The Times Magazine 27istory is written by the victors,
including on the fertility battlefield.
Stories about IVF are usually told
by women like me, for whom it has
worked. In public, the gruelling
journey almost always leads to the
happy arrival of a baby.
That was my experience over
nearly three hazy years. We tried
for a baby and couldn’t conceive.
That led to me being diagnosed with the
painful menstrual condition endometriosis.
Then we had a round of IVF that miraculously
gave us our son four years ago, after I had all
but given up.
I spoke publicly about our difficulties,
but only after we got what we wanted. That
felt uncomfortable at the time and now it
feels unsustainable.
We rarely get to hear about the IVF that
doesn’t deliver. What of those people’s lives?
What do they do next? How do they know
when to stop? How do they continue? We
need to hear about these experiences while
they are actually happening, not afterwards.
So, loathing hypocrisy and as the presenter
of the longest-running women’s programme
in the world, deep breath, here goes: over the
past 18 months I have been struggling with
secondary infertility. I have had five rounds
of IVF, one miscarriage and more internal
examinations than I care to recall. There is
still no second baby.
My womb is definitely empty and I am
reporting to you live from the front lines of
failure in the hope that it may be helpful and
to be honest.
Undergoing IVF treatment when you
already have a child is a totally different
experience from the first time round. Of course
it is. You can hug your actual child while
nursing a broken heart that your latest embryo
didn’t implant and somehow disappeared, even
after you have seen it on screen after your
doctor carefully placed it in your womb.
I know there will be people reading this,
women and men, who will be thinking: you
have a child, what more do you want? I agree,
up to a point, and nearly didn’t write this
as a result. I remember being childless and
resenting people like me. Especially the
couple that we once saw bring their baby
into the IVF clinic.
But I’ve learnt that secondary infertility is
very real and traumatic too. I am not looking
for sympathy or pity; I am sharing my story in
the hope it will help more people understand
and to explore what motivates us to keep trying.
It is very hard to come by figures that
show the average number of IVF rounds
a woman has, and NHS provision is criticised
as a lottery. Three rounds is often the
recommended number. The average cost of a
round privately, if NHS treatment cannot beaccessed or all goes have been used, varies
clinic by clinic from around £3,500 to
upwards of £7,000 depending on the services
recommended. You get the gist though – it
ain’t cheap by any metric. We also know
IVF success rates have tripled over the past
20 years in the UK, with almost a third of all
embryo transfers in women under 35 resulting
in a baby, according to the fertility regulator.
But of course many women are older too.
On Woman’s Hour I recently interviewed
the author Marian Keyes. She explained how
years ago she never went in for IVF when
she could not get pregnant because she felt
she already had too much. She had been
waiting for something bad to happen because
life was almost too good: she was sober,
happily married and her books were starting
to be published. The Catholic guilt in her
thought she shouldn’t push her luck. And
while she doesn’t regret her decision, she
did have to grieve.
I’m sure this type of thinking will be
familiar to many women. I have worried
that it is plain greedy to want a second child,
but I have come to realise that this is a toxic
idea. The effortlessly fertile rarely have tojustify their desire to have as many children
as they see fit.
After we had our son I also didn’t feel I was
in a position to speak out. I didn’t deserve the
microphone because I had already won.
But once you have experienced infertility,
you are changed. Humbled, grateful, angered
and saddened by it all.
Beginning IVF can be like walking into a
high-stakes casino. From the moment you first
place a bet, submitting those first bloods or
semen samples, you are hooked. Excitement,
hope, long odds and croupiers in white coats
keep you coming back for more. A tweak of
meds here, a change of diet there, the rush of
the pregnancy test after weeks of needles and
pills, and then the massive low of the single
blue line. It all leaves you vowing you will
never, ever gamble again.
Yet the lure of chasing your losses is
strong. One more roll of the dice could
change everything.
And just like in Las Vegas, there is no limit.
Genuinely saying “enough is enough” is rare
and usually comes when there is nothing left
in the financial, physical or emotional bank- or all three.
It is unbelievable what people desperate to
conceive will consent to and what becomes
“normal”. For me, it has meant attending
hospital every morning at 5.55am for blood
tests ahead of the morning news meeting
at Woman’s Hour and getting it together
to present the 75th special edition of the
programme, having just found out I’d lost
another embryo.
But you have to get on with it, in
silence. There are many reasons why women,
both fertile and infertile, do not talk in the
workplace about trying to get pregnant, but
one of the main ones is fear for our jobs.
Research by the campaign group Fertility
Matters at Work shows fertility issues affect as
many as one in seven people, all of whom are
working age. The study also reveals 69.5 per
cent took sick leave during fertility treatment
rather than ask for time off and 36 per cent
of those undergoing assisted conception
actually consider leaving their jobs.
H
BEGINNING IVF CAN BE LIKE
WALKING INTO A HIGH-
STAKES CASINO. FROM THE
MOMENT YOU FIRST PLACE
A BET, YOU ARE HOOKED
COURTESY OF EMMA BARNETTAccepting an award at the Audio and Radio
Industry Awards last week