When life isn’t black and white. A journey through IVF.

I wanted to share this touching story with you all. Robyn is a family friend and is such a brave young woman for sharing her story the way she has, with the intention of helping others going through similar troubles cope and see the light at the end of the tunnel. Here is her story.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Reproducing is a natural way of life .
A man and a woman make a baby and history generally repeats itself .

However life isn’t as black and white as that.

My name is Robyn and I am 28. I am married to my wonderful wife Stacey, who’s 34.

When I was 26 I had said to Stacey I would like to have a child one day and after a lot of thinking we decided to do a lot of research and seek medical help.

There are several ways for a female couple to have children and also lots of questions to answer and consider.

There is artificial insemination at home with a donor, this can be a known man or someone you meet on the internet. People joke and call this the turkey baster way! To me, this was not right for us as we wanted everything to be seen as “done properly “. I wanted to have a baby and to be honest with him or her when they were older with regards to where they came from, to me, explaining you’re the neighbour’s child or my friend’s or some weird guy off the net just didn’t seem good enough or fair.

We decided to go to a sperm bank and get a match.

We wanted the donor to have similarities to my wife; dark hair, dark eyes, tall, slim, sporty and (in her words) “intelligent ” lol. We went to the european sperm bank based in Denmark . Finding a donor was like browsing a catalogue, you fill in your requirements and wait for the search to meet your match! We paid £99 to search, this included looking at baby pictures, voice recordings, personality tests, staff impressions and a hand written letter from the donor to the recipient. We knew who we wanted straight away but when I told the hospital we were ready they then told us it wasn’t as simple as that and I would need to be a blood match and have the same cmv status!

Luckily, we were a match.

For 5 samples of sperm and delivery it cost us just over £3000. The sperm bank sends this directly to Leeds hospital and then they look after it at a annual cost of £300 a year. After many investigations the Doctor recommended IUI mainly because my reproductive system is in good working order. Essentially, this is artificial insemination in the clinic when you ovulate, however, the success rate is only 10%. This is not as good as normal sexual activity as the sperm is washed and frozen and lives 12 hours where as fresh lives up to 5 days in the body. To track ovulation we used Lh surge sticks which are very expensive, the idea being when you get a positive you go the next day for insemination!

The first go at insemination was fiddley and my cervix wasn’t playing ball so she dropped it near my cerivx rather than in the uterus.

The second go went in easy but no luck.

The 3rd month, OUCH! They couldn’t get through my cervix to the uterus so they tortured me with a tenaculum and pulled my cervix straight as it has a slight bend. There was a blood bath.

After all this trauma I had to have my cervix stretched and move to IVF. By this point we had spent another £3000, a total of £6000, and still no luck.

When we had IVF there was so many mixed emotions!

The needles for medication, oh my god, they were massive! We had to inject at home so luckily Stacey did this for me, but this goes on for about 4 – 5 weeks. Eventually we managed to get 7 eggs, however after all of that we received a call to say none of them had fertilised and I may never ever have children as my eggs appeared abnormal. £5000 down the drain, on top of the £6000 above; a total of £11000.

Further tests were needed as my fertility had dropped dramatically, but no! The tests came back fantastic! Everyone was baffled by what had happened. 

I refused to let this beat me, I had one bleed and started again! Double the drugs, double the emotions and tears and anger! 

Then it was all worth it, I had 15eggs and 14 had fertiliesd!!! Wow, I was over the moon!

Day 2: all eggs perfect.

Day 3: all eggs perfect having a 5 day transfer.

Then the positives turned negative … The majority had dropped off and died.

Eggs are left in an incubator but they live longer in the womb, the natural environment. On day 5 we had 6 slow eggs. I pulled up outside the hospital and received a call to say the transfer wasn’t going to happen as we had not achieved blastocyst stage and they couldn’t chose a winner. It’s survival of the fittest, but can the fittest live to day 6??

Anxious, crying and searching the internet knowing success rates were slim to none I had a call the next day to say I had 1 perfect blastocyst to transfer and 1 hatching standard blastocyst.

The transfer was easy it was the dreaded 2 week wait.

We did a test 11 days later and, wow, we got our BFP!

It was then a waiting game for the 7 week scan. We were so ecstatic.

Unfortunately, we had a missed miscarriage and our baby had no heartbeat.

Devastated. Numb. Emotionless.

The next day I crashed in floods of tears, feeling like a failure. I’d been defeated. I was lost. I saw no light. We were both so exhausted. Physically and mentally. The bank account, now empty. Out of sperm, more money to find. What do we do?!

But enough was enough.

I picked myself up, I will not be beaten. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I will continue with positive thinking, these things happen for a reason. I don’t know what the reason is yet but I believe we will find out one day. The donor maybe wasn’t compatible with me or maybe as he lived in the USA it wasn’t right for the child to find him when older. Who knows? Either way, there had to be a reason.

So while running all this through in my head I decided, while waiting for my re scan (which I knew wasn’t going to make a difference) I needed to think this is not the end, it’s the beginning, I needed to know that in my heart.

I’ve been searching for a known donor who will donate just the sperm. We don’t need financial help or a parental role to be played. I used to think this was seedy; getting a man to perform in a cup but when you want a bundle of joy, you will do anything in your power to make your dreams come true. Plus, a known donor must be a nice, kind man to help a couple achieve a dream, right? If done respectfully and correctly all this is, is a special gift from one person to another.

In return, although IVF wasn’t for me as I can’t carry on throwing money into it, my eggs are good and with that I shall donate to another couple in need.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Thank you for reading Robyn & Stacey’s story, please feel free to share with friends or family who are struggling with fertility, I hope that this gives them some hope and faith that they can continue down their chosen path to have a baby of their own.

Harriet x