Teen
It all started well when we pregnant but suddenly, our of nowhere,it felt like each brick from our wall was falling and we were told our precious baby had died and everything stopped. This was our first baby so we didn’t know of any problems, and we have never received any answers, reason or meaning since. Just nothing.
Not long ago someone told me she’d been diagnosed with Endometriosis and that had been given as a reason for her trouble conceiving her first baby. She said ‘at least I have a reason that can be fixed’. She said ‘she couldn’t imagine not knowing a reason why’. It was a punch to my stomach. That’s our situation. Never knowing why.
A local fertility group once gave an opinion that I probably have natural killer cells and after reading about this I felt it could be true. Our last step in our journey was being tested for them and just as I was expecting to hear treatment options from the consultant- he told us, yet again, everything was normal, I didn’t have natural killer cells.
In fact our baby who died was also normal, a normal male baby with normal chromosomes. People saying ‘its one of them things’ doesn’t fit when he was a normal baby boy growing.
Sometimes health cannot be fixed for one person but it can for another in the same or even in what seems an unhealthier situation. That feels unfair. To me IVF felt like trial and error. The womb and menstrual cycle changes each month, so what went wrong one month, may correct itself the next when tested by the experts. There’s one consultant who we have seen throughout our journey and although he couldn’t get us pregnant, I’ll appreciate him and his honesty. By working in healthcare I have an appreciation for those who work in this blind area of medicine with many couples experiencing trauma and mental health problems secondary to their infertility. Personally I struggled with the mix of emotions in the waiting area, some people looked anxious and cautious in the fight to simply get pregnant like us, whereas others appeared naive and excited to be having a baby.
We self funded our IVF with the hope that the money wouldn’t matter once we held our healthy baby. As soon as we walked through the clinic doors we were asked for money and this continued having to pay upfront before any procedures happened without any guarantee. We fell into a postcode lottery and we weren’t eligible for NHS funding. Now that we have completed 3 unsuccessful cycles, we are eligible on postcode but still cannot have this due to our unsuccessful IVF history. Wow, what a kick in the teeth! As an estimate I think we’ve spent as much money as a second wedding and not got a penny back as we decided against the refund package to think positively.
We were sold a dream from a business trying to make money. We were already heartbroken and instead of the dream we just wanted the happiness we sadly lost. We were sold a package that was originally aimed to prevent another miscarriage but instead it couldn’t even get us pregnant. We have been pregnant naturally three times but not at all with IVF. That wouldn’t be a great advert for the clinic.
During each embryo transfer the nurse would point to the screen and identify our future baby. All 4 times, the embryo sadly didn’t grow but we have the photos. The consultant would use the word ‘fail’ after each attempt and he didn’t have a reason for each loss. It simply didn’t work and they would make a change and reattempt. We didn’t receive a card in the post to say sorry for your losses but thank you for the money! Each time I visited the clinic their trees with newborn baby names were growing and one time they even needed another tree. Sadly we never had the opportunity to add a name and our experience didn’t feature in their 35% success rate. I wanted to kick the ‘success tree’ over on my last visit!
It occurred to me that 65% of people going through IVF with them had experienced a similar journey to us and left empty handed and heartbroken but the fertility clinic as a business has grown from our loss and none of these stories get heard.
The IVF clinic referred us to a recurrent miscarriage specialist clinic and this was the last step, IVF with them is based on research trials and experiments but unfortunately or some may say fortunately, our results yet again came back normal so it stopped.
This is where it ends. Unlike other stories that I read on fertility websites and IVF adverts, our story just stops. There’s no ending as I would need answers and reasons for an ending. I am unable to summarise or conclude. Our story just stops in the same way that each of our pregnancies just stopped and in the way that our journey just stopped with our IVF clinic and with our recurrent miscarriage specialist clinic. It all just stops. With no answers, reasons or meaning.
