My six-year journey began in 2019, shortly before I turned 36, when my husband and I first started trying to conceive naturally.
Twelve months later, without even a hint of success, we approached our GP for basic fertility tests. These found nothing concerning on my side, but suboptimal sperm morphology on my husband’s. He made some lifestyle changes and, a few months later, when retested, his levels were normal.
Another six months down the line and still nothing, so we were referred to our local fertility clinic and granted NHS funding for one round of IVF. By the time we reached the top of the waiting list, it was March 2021 and I had just turned 38. We finally saw a positive test for the first time in our lives, but after experiencing some pain, a scan confirmed an early miscarriage.
We moved to a private clinic in September 2021, but unfortunately our next two transfers resulted in Big Fat Negatives. We stayed with the same clinic and, after our next round in May 2022, we saw those two pink lines again. A little more wary this time, we checked my hCG levels, which revealed I had suffered another early miscarriage.
We ploughed on, but our next two transfers were not successful either. Then, a transfer in April 2023 brought us a positive result with correctly rising hCG levels, and we began to hope. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as after previously hearing a heartbeat, our viability scan revealed a third miscarriage.
At this point, our UK clinic was not keen to continue supporting further IVF attempts, so we transferred to a clinic in the Czech Republic. However, our first transfer there, in September 2023, resulted in our fourth miscarriage at nine weeks.
As I was now nearly 41 and we had been on the own-egg IVF merry-go-round for five years, we made the decision to move to donor eggs. We were matched with a donor early in 2024 and went ahead with a transfer in May, which was unfortunately yet another negative. Two months later, in July 2024, we tried again and this time we were successful. In March 2025, at the age of 42, I finally gave birth to my daughter.
Wow. Condensing those agonising six years into just a few factual paragraphs really does belittle what we went through, but adding every detail would make this page a very heavy read.
I can tell you that I was repeatedly poked and prodded, endured hundreds of injections and blood tests, underwent multiple procedures, was overloaded with hormones, struggled through four miscarriages and had to face genetic loss.
I’ve felt overwhelmed, scared, hopeless, angry, humiliated, devastated, lonely, inadequate, depressed, numb and more — sometimes all at the same time.
This journey has given me (unsought!) experience with unexplained infertility, missed miscarriage, recurrent pregnancy loss, reproductive immunology, own-egg IVF both in the UK and abroad, advanced sperm sorting techniques, the donor egg pathway, and nearly every sort of testing the fertility world has dreamed up. So if you’re looking for someone who personally gets it, I’m here for you.
If you would like to know more, I documented every painstaking detail of my journey via an Instagram account (trigger warning: it does contain some pregnancy content). I do not share it publicly to protect my daughter’s anonymity, but if you contact me, I would be happy to give you the details privately.
