My Path To Pregnancy
Shortly after Anna got married, her and her husband were told the path to becoming parents, was not going to be plain sailing. Despite years of tears, angst, IVF and severe Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome, she finally became pregnant. Here, Anna tells us how she got there.
I was told unexpectedly that the only way we would become parents was through IVF. It was quite a shock and hit me and my relationship pretty hard. We had already had a tough start with my husband's brother tragically dying very suddenly 8 weeks before we got married, so to then throw fertility struggles into the mix plus a heap of other health issues in quick succession early doors into our marriage, meant we missed out on the honeymoon period. Thankfully we had our dog Ettie throughout the whole of our ups and (lots of) downs who still to this day I say, without her I doubt my husband and I would still be together. She saved us and gave us something to smile about through the hard times. We love you Ettie!
Smashing the F**k out of plan B took me a lot to come to terms with. After a lot of ‘why me?’ and trying to control the uncontrollable there came a point that I had to surrender to the reality that was being presented to me. I so desperately wanted to become a mum and once we had quite literally tried everything, it was time to resort to plan B. At the time of coming to terms that IVF was going to be our story, the incredible author Rosie Green had written a very poignant article about ‘smashing the fuck out of plan b’. I remember sitting in the car on a rainy Sunday while my husband fetched coffee reading it with tears rolling down my face knowing THIS was the mindset I had to adopt. Sometimes life throws you a huge curveball (or many all at once) and it's absolutely ok to cry, rant & feel all the feelings - I’m the queen of ranting - but I knew I had to dig deep and put one step in front of the other to hopefully one day hold my baby in my arms. So, from that rainy day, we put together a plan.
To improve my chances of IVF success, I jumped with both feet in to explore nutrition, supplements and alternative therapies. I’m seriously open-minded, so I was the perfect candidate to try anything to make this work, but it was also all consuming not to mention conflicting. Having trained as a dancer and then a Pilates instructor, I had a pretty good understanding of the body and what was good for it, however the world often makes it hard for you to do good things for your body, bear with me..... Once I started delving, I realised that ‘natural’ products/foods aren't always 100% healthy & often have things like emulsifiers and gums, so you really have to look at the back of packaging. Even small things like receipts have BPA in and are not recommended to be handled by women doing IVF, so as you can imagine you feel like someone darting through people in rush hour on the jubilee line instead of actually approaching this hugely testing time, holistically. So, after wading through soooo much stuff and scrolling endlessly I found my people and my things, relying on Bare Biology & Biocare supplements, meditation, acupuncture, Pilates, no nasties in skincare and shampoo and much to my bank balance’s annoyance, as much organic food as I could afford, oh and no caffeine (eughhhh).
I felt like I needed a lot more therapy, but then covid hit. It felt like an excuse looking back. I just wasn’t ready to take on this thing that wasn’t on the ‘life plan’ so when our doctor would ask what month would you like to start IVF? I used to say maybe next month, every month “as I just think I need a bit more therapy”. Then Covid hit. We had a call to say you better get a shimmy on as we don’t know what is going to happen with the IVF clinics and actually, it was the best thing that happened. It was go time and I had no choice.
Bum pessaries were the biggest shock for me. The media and every conversation I’ve ever had about the process of IVF has always been about needles. I’ve fainted at every blood test I’ve had (I’m now a boss FYI), so needles for me were not going to be the one. However, they were a breeze compared to the lesser talked about sister – BUM PESSERIES! If you know you know, but these rocket shaped nuggets are designed to help implantation and keep a pregnancy until your placenta takes over and your body basically realises you’re pregnant - all for a total of 12 weeks!! So, for 12 weeks, long after the needles had done their thing, the bum pessaries were still going strong.
Thirteen eggs were collected during our round of IVF. In my past life I think I must have been mystic meg as I had a gut feeling this would be the number. It seemed high, which you’d think would put me at ease, but the days that followed were horrendous. After daily phone calls from the lab to tell us how our embryos were doing, on day 5 (the point where they become blastocysts) only 4 had become embryos. Our incredible doctor recommended doing a test called PGT before a possible transfer to test for a range of genetic problems that can cause implantation failure, miscarriage and birth defects. We’d already paid a fortune at this point and had to take out a loan to pay for IVF so thought we’re broke anyway, why not add some extra debt to the pile? After PGT, we only had two embryos. A steep jump from 13 eggs and the stakes felt seriously high.
