and so all we could do for reassurance was blood work - to check my HCG levels were rising accordingly.
However, even this left us waiting almost 3 very long days from the scare occurring to getting the results.
Thankfully my levels were rising ridiculously high, so all we could do was use this as reassurance, and count down the days until our scan came around.
Returning to the clinic for our first pregnancy scan brought so many feelings and worries flooding back.
After it being a scan at the very same clinic that confirmed our last loss, it meant we could not relax, and we were both filled with apprehension for what our scan would reveal.
Thankfully everything was fine, the heartbeat was strong, and I was determined this pregnancy was going to be a positive one.
As the weeks went on, it was extremely difficult keeping our news from family and friends, but we stood by our decision and just before the second trimester, with our clinic’s approval and weekly scans at our local hospital, it was agreed i could travel abroad for our much needed holiday.
That holiday felt so surreal - whilst relaxing in our favourite sunny Cyprus, we found ourselves talking for hours over what gender he or she would be, baby names and how to tell our parents.
The things we had never let ourselves do up to this point, and instead of worrying about something going wrong, we slowly began to enjoy the little things - like my growing bump that I didn’t have to hide and planning our pregnancy announcement - it felt great.
On our return, the very month our family all presumed we were beginning our second IVF cycle, we instead announced, in the most memorable of ways, that they would be becoming grandparents that very same year.
Their reactions are something that we will never forget - the pure confusion, mixed with absolute joy, is something forever ingrained in my mind, and something I can’t wait to share with our little one, when she is older.
2018 felt like time stood still - we experienced loss and life and a very long journey in between.
January we said goodbye to one baby, and December we welcomed our rainbow baby into this world.
Our pregnancy was tough, and our journey tougher. But through strength, togetherness, and a lot of tears, the years of grief we encountered were so very, very worth our little girl that we have been so kindly gifted.
The one thing I have learnt throughout my life, is that disease should not, and does not, limit you.
I was always lead to believe, both by our local health care system, and by people in my life that have come and gone, that my genetic diseases that gradually took away my quality of life for many years, would continue to dampen my future. For a very long time I believed this.
My longing to become a mother had always been the focus of my determination through out the decade of medical treatment prior to our 5 years of trying for a child.
When I met my husband just over 6 years ago, and we chose to marry , and plan the future we longed for, I knew that with that determination and strength, we would eventually get there - but there were many times along the way that I truly did question my own belief.
I’m so grateful now that my years of illness have strengthened me - because without that strength and the positivity that my husband continued to hold, I truly believe that we would not have the beautiful little girl we had for so very long been wishing for.
Ayla Grace is our absolute world - as she is to our family too, and I will continue to cherish and document our journey as we now grow as a family of three’’ - Emmy & Adam.
