2017 was the year my husband Stuart and I had a GP appointment and were told the words “for you to conceive naturally it’s a 1 in a million chance”. We had tried to conceive naturally for about 12 months prior with no success. Stuart came to me and said he thought he should get his sperm tested (it was playing on his mind as he was born 10 weeks premature, had a few operations when he was younger and had undescended testes).
After that appointment before we knew it, we were sitting in a fertility specialist's office ready to discuss what was next! The plan was simple, IVF with ICSI, sperm and egg together, create embryos and transfer the embryo back in… easy!
NOT!
Starting IVF
In November 2017 we started IVF. Our first stimulated cycle was pretty straightforward, I responded to the drugs very well and 23 eggs were collected, 9 fertilized and 3 made it to day 5. After the EPU, I was so bloated and constipated and didn’t do much for a few days. We did a fresh transfer, I started bleeding a week after and blood confirmed a few days later it was unsuccessful.
At the start of 2018, so a month later we jumped straight into another embryo transfer. This wasn’t successful either. This was followed by another transfer, in which once again HCG was negative.
We were out of embryos, before another cycle, my specialist recommended a laparoscopy and hysteroscopy which he found mild endometriosis, adhesions and high natural killer cells. We thought right! There is more to this, and it wasn’t as simple as we thought.
Prior to this cycle, I spent a month or so working on egg quality. This EPU resulted in 27 eggs, however, only 9 fertilized but 5 made it to day 5, which we were pretty excited about. We did a fresh transfer (on an immune protocol), and the same thing happened, I started bleeding a week later.
Another BIG FAT NEGATIVE.
We did another embryo transfer (July 2018) and this time we transferred two embryos.
Once again, NOT PREGNANT.
Partial DQ Alpha Gene match
We had another appointment with our specialist to see what else we could do. I had heard of a DQ Alpha Gene match through a Facebook support group and asked him if we could be tested for this and he didn’t hesitate. A few weeks later, I was informed that we were a partial match and was referred to a specialist in Melbourne. We spoke to him on the phone a few weeks later and discussed coming down to Melbourne for LMIT. It was an absolute kick in the guts but we felt we had no choice but to give it a go. We needed to do something different as so far 5 transfers were unsuccessful.
In October and again in November of 2018, we travelled to Melbourne for LMIT. This treatment needed to be 4 weeks apart.
Jan 2019, we did a double embryo transfer and let me tell you my hopes were high, how could it not work!? But unfortunately, once again, that phone call from my IVF nurse was a disappointing one.
We had no more embryos but we felt like we were so close! We had to keep going. So in March of 2019 we did another IVF cycle, resulting in 25 eggs, 9 fertilised and 5 made it to day 5. We consented to PGS, so 3 of these were biopsied. We did a fresh transfer, I started bleeding a week or so later and this transfer was once unsuccessful.
One last push
We had hit our rock bottom, with not much left to give. We received our PGS results and were so happy to hear that 3 out of 3 were normal. So this was the little push we needed to keep going.
In April 2019, we did another transfer (lucky number 8) with a PGS embryo and full immune protocol. I will never forget the day the nurse called me with my results to say that I was PREGNANT!
This pregnancy resulted in the birth of our beautiful Genevieve who was born in January 2020.
The following November, I had an appointment with my specialist to discuss the plan for baby number 2. He said let's do exactly what you did last time as we know that worked! So we managed to get to Melbourne in January and February of 2021 for LMIT (we managed to do this even with border closures and border passes!).
We did an embryo transfer in March and this resulted in our sweet boy Maxwell (born in November 2021).
IVF was by far the toughest thing we have ever had to go through. It took a toll on our mental health (I even sought counselling and had to take a couple of weeks off work for self-care). It exhausted us financially (we used all of our savings, borrowed money from family and withdrew money from our superannuation). And physically, well you should have seen my moon face from the steroids. But looking at my two beautiful children, I wouldn’t change it for the world. It was just the cards we were dealt with and we were so keen to have a family, so had no choice but to go through it all.
My advice to anyone going through IVF is to not expect a different outcome by doing the same thing over and over. If you look at my story, if we just kept doing transfers without further investigations, we would have got nowhere! It was a lot of trial and error, but sometimes stories just aren’t that simple.
Make sure you check out Simone's podcast over at @ivftalespodcast
Simone shares her story from Queensland, Australia
Thank you for sharing x Emma & Lynette.
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