Introduction

When going through my IVF journey, I found it really helpful to read other people’s stories. It helped me prepare and know what to expect, and also helped give me hope in the difficult times. I hope that this story can do that for someone else stepping into this journey.

We ended up on the IVF path after an ectopic pregnancy left me with one, likely blocked, tube. I’ve also shared that emotional story which will give additional context and why it had already been such a hard road before starting IVF.

Testing Fertility – HyFoSy Scan

My IVF journey began at a HyFoSy scan. We went in to it understanding that we were likely going to have bad news, but still feeling hopeful. The fertility doctor performing the scan did the usual anatomy checks before injecting the foam dye into my uterus via a catheter. This is when shit got serious. For those that don’t know, fallopian tubes are generally too small to see on an ultrasound, so you can imagine that any potential blockages are even harder to see. The foam dye however can be easily seen and tracked through ultrasound.

This foam dye was injected, filling my uterus. As time went on, more dye was injected, the pressure built and the pain pulled me completely inward. We hoped to see the dye move through my remaining tube and into the abyss that was the rest of my abdomen, but we weren’t so lucky. The doctor said that sometimes a blockage may have a moveable flap or component, and that pushing the dye in harder can sometimes open it, asking if I consented to her trying a little harder. Being the determined and tough bad ass that I am, I said of course. She pushed harder, I couldn’t talk anymore. With nowhere for the dye to escape each push just built pressure, and in turn, my pain. My husband, Tony, told me later that I looked how I did when I was in labour with Oliver. I couldn’t talk, all I could do was breathe. Soon it was over, and we had our answer.

No tubal patency.

No chance of conceiving naturally.

I held myself together until we got in the car. The second the door shut, I fell apart. It felt like one challenge after another, it felt so unfair that I was even in this situation. But we knew we wanted another baby, and we knew that we didn’t want to wait any longer than we already had. Immediately we picked an IVF clinic and had our GP refer us.

My IVF Journey

For anyone unfamiliar with the IVF process, here’s my very basic understanding. Normally, a woman’s ovary will grow a few follicles through her monthly cycle. All of these have the potential to release an egg, but generally only one will mature enough and release a mature egg. The IVF process sees you inject your body with stimulation medications to create a super ovulation, lots of follicles, lots of eggs. Then the doctor will do an egg retrieval where they go in and harvest the eggs, mix them with the sperm, and after a few days, one of your embryos will either be transferred in a fresh transfer, or they’ll all be frozen to be thawed and transferred in a frozen transfer at a later date. And the odds of success? Here’s the advice I was given:

• For every follicle counted, expect half to produce mature eggs
• For every mature egg, expect half fertilise
• For every embryo, expect half to make it to transfer

Stimulation Phase

On our journey, the first step was a blood test for me, and a sperm check for Tony. The doctor told him he had super sperm, and that my AMH value was in the normal range, although a little on the low end. Next it was time to pick up all of the medication and learn how to use it. In a little room, a nurse took us through how to use all the little needles and med tubes, when to start the cycle, when to administer all the different meds, and how the rest of the cycle would work. Now all that was left was to wait for my period to start.

Fast forward a few more days and there she was, in all her glory, telling us it was time to start the stimulation cycle. Tony gave me every one of my shots, which were easier than expected. I’d done lots of reading, so I knew I would bloat, but I was lucky that overall this process wasn’t too bad. Honestly, I think I was just so happy to finally be on the path to our baby after all of the emotional trauma and waiting around after my ectopic.

The clinic had booked in a scan part way through my stim cycle to check how I was responding to the treatment, but I’d come down with a nasty case of gastro. They told me to stay home so that I wouldn’t get everyone else in the clinic sick, and that I would only do the scan before booking in my egg retrieval. This sickness saw me spike a nasty fever, but thankfully it was short lived. Soon it was time for the final scan. This was when we were going to see how many follicles my ovaries had produced. During my HyFoSy scan, the doctor counted TWELVE follicles, and that’s just what my body had done naturally, with the super ovulation that my body was gearing up for now, I was expecting a great result. One. One mature follicle. And two more that might mature before my egg retrieval. It felt like a punch to the chest. The nurse asked us what we wanted to do. Did we want to go ahead with the retrieval, or start a new cycle and hope for better results? We contemplated, aware that considering the odds we’d heard before, we almost certainly wouldn’t be successful in this round of IVF. I asked the nurse what she would do, and without hesitation, she said she would go ahead, and that ‘it only takes one”.

We chose to go ahead. She told us when we needed to administer the trigger shot, the final medication to prepare your body and eggs for the retrieval, and booked me in. We set a timer so we didn’t miss our window for the shot, and made sure we were home and undistracted. It went off without a hitch.

Egg Retrieval

Retrieval day, we arrived at the clinic and waited for me to be checked in. This clinic was a more budget friendly clinic, so they ran their cycles like a production line. All retrievals were done on a Wednesday, that way the doctor could blow through them one after another and get as many women through as possible. Same scenario for the transfers. Because of this, all of the women wait together for their turn in the back, and for the privacy of others, partners are not allowed to wait with you, or be with you while you’re in recovery. It’s hard, because IVF is a very emotionally taxing process, and sitting alone before and after a big step like this, it’s just, extra lonely. I was required to have a full bladder for the retrieval, but sitting and waiting for as long as I did, I, without exaggerating, nearly peed my pants. I was allowed to go to the toilet thankfully, that was the best pee of my life, and even more thankfully, that didn’t seem to cause issues with my retrieval, or at least no one commented on it.

