MY INFERTILITY AND IVF JOURNEY
While I am happy you’re here, this isn’t a club I’d wish on my worst enemy.
Welcome friends! This blog is a personal account of my journey from being starkly child-free by choice to my IVF journey after an unexplained infertility diagnosis in my 30s.
The stories here are raw and real. They might trigger some. I hope that the info here brings you knowledge on your own journey, helps you feel less alone, or that it helps you understand the struggles of those you love.
Whatever brings you here, thanks for coming along for this wild ride. I am Heather and this is my meandering story.
My Journal
Hope is made of steel
One of my favourite songs hit different today. It popped into my head as I was drafting an instagram post updating friends with the news (which I’ll share below). The lyrics go like this… “You left your homeWhere you were bornAnd you followed your furyYou followed your stormIn the…
Frozen Embryo Transfer #5
We meet again. I’ve been taking a hiatus from posting on social or writing here as I grappled to wrap my head around the news we got in December. I won’t be updating on the recall stuff for a while as we figure out our plan of action, but…
Something, something, peace, love, joy.
This one sucks. Be warned. It’s not a read for those looking for warmth or good vibes. This holiday season I amped up my Christmas spirit behaviours, arranging Christmas hampers for moms in need, finding ways to connect and help those in my life and by taking on loads…
Egg Retrieval #3 – The Results
This week has been one of the hardest emotionally. 7 days of sitting, wondering, contemplating my existence. And I thought the two week wait was hard. What a mind f&@%. This cycle was big because having done two before, it was THE determining factor with how we’d move forward….
Fertilization, Some Feels & Exploring Donor Conception
It has been 5 days since my retrieval and I am patiently (also anxiously) awaiting our final results. I have been sitting with my fertilization results for a number of days, not because they were bad but they triggered me pretty bad. During our last cycle the attrition went…
The Third IVF Egg Retrieval
Well my friends, that cycle went FAST. I have a lot to update you all on. Last we left off, I had gone in for my monitoring appointment on stims day 8. Things were looking good, slow and steadily where they should be based on my previous cycles and…
IVF Supplements – What I am taking
As always, consult your fertility doctor before taking any of these. I am not a doctor, obviously! After about a year of trying to conceive, a failed IVF transfer and a few embryos on ice, I decided to call in the experts, and by experts I mean a really…
IVF Monitoring – Appointment #1
Many of you are new to IVF, about to begin your cycle, or here to get some insight into what your friends or family are going through (some of you are my friends and family – probably many actually). There is so much you are left in the dark…
Deja Vu: Egg Retrieval Prep #3
These mid cycle posts feel kind of funny, because I don’t have news to share necessarily. Everything right now is fuelled by hope and unknowns. I started my stims on Saturday Nov 11th for our third egg retrieval. I joked last cycle that I could do egg retrieval stims…
PGT-A: Yay or Nay?
