The IVF Clinic

So after much research trawling though websites we were visiting the IVF clinic we had picked. It had the history of brilliant result for couples in London and this is what we wanted.....the best result.

If you are at this point in your journey and are doing your research I strongly suggest joining Facebook groups and Instagram pages with other people who have gone through IVF - they will give you a true picture of the clinics rather than their glossy brochures and websites.

The clinic we chose was very close to home, very good results and they appeared very caring - so this was it......we were going to have an IVF baby.

This part of the story does move rather fast and probably misses out alot of information, but it all went so quickly I cant remember everything so please forgive my shortness.

The bag started to fill up with meds, needles, meds, bigger needles, meds and instruction manuals, oh and some more needles. I think we walked out with about 3 big bags of the stuff and a heavily dented bank balance. We believed this would be it, in this first round we would end up with a baby, so the money didn't matter. We were lucky enough to start IVF in the first month so it was straight into meds and injections everyday. My poor wife, her stomach and bum cheeks both looked like a scene from Saving private Ryan. I cant remember the name of the injection I had to give her in her bum cheek every night, but I think I can still hear the skin break as that huge needle slid into her, it made me wince every time. All through this I just kept thinking how much it was my fault, what could I have done as a younger man that had caused this, putting my wife through this pain was killing me inside. Every day she was up early for blood tests and more meds, I carried on work as normal and felt kind of helpless. My only real "input" came again when I had to go to the clinic for a quick "release" into the pot for some new fresh soldiers, sending them on their way hoping they were good enough.

We had 3 embryos that fertilised so we decided to put them all back inside. I went to the transfer with my wife and on that day we had some very good omens, i wore my lucky watch and off we went to have our "baby" put in my wife. Everything went brilliantly, we were so happy and now the wait had begun.

Nothing worked. The test was negative. All 3 had failed to hold on. Our dreams were shattered. We were not having a baby. Why had this not worked?, What had gone wrong?. We were both emotionally broken, we felt lost and empty but thought we were strong enough to cope. We both wanted answers, but all it was put down to was "unexplained infertility issues".

"Unexplained Infertility" still seems like sort of easy get out clause, surely there was an answer, a reason for the loss and something that we could do better next time.

Nobody at this point, neither the GP or the IVF clinic said my sperm was the issue, purely saying its not great, but ok for IVF. Not being an expert we trusted them and ploughed on, toying with a slightly different diet, cutting down on alcohol and cutting down on stress.

And then she buys ......"It started with the egg".......