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I must have read a hundred personal accounts of other people’s Infertility Treatment in publications and websites over the 6 years of my own quest for a baby, and the comforting thing is that in some way, I have been able to identify with every one of them. Every one’s journey is different with it’s own twist and turns, bumps and hurdles, but the aim is the same for all of us, we all want to be parents. We all fantasise about that day when we hold our baby for the first time and feel that unconditional, all consuming love that we have longed to feel.

My own journey began around the time I turned 30. I remember the conversation I had with my husband quite vividly. We were talking about our future. We had always had a 10 year plan after our marriage which involved establishing ourselves in Scotland, him completing a post graduate course and me finding a career that would keep me happy and enable me to settle down after years of travelling and a rootless existence. So far, children had not featured in this plan. However, I had been feeling something stirring in me, some kind of longing and a feeling of time rushing past me. A nagging feeling that something was missing. After I while, I figured it out, children. We had always assumed we would have some, as I think the majority of couples do, but there was still so much to do and having kids would have made some of these things quite difficult. He wasn’t sure he was ready. Neither was I but I was consumed by a particular fear. I was afraid that if we waited any longer and found that we had problems, I would then be too old to do anything about it and any chance we had of having a child would be gone. I was afraid of spending the rest of my life filled with regret and resentment.

So like so many couples before us, we started trying full of hope and expectation. I started paying attention to my body for the first time in my life and religiously marked in my diary the important days of my cycle. Then there was the post coital gymnastics which involved me putting my legs up against the wall and staying like that for half an hour to allow the good swimmers time to get a headstart before gravity made it more difficult for them. Nothing! So it’s off to the doctors, then the referral to a clinic for investigation, blood tests, laparoscopy, keep trying, still nothing.

It was time to take action, so after a 9 month wait (ironic, eh?), we started IUI. IUI stands for Intra Uterine Insemination and is really a way of making sure that the two elements get into the right place at the right time to do their thing. Sounds simple enough and to begin with it was. I did my own injections which was fine, attended the clinic for scans and felt full of hope. The first failure was disappointing but we carried on with another cycle straight away. I was coping really well and found the only really stressful thing was bunking of work for the times that I needed to go to the hospital for scans and getting a day off last minute when it was time for the insemination to take place. I think my husband found producing the goods in a reasonable quantity at the appointed time slightly daunting, but we coped.

I think it was cycle number 3, just before Christmas in 2001 that the pitfalls of IUI hit home. The egg producing had been just a bit too successful and I had 7 follicles. In IUI, 7 follicles can mean 7 eggs which, can mean 7 babies. There’s no element of control over the number fertilised, as there is in IVF. We had to abandon. Never mind, onwards and upwards. Cycle number 4 all going well then on my last scan before insemination, the discovery that I had ovulated already and we’d lost them. I was devastated. We ended up doing 2 more cycles of IUI, but any hope of success had gone from me and I
resented the process and found myself getting anxious every time we drove up to the hospital. I had always said that I would take advantage of every cycle of IUI I could have, as the success rates are comparable to those for IVF and it is so much less invasive, it had to be better for me. But it was time to accept that enough was enough and we had to move on.

The hospital where we had undergone IUI referred us on to another hospital for IVF. More bloods, more sperm analysis. Based on these results, they said ICSI was our only option. The sperm analysis showed that there were insufficient numbers to do normal IVF. I couldn’t understand it, how could it be OK for IUI but not for IVF? We struggled with the decision as to whether to continue or not for some months. ICSI seemed like such an unknown quantity and scientific studies that had been done to assess any harmful affects to children born from ICSI seemed inconclusive. Again, the decision came down to the fact that if we didn’t try, we would wonder about what might have been and possibly regret the decision to give up for the rest of our lives. We had to continue.

Which brings me up to present day. Yesterday, 10 eggs were taken from me and handed over to the embryologist to fertilise. Our future is entirely out of our hands, as it has seemed to be ever since we began treatment. I lay awake last night thinking about the life that may be forming in an incubator a few miles from home and trying not to think of them as my children, preparing myself for disappointment. If positive thought does play any part in this process, we are doomed from the start as I see this current treatment as something that has to be endured in order to be able to get on with our lives, knowing we did everything possible and explored every avenue before giving up. I fully expect the result to be failure. And yet there is this little part of me, that still imagines the joy of being able to tell the friends who have supported us through this, my family, my husband’s family, the postman, anyone, that I’m pregnant. As long as I can take pleasure in this fantasy, I can keep going.

Fertility Treatment is the loneliest path I have ever walked in my life. It is very hard to think that you are not the only person who feels this way. The reason I have identified with every account I have ever read, is that the feelings we experience are felt by all those who go through it. The loneliness, the desperation, the longing, the frustration, the envy and the physical pain that each disappointment inflicts. If I have hit the nail on the head there, then you know YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

For those of you reading this before starting treatment, take heart. At times it will be agony, but you will keep going, as will I, because every time you walk into your clinic, you will see the pictures on the walls. Pictures of the beautiful babies that have been born to the lucky ones and this spark of hope will make it possible for us to keep going.

Wendy

Since writing this article Wendy has decided to stop her fertility treatment for now and is fully enjoying some new found pleasures in life.

Sam MacCuish
Cradle Editor