I was called into a room full of nurses and the fertility doctor. One nurse held up a sheet while I changed into a gown behind it. I hopped on the bed, and was given a green whistle for pain. Most IVF clinics conduct their retrievals in a hospital and patients are under general anaesthetic, but again, budget clinic. I was a little apprehensive, knowing that most women are knocked out for this, and I was just getting the same thing injured footy players get on the field. The nurse told me to take some breaths from the whistle to get the medicine inside working. The doctor inserted the ultrasound probe and had a quick look around. Before I knew it, I was high as kite. Then it was time.

Here’s a quick explanation of how this process works, but it may not be for the squeamish, so skip this paragraph if that’s you. The intravaginal ultrasound probe (meaning, in the vagina) has a hollow needle that pokes out of it when it’s time to conduct the retrieval. This needle is poked through the vaginal wall, over to the ovary, where it then acts like a vacuum to suck up the eggs. Then the needle is pulled back into the vagina, and the process is repeated on the opposite side.

The doctor extended the needle, and once again, I focused on my breathing and went into myself. I also made good use of that whistle. I could here talking, but I couldn’t understand what was being said thanks to being so high. I was told that they were going to the other side, and of course felt that happen too, and then they told me they were going back to the first side again. This is when I realised they hadn’t retrieved any eggs yet. Internally I was panicking, but soon someone announced they’d gotten an egg. And then it was all over. The probe came out, I was sat up in the bed, and I fell apart. One egg. In a line of what felt like failure after failure, here was the next one. I knew the odds. I felt completely hopeless. I was moved to recovery after I gathered myself and once I was seated there, I promptly broke down again. The nurse came to check I wasn’t in physical danger, and I was sobbing so hard that I couldn’t even tell her why I was crying. Eventually though she realised that I was just so sad.

Eventually I was discharged and finally able to see Tony again. He could see that I’d been crying, and soon he understood why. We were told to expect a call the following day to tell us if our egg had been fertilised, but we weren’t holding much hope. Tony drove us home.

Making an Embryo

The next day the call came. I put the doctor on speaker so we could both hear, and she announced that our egg had fertilised! Our egg was now an embryo! It felt like a miracle after everything that had gone wrong. I almost couldn’t believe it. It started to feel like this might actually work, there were just a few more steps for us to get through.

The next step was for the embryo to grow for five days and become a blastocyst. We were told that if it didn’t make it, we would get a call, but that if it did, no news was good news, and that we would go back to the clinic the following Monday for a fresh transfer. Let me tell you, no news is good news is great from a practicality sense for the clinic, but waiting those days, with no way to know if things were tracking okay was nerve wracking.

Fresh Embryo Transfer

Sure enough, no news came. Tony was required by work to attend a site trip, so I drove myself back to the clinic and checked in, waiting with the same group of women I had five days prior. When it was my turn, I was taken back into the same room and told that we had a 4AB graded embryo. I don’t know all of the details of what that means, but it’s about the second best grading you can have, so that was good news. A catheter was placed through my cervix and into my uterus and presto, the embryo was in and the transfer was complete.

On the drive home I had a little chat with that teeny tiny baby. I held my tummy, really low, and I promised to do whatever I could to give it a good home to grow, and asked it to do whatever it needed to stick in there and start growing. It felt like we were already a team, and we were going to do this together. I needed to use progesterone suppositories every day to help my body accept the pregnancy. These made me bloat so fast. I looked pregnant after a few days. The progesterone also gives you just about every pregnancy symptom in the book, so it’s really confusing and emotionally taxing.

Waiting and Testing

They tell you not to take any pregnancy tests after you do a transfer. They tell you to wait until the blood test that the clinic performs to test for the pregnancy hormone hCG. This is famously known as the two week wait. Fuck that. I started testing a few days after transfer. I knew it was too early, but I did it anyway, multiple times a day. I felt like I was insane, which is exactly why they tell you not to do this. Five days past my transfer my tests were still negative, but I just KNEW they were wrong. I was using the cheaper Pregmate tests from Amazon, and a deep dive told me that those will show a positive once the hCG in your urine hits a level of 25 mIU/mL, where as First Response truly is the first response with a positive showing at 6.3 mIU/mL. Tony ran out to the store while I put Ollie to sleep, and then I immediately took another test. It was faint, but the line was there, I knew it! It really does just take one egg.

Of course, the follow up blood test at the clinic came back with a positive result, and then I was referred to my GP and my care at the clinic ended.

Our Happy Ending

Our miracle baby was born happy and healthy 9 months later. I’m excited to share her birth story in my next post. After everything it took to get here, I’m so incredibly grateful that our IVF journey was fast and straightforward, which is not the case for many. I’m also so happy to get to be such a hopeful statistic, that it really does only take one.

xx Laura