IVF: Brigid's Emotional Journey
Brigid's story
I was in my early thirties when I started to try to become pregnant with myfirst child, but I gradually realised that it wasn't happening for me. I definitely felt embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn't do what everyone else seemed to be able to do with ease: get pregnant. I thought people would pity me and I couldn't get my words out when trying to describe the emotions I felt. Having children seemed like everything to me and not being able to have them went to the heart of who I felt I was. Vocalising how I felt about not being able to get pregnant was too much for me, even with close friends and I desperately needed something to read on the subject. This is why I wrote IVF: An Emotional Companion, which is not only my IVF journey, but 22 other women's stories of the emotional ups and downs of fertility problems. Each chapter has a theme, from pregnancy after 40, choosing to have children alone to secondary infertility.
My own experience
Once I realised I had a fertility problem it took about three years to get all the investigations done on the NHS; it turned out I had blocked tubes and had a laparoscopy done to try to clear the blockage but it didn't work. Sometimes I had to wait months between each NHS appointment. When you are longing for a baby it can all feel frustratingly slow.I love my friends and their children so it never bothered me that others were having babies around me, but it was seeing random pregnant strangers that I found difficult. Everyone I interviewed for the book had different situations that upset them; one woman hated weddings because people would come out and ask her why she had no children. Another hated bring in the office and seeing work colleagues announce their pregnancies, one-by-one. Some couldn't see their friends who were constantly having babies, but for me it was people I didn't know.
Becoming pregnant
I became pregnant with Patrick after my first round of IVF and I felt incredibly lucky. I hadn't considered how gruelling the process would be, or quite how physical it was. You have to have the support of your friends and family through every stage of IVF, from having to inject yourself everyday, growing enough eggs, worrying about whether the eggs have fertilised and being on the two week wait, where you wait anxiously to see if it has resulted in a pregnancy. With IVF there is also a big possibility of disappointment. The Red 2011 National Fertility report asked women who had had IVF what the outcome had been; 45% had a baby and 5% got pregnant naturally. So for all the women who had IVF only half ended up with children.I loved being pregnant and I couldn't wait to meet the baby. When Patrick was born it wasn't love at first sight, more like shock. But when the love kicked in, two days in, it was stronger than I ever imagined it would be. It no longer mattered how he'd been conceived - just that he was here.
Trying again
Patrick was two-years-old when we decided to try for a second baby. When Patrick was conceived we had been able to freeze two embryos, so these were put back inside me with the hope that it would result in pregnancy again.This time the IVF cycle didn't work. I was really shocked by how devastated I was when it was unsuccessful. I thought I didn't need another child but the baby-hunger kicked in and I started thinking more and more about
providing a sibling for Patrick. So last year I had two IVF cycles; the first one failed, and the second one worked, but sadly, when I was 16 weeks pregnant, I experienced a miscarriage. It took me a long time to come to terms with losing that pregnancy and it's still something I am dealing with. But I was writing the book at the time and the constant support of the women I was interviewing for the book was an amazing support system I was lucky to have.
One of the women in the book had also experienced a miscarriage and one day she told me she believed that if your children die before you, they wait at
the gates of Heaven for you until you arrive. You then go through the gates together holding hands. Whenever I've felt anger and sadness or hopeless and
dark I've thought about this and it's really helped me. At 16 weeks I'd had
a bump, I'd told everyone I was pregnant and my pregnancy was very public.
This also meant that I had lots of support when I lost the baby, as people understood what I'd been through in order to become pregnant. Another mum
in the book had one child and tried three unsuccessful IVF cycles to have a second baby. She told me that she often had to remind herself that just because she was a mummy to one child, it didn't mean she was less of a mummy than her friends who were parents to two, three or four children.
The hard choice
After my miscarriage I wanted to try again for another baby but this time myhusband didn't. It took me a long time to be reconciled to this decision and I had to switch my mind to concentrate on what I did have, not what I didn't have. I certainly went through a stage of resenting my husband for making that choice, but I also saw the truth in his reasoning. The cost of IVF on our family didn't just cost us financially but also emotionally. A typical IVF cycle takes roughly two months, but you have to be healthy for months beforehand and consider the effects afterwards if it doesn't result in pregnancy. You're basically looking at six months out of your life for each cycle. I am still coming to terms with IVF not working a second time for me and I'm still working through that to some extent. Men and women deal with infertility very differently and I totally respect my husband's decision.
Fertility expert Zita West once explained to me that she often sees women at
her clinic who are going at 100MPH planning each treatment and what they'll
do if this treatment doesn't work, whilst men don't plan and obsess in the same way. They take each treatment one step at a time. Men and women work to different speeds and this is really evident when you go through something
like IVF.
The future
In the Red Fertility report women were asked how many children they had: 31% said one child, 52% said two children and 13% said three. The study then asked the women what the ideal family size was: Only 10% said one child which outlines that there are lots of parents out there that have one childbut are struggling to have a second. This could be for financial reasons; a marriage breaking up or fertility problems but it certainly indicates that there are people struggling to come to terms with having only one child.
My son Patrick, now four, had found out about the second pregnancy at 12 weeks. He asked lots of questions after the miscarriage like, 'where is the baby now'? During my own grief I had to explain to my son that the baby was born too early, too small. I told him that some families have a mummy and a daddy and only one child and whilst I was very sad about the baby, it was nothing to do with him. No matter what happens he has to understand that although mummy and daddy are sad at the moment we love him very much and he is the one making us happy.
Brigid's book IVF: AN Emotional Companion (Collins, £12.99) is available
from Amazon
If you want to hear more from Brigid Moss, she'll be talking at the Fertility Show on Friday 4th November in London about Surviving IVF (fertilityshow.co.uk).
Key findings from the Red Fertility Report include:
- The recession has resulted in a 25% drop in babies tried for, with 10% of women saying the recession had made them postpone trying for a baby, and 15% saying they¹d decided not to try at all.
- Baby prices have dropped more than house prices with the average amount women would be prepared to spend to conceive dropping from £15,000 to £12,000 a 20% drop in just 12 months. * The average house price is down 2.65% from July 2010 to £163.981 Halifax House Price Index.
- The percentage of women who would be prepared to spend £50,000 toguarantee them a baby has dropped even more dramatically from 10% to 6% - a 40% drop over the same period.
- Following increased financial pressure on the NHS, when it comes to offering free IVF, 62% of women don¹t think it should be available for anyone who wants it - this is up 17% from 2007 (45%). This suggests that when funds are tight, fewer women perceive having a baby as a right for all.
- Due to lack of IVF on the NHS, 61% have paid for IVF privately, with only one in five getting all their treatment for free.
For more information on visit www.redonline.co.uk
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