"Even the stormiest tides turn...."

May 2018. Unequivocally the worst month of my life. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. 

After 3 years of trying and getting nowhere, we were eventually referred to Exeter Fertility Clinic for a first round of IVF back in May 2017. I am reliably informed that it usually takes about 2-3 months from your initial IVF consultation to the commencement of a first cycle of treatment. For various reasons it took us just shy of 12 months. A whole year. A tortuous, emotional wreck of a year of appointments, discussions, blood tests, ultrasound scans, trial procedures, more discussions, getting lost “between admin systems”, and generally having to lie back and think of England whilst the world and his wife – or so it often felt like – became intimately acquainted with my intimate area… believe me, for someone so body conscious that it took me 31 years of my life to work up to showering and changing in the communal changing area at the local pool, that is one hell of an ordeal.

What I have noticed since I have revealed that we have gone through IVF is just how many others have responded with their own personal stories of fertility struggles and difficulties conceiving. It is almost a taboo subject that people just don’t speak about, and whilst I can understand why – it is intensely private and personal and, often, quite upsetting to discuss – I also believe that it is healthy to have these conversations, when you feel ready to do so. Going through IVF is so all consuming and because you do not read about the struggles of others but only see the constant baby-joy announcements of success stories, it is easy to feel that you are the only unlucky ones in this position whilst everyone else parades their fertile family unit across social media.

We started the whole process somewhat naively; again, no doubt, because I was not aware of anyone I knew who had gone through the treatment, I had no personal accounts to draw upon. I thought those three loaded letters – I-V-F – were just a case of tapping into a bit of scientific knowledge to help you out a bit: wait until I’m ovulating, have someone who knows what they’re doing extract the egg, mix it with sperm, put egg back in, baby is made, or, often, two babies in a buy-one-get-one-free deal. I had not appreciated the 8 week long preamble that leads up to this part, in which you must self-inject with a truly astonishing (or so it seemed to me, when it arrived by the truck load in a giant box on the back of a transit van one evening) volume of drugs. You inject nightly, always at the precise same time, 8:45pm for me. As some of the drugs have to be kept refrigerated, this means always being at home in time to take them. If you get the timing wrong just once, it can muck up the whole cycle. I remember once racing back up the A38 from a massage with Patrick, my sponsor, at St. Mellion clinic, to get home in time. It's pretty stressful. 

This goes on for weeks. One drug shuts your whole reproductive system down (this phase is called “down-regging”) and puts you into a menopausal state and you get to experience the delights of every symptom that goes along with that… hot flushes, sweating, headaches, and mood swings like you would not believe. The next phase (referred to as “stimming”) sees you start to inject another drug that stimulates the ovaries, causing them to go beserk, get huge and produce multiple eggs ready for retrieval. Cue mega bloating, constant cramping, back ache and a 7lb weight gain in as many days. Oh, plus the continued mood swings, emotional outbursts, generally feeling like shit etc etc and the risk of contracting a potentially fatal side-effect called OHSS if the ovaries become too stimulated. Finally, after 4 delightful internal ultrasound scans, you arrive at the egg retrieval phase. Cue another injection timed to the minute to trigger the egg release at precisely the right time. Egg retrieval – usually done under sedation unless, like me, you don’t handle sedation very well, so in my case purely on gas and air, is followed by 5 long days of waiting to see if any of the eggs fertilise in the lab. You await the daily phone call from the embryologist to update you with the current state of play. From 10 extracted eggs, we had 3 valid embryos by day 5; one of which was put back into me, the other two frozen in storage for potential future use. For me, the embryo transferal did not go well; she struggled to navigate my apparently complex canal, resulting in me bleeding a lot. The night I got home I had bad cramping and more bleeding and, basically, I think I lost the embryo that very same night. But I don’t know this; I still had to assume I was now pregnant and act accordingly, avoiding alcohol, processed meats, pates, soft cheeses etc. You have to ride out the hellish period that they call ‘the two week wait’ before you can take a pregnancy test 14 long days later. That day happened to be my Mum’s birthday, 12^th May. It was negative. 12 months riding the emotional IVF rollercoaster and it had all been for nothing. The realisation that we would have to go through all of this again, only next time pay thousands of pounds to do so, was crushing.

All throughout this procedure, you are advised to exercise minimally in the 6 weeks of injections leading up to the egg retrieval, then from that day, for the next three weeks, you cannot exercise at all beyond a 30 minute daily walk. For someone who uses exercise as an emotional coping mechanism and stress reliever, I cannot tell you how hard it was to have to abstain. It was like going cold-turkey off an addictive drug! That 3 week period was the longest I had ever gone without exercise since I was 14 years old…. A fact I think I must have pointed out to poor Matt at least 10 times!! After training through all that miserable, cold winter weather, the sun and heat had finally arrived and all I could do was watch the strava uploads as all my mates went out cycling without me and stole my QOMs! Hard, but there was no way on earth I was going to “cheat” and disregard clinical advice, as, if it didn’t work, I wanted to be sure, for peace of mind, that there was nothing I did that could have impacted it.

We took the negative test on May 12^th at 7am. By 9am I was lining up on the start line of Exmouth parkrun. Might as well get back to it and focus on getting fit for the world championships in Denmark, now I’m not pregnant. The next day, the 13^th, despite 8 weeks of little or no training, I took up my place at the Exe Valley Triathlon. I should have just coasted it for a training run out, but competitive Ellie had to push and ended up buggering up her left leg again in the process. No baby, no running, and likely now no world championships. Not in the best place I’ve ever been, physically or emotionally….. and then, 5 days later, after being unwell since a botched hernia operation in January, my Dad very nearly died. Long long story there, which I won’t go into here because it’s too upsetting to recall it, but thank God he didn’t. My Mum and I found him in time, and he is now fully fixed up and back to full health. But it certainly put a few things into perspective. The world duathlon champs suddenly seemed unimportant in the scheme of things. What matters most is health and family: I was lucky that I still had both and so I had every reason not to wallow in negativity, but to pick myself up, be thankful to still have my Dad and the unfailing love and support of my husband, family and friends. Time to kick back, go easy on myself, just do exercise for enjoyment for a bit and not worry about any competitive goals for the moment. And the IVF? Well, we certainly aren't keen to go back to Fertility Exeter, and we needed a few months to take stock, allow my body to reset itself, and then consider our options.

One month later, following a relaxing weekend away in London in a lovely spa hotel, I was pregnant, naturally! I found out in the doctor’s surgery when I went for a check-up following the failure of the IVF and all the emotional upset I had been through with that and my Dad’s situation. She made me do a urine test and it revealed I was pregnant! I was absolutely flabbergasted. My doctor was too! We danced around her surgery, hugging each other. She was so thrilled as she has been on this whole journey with us and been such an advocate of our cause, constantly chasing results and making enquiries on our behalf. She was thrilled that she was able to share the special moment with me. That was the 14^th June, just 3 days before my 35^th birthday and 3 days before father’s day…. What an amazing birthday and father’s day gift!

My wise old Gran, who passed away in December 2013, aged 97, and is my own personal hero, had a plethora of axioms that she would periodically impart when occasion demanded. One was “good things come to those who wait” and another, “even the stormiest tides turn”. You were right Grandma, they do. They really do. From worst month ever to best month ever, life’s great storms sometimes engulf you and all you can do is ride them out, because, eventually, even the stormiest of tides turn and spit you out onto a sunbathed tropical beach. 

First time in my life I've ever had a belly! It's taking some getting used to, but proving useful for added buoyancy in the swimming pool! ;-)