Our IVF Story: “When we started treatment, I felt like such a fraud.”
In this blog, a member of our Patient Engagement Forum shares their experience of fertility treatment after their partner’s elective vasectomy.
Each IVF story is different. But ours has always felt like an outlier, which has affected the way I see and think of myself throughout the entire process. However, I think it’s so important for all of us on this path to know that our shared experience that brings us together is our treatment journey, not always our background or why we are here.
Me and my partner met in our late thirties. He was divorced with two children, and I had always been on a lifelong journey to find the right man to have the children I was desperate for. When we met, something clicked and I knew I had to see where this relationship was going to go… even though I knew he’d had a vasectomy during his marriage. Absolutely desperate for a biological child of my own, IVF with ICSI was our only option.
What is ICSI?
Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) treatment is almost exactly the same as with IVF. The only difference is that instead of mixing the sperm with the eggs and leaving them to fertilise, a skilled embryologist (embryo specialist) will inject a single sperm into the egg.
When we started treatment, I felt like such a fraud. Two healthy people scientifically capable of creating children were it not for this one tiny, huge issue of the vasectomy. In waiting rooms, in test results, in embryo transfers, I always felt like I shouldn’t be there because we were there as a consequence of our own choices rather than things outside of our control. If I’m honest with myself, I think I do still feel like that really.
I would assume that the consultants thought of us as a “quick win”, because there was nothing to investigate and they could get us pregnant quite quickly. Or so I’d hoped. Of course, IVF journeys are never that simple!
We were not entitled to any funding, and we had a rapidly increasing bill for the procedures to extract the sperm (SSE – Surgical Sperm Extraction). I think we were both surprised at the success of the SSE operation and thought we would be well on our way to a pregnancy. Alas, we had my age to contend with!
We had moved clinic because we didn’t feel comfortable at the first one, so we had to start our journey over again. By the time I had my first egg collection, I was two weeks shy of my 40th Birthday. Since then, we have had another egg collection and nine embryo transfers, two of which were successful for a few weeks.
We continue our journey, which looks different every time a procedure occurs. Each embryo transfer feels entirely different to the last with alternating “fake” pregnancy symptoms and the lure of “ooh, this could be the one”, which inevitably, it’s not… yet!
The thing I keep reminding myself of constantly is that everyone’s story is different. No two experiences are the same. We are just as deserving of the science and technology as the next couple in the waiting room. No-one is judging you and we are all travelling this road together.
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