Today I stopped my priming meds and begin a 3 day unmedicated break between priming and stims.. Now, a decision is upon us once again. It’s one I have had to make twice before, both times deciding differently (and glad that I did the last time around). Our first…
The long awaited test results
The biopsy results are in. Back in early October we did 4 tests to help determine a better treatment plan for embryo transfer. Check out that post here if you haven’t read it yet. I was a bit on the fence, but so open to doing anything and everything…
The Scaries during IVF
I can’t say I am a huge Halloween person. Not in the way some people are, where they deck themselves out in epic makeup or handmade costumes. But I do enjoy embracing my inner child this time of year, and usually end up with a cute costume I pieced…
A new plan
We’re at the point in the journey now where we are living this day to day vs looking back. There are a lot of things in my experience to date that I didn’t share, but we will get to the more minute details eventually (things like the medications, the…
The Biopsies
I’ve been on a little hiatus since my last post, taking a very rare moment between appointments and work to go visit my family on the east coast of Canada. Living so far away from where I was born is both a blessing and a curse. It often means…
Egg Retrieval #2
Despite the failure of our first egg retrieval cycle, with 7 embryos and 3 transfers (2 failed implantation + one 7w miscarriage), I went into this cycle with so much hope. I surprised myself sometimes with how I was able to let the past go and really be positive…
Never say never
IVF is one major life disruptor. One cycle with one transfer can involve 5-6 bloodwork appointments, 4-8 internal ultrasounds, getting pumped with liquids for external ultrasounds, timed and temperature controlled injections daily or multiple times daily for two weeks or more, popping 20+ supplements a day, going to the…
“Just relax” – The last euploid embryo
At this point we had been working on growing our family for 15 months. Not a super long time, as some people go through years and years struggling with infertility. When you have repeat failure to conceive there are lots of weird things that start to become triggers –…
Medicated Miscarriage
— Skip this one if you’re squeamish. — Since going through this I have become a FIERCE advocate for women’s rights and abortion rights. I always was pro-choice, because I truly believe women aren’t out there in droves trying to abort babies late in pregnancy. I never thought I’d…
A flicker of hope – Pt 2
I was pregnant. Pregnancy after loss is a beast, even if the loss was barely after finding out you’re pregnancy in the first place. My previous loss was so early that I didn’t really know it was happening, had it not been for my beta bloodwork telling me so….
A flicker of hope – part 1
Our transfer day. There’s so much build up to these “major” moments that are catalysts for possible life changing events. It’s wild how lacklustre the experience is and how uneventful it is after the fact. More waiting. The hardest part of IVF is the waiting game. The complete unknown…
Frozen Embryo Transfers
Christmas. This can bring challenges when it comes to fertility treatment as many clinics go into a slowdown of sorts over the holidays (if you’re undergoing treatment now – it’s October as I write this, it’s worth asking about clinic closures and how they might impact your cycle). My…
The little blobs that could, and couldn’t
Day 4-5 is interesting after an egg retrieval. They give you an update, and it could mean absolutely nothing. From day 4-6 everything can change for the better or the worst. For us, it was luckily for the better. On day 6 the clinic called to tell us that…
Embryo Attrition and Our First Transfer
Attrition is something they somewhat prepare you for. After the egg retrieval, you begin to play a new waiting game. You’ve done your part, and now it’s time for the eggs and sperm to do their’s. Immediately after the retrieval, they look at how many eggs are mature. We…
Retrieving the Good Eggies
Nobody tells you what to expect when you go into an Egg Retrieval procedure. You are told to show up at a given time, and to have a ride home. That’s all they told me. I reached out to someone I knew from Instagram who had gone through the…
IVF For Beginners – Stims
11 months. We tried ‘naturally’ for 11 months with one chemical pregnancy. When it came time for us to start IVF the feelings were bittersweet. On one hand we both felt so defeated and mad that we had waited so long to make the decision we had to try…
If at first you don’t succeed
The summer after my chemical pregnancy came in hot. If you don’t know me personally, I am a wedding photographer and it’s my full time job. Mid-may to mid-October I tend to go completely MIA due to wedding season and portrait season. My friends have grown to expect this….
The Rollercoaster
I was. I was pregnant. (Trigger warning, emphasis on ‘was’) I was in absolute bliss for 5 days. Happy as a pig in shit if you will. Before all of this started I had seen a walk-in clinic doctor to get some blood work done, just to make sure…
Preconceived notions
We had planned to start trying for a baby the old fashioned way in February 2021. If you know me at all, you’ll know I’m a pretty type A human being. I tend to obsess over things that I’m really eager to learn or do. I researched the crap…
Dare to dream…
Let’s start from the beginning. I never wanted a family. All I ever cared about was experiencing life, travelling, eating good food, enjoying my freedoms. A family wasn’t on my radar. I grew up in a chaotic environment. Shuffled around between homes and cities, between parents and grandparents. I…
Thanks for reading along!
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