things i wish i knew about ivf

It's taken me a while but I'm finally in a place where I can talk about this without choking - with some (explained) caveats. As a friend put it, “what you thought was a stork, was actually a dodo."

Update: Since writing, I chatted on Alex and Em’s podcast about my IVF experience which people may find helpful. As mentioned on there all profits from paid subscriptions via this post will be donated to Tommy’s Charity.

I’ve thought about writing this for a while but if I’m honest I'm not sure I was ready until now. For those who don’t follow me on Instagram, my husband and I went through several rounds of IVF unsuccessfully. In actual fact a couple of the transfers were deemed a “success,” but the pregnancies didn’t hold. It is a chapter we chose to start - and finish - when we were ready. I’m not going to go into our specific reasons, but it was something we moved to quicker than others as it was clear we needed some help starting a family.

Things just weren’t happening. Or when they did happen they didn’t stick around for long. As my friend put it, “what you thought was a stork, was actually a dodo.” In my experience, a warped sense of humour does actually help.

I’m happy to be a relatively open book so I can help others - with two caveats. Firstly and most importantly, I wasn’t the only person in the process and I need to consider my husband’s preference for privacy. Secondly, being open about my experiences doesn’t mean I am happy to get randomly timed messages asking for advice. The idea of this post is to get it all out, so that if anyone does have any questions they can come here instead of ask me, sparing me the (potential) pain of taking them through my experience without warning.

I’m going to put this under a paid embargo because a) it means Google won’t work it’s SEO magic and make me an unwanted poster child for infertility, b) any way to claw back the £70,000+ we spent over that time is welcome. And c) for the people that have long speculated over my fertility in your forum-cauldrons, at least I know I’m going to get a fiver out of you to find out the information I’m happy to share anyway (ps - If you are a troll please bear in mind I’ll have your email address and there isn’t that many of you so… you’re a tad busted if not by your email, then by your IP address, or from your banking information when you sign up). So, let’s do this…

Update: Since writing, I chatted on Alex and Em’s podcast about my IVF experience which people may find helpful. As mentioned on there all profits from paid subscriptions via this post will be donated to Tommy’s Charity.