I was wrong to think about IVF with a 10-year-old’s brain

In two day’s time Louise Brown will be celebrating her 40th birthday! Although I was not quite 11 when Louise was born I do remember all the “fuss” about the first IVF baby. Having a sister who was five years older than me I was already aware of the basic bits around the “birds and the bees”. I knew that when a man and a woman loved each other they could have a baby and that the baby grew inside the woman’s tummy until it was time for it be born. However, my 10-year-old’s brain was threatening to explode when I heard that Louise was a “test tube baby”. Although babies were small when they were born they were FAR BIGGER than a test tube. I knew this for a fact. At school we had been doing some very basic chemistry lessons involving test tubes and I’d seen the son of a cousin when the baby was only a few days old. James WOULD NOT have fitted into a test tube!

Luckily for me my sister was there to put some context to the term “test tube” and my 10-year-old’s brain was happy. If a man and a woman loved each other yet they couldn’t have a baby because something was wrong, then a very clever Doctor would mix a little bit of the man with a little bit of the woman in a test tube. They would then wait until a very, very, VERY small baby had started to grow at which point it would be put into the woman’s tummy where it could continue to grow until it was time for it to be born. All was right with the world: baby was growing where baby should be growing and not at risk from breaking the glass of the test tube when it got too big.

What my 10-year-old’s brain had also latched onto was that sometimes love is not enough to make a baby, which is very sad, yet fortunately we have a very clever Doctor who can make everything alright again. I do wonder if, 30 years later, when Andrew and I found that our love wasn’t enough, my brain reverted to that of a 10-year-old and thought “it will all be OK because there are far more clever Doctors than there were 30 years ago” and the one that is looking after us will help up make our baby in a test tube.

You see, whilst I knew the statistics and that, being over 40, the odds of having a big fat positive (BFP) after one cycle of IVF were slim. Yet I don’t think it really dawned on me that our IVF might fail. I was far too busy being far to positive for that. After all EVERYONE, and I do mean EVERYONE, had been telling me for months that I must remain positive and I must have hope because ONE DAY I was going to fall pregnant again and carry the baby full term. I also think my 10-year-old’s brain was being encouraged to hang on to its 30 year old beliefs by the media who always included a miracle baby in any article or report about infertility and IVF.

It didn’t help that all my girlfriends who had struggled to conceive eventually did and that EVERYONE knew someone who had become a mother after five, ten, 15 years of trying. Yep, the whole universe was reassuring me that I WOULD BE PREGNANT.

So, it was rather a shock to me, and everyone else, when it didn’t happen. Despite being on the highest dosages of drugs, and 8 viable eggs being harvested, none of them fertilised. Our IVF cycle was over before the “main event” started. Neither Andrew or I knew what to do to take away the anguish and sense of failure. As for our friends: they were at a loss too, not only because it had shocked them, but because we weren’t in a fit state to articulate what we needed in terms of support, so they were floundering around in the dark.

As our grief overwhelmed us I went through the normal stage of really struggling with pregnancy announcements and seeing pregnancy bumps. There was a time when it seemed as though the whole world, including the men, were pregnant and yet we weren’t. All announcements were hard to deal with although I did find successful IVF cycles particularly difficult to handle: the feelings of jealously and failure were magnified because they had been lucky and beaten the odds whilst we had not.

Since I started my healing, pregnancy announcements have become easier, with the exception of the recently mentioned “grannie” variety, I have noticed that IVF pregnancy announcements still had the power to hurt. Perhaps it’s because my brain still reverts to its 10-year-old self and believes that those clever Doctors should have been able to help us ensure that love was enough. Perhaps its because the media hasn’t changed the way that infertility and IVF is covered so is still perpetuating the myth that IVF success rates are far higher than the dismal truth. For a while it was all too depressing to rip off the plaster and take an honest look at the negative emotions festering beneath the surface.

Then an announcement took me by surprise. A fellow blogger, who has been very open about charting her IVF experiences received her BFP. As soon as I saw her Tweet I sent her a reply saying how thrilled I was for her and her husband. This was cycle 5 and I think it was going to be the last regardless of the outcome. This was nothing out of the ordinary: like many of us I’d been sending supportive messages of congratulations for years whilst gently wiping away my tears behind the scenes. However, this time it was different. This time I didn’t shy away from her blogs updating everyone about her progress. I continued to read and comment. I waited for jealousy to rear its ugly head and it DIDN’T come.

She’s now past her first 12 weeks and is has stopped taking all the medication to ensure that her pregnancy remains viable, and still the pangs of jealousy haven’t arrived. Yes, there is a small hint of regret that it didn’t happen to us: however, I have reached a stage in my healing where that is OK. I can handle that.

It might have taken 10 years of grief for me to realise that the beliefs around IVF that I had laid down 40 years ago were not serving me well. However, the main thing is that I have realised it. I can now be truly happy for the people lucky enough to have a BFP after their IVF cycle. My 10-year-old’s brain isn’t conning me into believing that their love was enough and ours wasn’t. My 10-year-old’s brain isn’t screaming “SNOT FAIR!” and “WHY THEM?” any more. The quiet and calm reasoning of my 50-year-old’s brain has taken over and it content to be happy for them, whilst working at supporting other people who weren’t quite so lucky.

So Happy Birthday Louise Brown and thank you for the publicity around your significant milestone making me aware that I have made substantial progress in my emotional healing.

In CANBACE friendship!

This blog is part of a series of blogs reflecting on IVF written by women who are Canbace/CNBC. You can read the other blogs by following the links below:

Jody Day asks where are the childless voices for whom IVF wasn’t a success?

Pamela Tsigdinos looks at the untold stories and some of the facts behind the IVF industry

Lesley Payne writes about how support has changed and why speaking out is important

Sarah Roberts looks at how far we still have to go in terms of awareness and understanding

Loribeth reflects on Louis Brown’s 40^th birthday and her own personal experience of IVF

Berenice Smith shares her experiences of receiving IVF treatment at the same clinic where this pioneering work took place 

Some of us recorded a Zoom chat about IVF and have decided we’re going to record over group chats about a range of different subjects relating to being canbace/cnbc. You can watch that video and read about the plans for future discussions in New(s) and Reviews 17th July 2018.

If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about so if you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website please let me know and I will keep your words private.