I knew there was something wrong when we walked into the room. It was embryo transfer day, the day we had been waiting for, after all the setbacks and delays, we were finally going to be on our way to becoming parents! Now we just had to pop this little ‘Embaby’ in and we’d be on our merry way. But our incredible Doctor, a powerhouse of a woman to be honest, who had held us and supported us throughout had a look that I just knew was about to deliver me bad news. “Your embryo hasn’t thawed how we expected it to”. My heart sank and tears filled my eyes. I had been building up to embryo transfer day like a kid for Christmas, the excitement, nerves and waves of emotions were crippling not to mention the insurance I thought we had that everything would be plain sailing from here on out, as we did ‘the test!’. Our Dr recommended we did the embryo transfer anyway as it was 50/50 that it may thaw and thrive more in ‘my warm womb’. With this thought in mind, I lay back and watched on the screen our precious embryo which looked like a shooting star make its way into its nest, aka through the tubes and into my uterus. I whispered to myself, "Welcome home”. It truly was amazing.
The days that followed were up there with the worst. I am someone that hates not knowing, literally hates it. It takes over me. Even if the news is bad, I would rather just know and aside from me getting severe Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome, a rare and potential life-threatening side effect of IVF, I’d say this was up there with the worst part of IVF – the dreaded two week wait. Give me Bum Pessaries any day over this. So, after two weeks of googling every symptom, praying so hard and failing awfully at trying to distract myself it was time to do a pregnancy test. Negative. The world crumbled.
A real kick in the ovary is an understatement to how getting a negative test felt. To make matters worse, the day we were due to do the test was Mother's Day. Surely the day you do a pregnancy test that falls on Mother's Day has to be positive? Computer, or shall I say Pregnancy test, says no. This was the shocking part. It's not like the movies, yes, we cried, yes, we crumbled but I had to keep going, I was opening a women's summit with a speech and a Pilates class in 30 minutes, the show had to go on, but my tiny little sparkle of a baby's show was over. A life not to be lived – my womb had failed.
Ultimately, I had to push through. I kept getting told I should take some time to heal from the loss. Some might say it was only an embryo at that point but when you’ve been through a grueling round of IVF and waited two weeks after the embryo transfer it’s a hell of a long time to hold on to hope and for me, a loss is a loss. But contrary to our Doctors advice, I said I’d rather get hit by a train than by two cars so if this is going to be royally shit and we are left with nothing, I'd rather know that sooner than later. So after two weeks we went back and the experience was completely different. I was a little numb if I’m honest, but there was no sad look in anyone's eyes, this embryo had thawed beautifully. I lay back again and off it went on its journey to my womb, me watching on the screen in amazement. Could this be it? We had got so used to bad news that this was just another part of the puzzle, yet I held that scan picture, looking at this dot nestled in with an ounce of hope.
I couldn’t bring myself to do the pregnancy test again. When it came to finding out if I was pregnant after the dreaded two-week wait again, I needed a definite answer. When we did our test last time although the test said negative, there was still a possibility I was pregnant, so we were advised to test again a few days later, which felt like another kick in the ovary when it was negative again. This time I needed to be dead cert was it a yes or a no. So we trapsed up to London to have a blood test. A very expensive blood test. Our Doctor sat beside me, needle in hand, I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous in my life. Before she found a vein, she literally flopped her head on my chest and said I soooo hope you’re pregnant. We really had had a wild ride together and it would take a book to tell it all, so we all just wanted some good news at last. Then we waited.... 4 hours!
“Your pregnant!!!!!” Lynne, our incredible Doctor, shouted down the phone, 4 hours later. My husband shouted “Yessss”, I dropped (gently) to my knees. Oh my freaking god. After 3 years of tears, angst, arguments and trying, it had happened! That little speck on the screen had this time found its way home. Hello baby, you hang on in there.
By Anna Johnson