The light at the end of a very long tunnel (IVF)

Member Name: Lunar13

Product:	IVF
Date:	01/04/09 (595 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It gave me my beautiful baby boy

Disadvantages: The most stress and pressure you will feel in your life

I have to be honest with this review, I have felt suicidal at points in my life when I thought I would never have a child. Getting pregnant became an all consuming obsession in my life and looking back I cant believe what I went through to have what is supposed to be natural in life. Anybody reading this, if you need support then send me a message, infertility is something no person should have to experience.

I am going to post a link to a website that will give you all the technical information on IVF. Its such a personal experience I think people who may be faced with it need you know how it effects the life of you and your family. This review would be tens of thousands of words long if I went into all the details, so I will stick to the aspects that stuck out the most for me.

http://www.hfea.gov.uk/en/1215.html

I have had 4 cycles of IVF in my life, and I'm only 28. I have had dozens of invasive tests and other treatments before the IVF. I also got divorced at 24, we had been through so much with failed treatments there was just nothing left between us. Please don't take this lightly, I got married when I was 20, I knew at 18 that I would have fertility problems so we started trying straight away. I loved my husband, we never argued and I thought it would last forever, so did he.

We got up one day, the morning I was due to start injections for the next course, he looked at me and said "I don't think I can do through this again". We separated a week later, there was no bitter end, no fighting, no cheating. We just came to a fork in the road, and it was one that we couldn't go down together. I honestly think if we had never faced this problem we would have still been married.

I met my partner just before I turned 26, we were friends for a few months and he knew everything I had been through. When we began our relationship he knew we might never have children naturally, we discussed everything we wanted from life and made a decision that if I got to 30 we would apply to join the adoption register.

I'm going to tell you about the last IVF cycle I went through, which resulted in the gorgeous boy in my profile. I had long since used my NHS entitlement, this varies depending on where you live. So Christmas 2007 I open a card from my partner, inside it is an appointment for January 2nd with a private consultant and a note from my partner to say he had the money saved for it, £3000.

This happened pretty quickly, I had all my tests repeated a few months previously. This includes blood tests at 3 points in your monthly cycle. A procedure called a HSG, this involves laying on a table with your legs in stirrups, they put a dye into your fallopian tubes and take several x-rays to check your tubes are clear. This can feel a little like period cramps, and is embarrassing. The staff are brilliant though. They have done this loads on times and really put you at ease. I also had an internal ultrasound to check my ovaries. My partner also had to give a sample to check everything was OK on his side.

All my tests showed that I was not able to ovulate naturally. I had previously tried drugs to stimulate ovulation, they worked in that I did ovulate, however I didn't get pregnant.

The stages of IVF can vary depending on your diagnosis but this is the stages that I went through, I have taken this from the official government website I linked to above, I don't think I can word it better than they can.

Boosting the woman's egg supply
You will be prescribed drugs that will help to control when your eggs are produced. You will also take drugs to increase the number of eggs you produce. This means that more eggs can be fertilised and the clinic will have a greater choice of fertilised eggs to use in treatment.

Checking on progress
The clinic will carry out vaginal ultrasound scans to monitor your developing eggs. They will also do blood tests to chart the rising levels of oestrogen produced by your eggs. This helps to track how your eggs are maturing. 34-38 hours before your eggs are due to be collected, you will have a hormone injection to help your eggs mature.

Collecting the woman's eggs
Eggs are usually collected by ultrasound guidance, which takes around 30 minutes. Your doctor will insert a thin needle through your vagina into each ovary. The eggs will be sucked into the needle. Very occasionally, eggs will be collected by laparoscopy (a small telescope with a light attached). This procedure involves making a small cut in your stomach and extracting the eggs with a fine needle, as before.

Collecting the man's sperm
Around the same time that the eggs are collected, the male partner will produce a sperm sample. This will be stored for a short time, and the sperm washed and spun so that the healthiest sperm can be used to fertilise the eggs. If you are using donor sperm, this will be taken from the freezer and prepared in the same way.

Fertilising the eggs
The eggs and sperm are mixed and left in a laboratory dish for 16-20 hours. They are then checked to see if any have fertilised. Those that have (now called embryos) are left for another 24-48 hours before being checked again.

Preparing for pregnancy
Two days after egg collection, the woman will be given progesterone to help prepare the lining of the womb for pregnancy. This is given with pessaries, injection or gel.

Transferring the embryos
Two to five days after the eggs fertilised, the healthiest ones are selected to be put back into the woman's womb. For women under the age of 40, one or two embryos can be replaced. If you are 40 or over, a maximum of three can be used. Remaining embryos can be frozen in case you have further IVF treatment.

After the transfer you have a two week wait to find out if it has worked. I have to be honest I had such bad stomach cramps I was wearing tampons for 2 days as I thought my period would start any minute. You cant use a normal home pregnancy test as the drugs you are given can give you a false positive result. We went for the blood test in the morning then spent several very long hours waiting for the news.

I cant begin to describe how I felt when I got the news, I didn't believe it until I went for a scan two weeks later. Fertility treatment is an emotional roller-coaster, and the hormones I took did turn me into a crazy person. I had to remind myself constantly that my partner was going through this too, people do tend to focus on the woman in all this, and its just as stressful for men.

I can say now that it was worth every second, but if you are facing the prospect its good to know what you are going into. Try talking to people who have been there. I have one friend who decided to adopt after 3 failed attempts, she has a beautiful little girl now and knew that adoption was the best decision for her.

Summary: I hope this can help someone out there cope with their situation