When I set out to write a blog my inspiration must come from somewhere, but where? Well, late at night when a lot of Britain is asleep my mind seems to be active and I can’t seem to stop my brain thinking about what I may write next. So, my main aim for this blog is to relate to the male population – and their partner’s – the trials and tribulations of IFV and that it’s not just about the ‘plastic cup’ for us men, which I will hopefully explain in what follows.
As I’ve said in previous blogs, I was shot in the spine by a sniper in 2007 whilst serving in Iraq and that left me with serious nerve damage from the waist down. At the time I had no idea the extent of the injury to my sexual reproductive organs as I had to focus on getting better from the initial life threatening injury and quite rightly so, however, when one is faced with their own mortality ones desire to procreate becomes a top priority.
As the months went on the consultants had diagnosed me with some sort of sexual dysfunction, which I was not surprised really with my level of injury. For many blokes the act of sexual intercourse is something of importance and when this is taken away from you, by no fault of your own, one is forgiven to think the world has just ended for that person. Well I was that person and psychologically the world had just ended as I thought I would never be able make love to my wife or be able to procreate, but as I was corrected by my own Mother believe it or not, that in this day and age you do not need to have sex to get pregnant. I don’t mean by divine intervention, but by medical science.
A few years into my injury and I was thinking about the future, so I was sent to a private clinic in London where I was going to get my little swimmers tested by means of electro ejaculation. It had to be this way because at the time I was unable to get an erection and the act of self gratification was near enough impossible. Don’t get me wrong I am a bloke and I had tried several times, but found out I would need the arms of a lumberjack to finish myself off. To complete this procedure I would need to be under a general anaesthetic and not to get to graphic, but something that resembles a torpedo and an electrical charge up the rectum to get my swimmers out and into a plastic cup. The clinic would then cryogenically freeze my swimmers so I didn’t have to go through this medical procedure every time they wanted a sample.
After a quick five minutes on the surgeons table and I’m recovering in a room and the consultant tells me the news I have been hoping to hear. “Your semen is in the low mobility column. (wow even my sperm is disabled) However, it should still be possible to conceive naturally so keep trying. Because of the damage done by the bullet we will still go by way of IVF when the time comes.” After trying to get pregnant with my wife for over two years we decided that it was time to accept help from the Fertility Clinic. It’s not as bad as what the movies make it out to be. I didn’t need to go into the clinic with a wig and fake moustache and glasses on, and my desire to be a father outweighed any embarrassment I had for the situation. Even though the consultants were giving us something like a 55% chance of it working first time, my wife and I were quietly confident that we would get lucky.
The first IVF cycle consists of your wife down regulating, which is essentially shutting down the body’s fertile system basically bringing on an early menopause and as anybody who has a partner that has been through the menopause can vouch, that this makes your significant other very emotional, headaches and quite irritable at times. The way she will ingest this medication is through the nose by way of a nasal spray and she will have to do this twice daily like clockwork. This part of the cycle was going well as she was responding to the drugs given to her. When it came to harvesting the eggs they found that my wife had over stimulated, probably due to a dose of the nasal spray, and she was carrying 30 eggs. These eggs vary in size, but the normal size will be about a few millimetres and that is encased in a folicule, which can be up to a centimetre or two, so as you can see my wife’s stomach would be rather distended and tender to the touch. As a husband you have to be most understanding and forgiving as she can be quite short tempered with you understandably so. You try being permanently bloated and in pain for over a month. Once the eggs had been extracted it was down to the embryologist to do her bit by taking my sperm and fertilising the eggs and in the morning we would find out how many embryos’ we would have to play with.
That night was horrific for my wife, she had not responded well to the procedure, and was in so much pain I very nearly called an ambulance. I now understand what it is like to see your other half in dire pain, and unable to do a thing about it. I was doing all I could by bringing hot water bottles and pepper mint tea. I couldn’t even hug my wife as she was sore to the touch. After being up all night we were waiting by the phone at 09:00am with bated breath and the embryologist did not disappoint as at nine on the dot the phone rang. We were both excited as this was the first cycle, and we had no reason to think that it would not work. The embryologist said that out of all the eggs only one had fertilised and they had no idea why it had been such a low fertilisation, but they did remind us that it does only take one to make a baby. The clinic had decided that it was best to transfer the embryo on day two, which went without a hitch and then the waiting game began.
It would be two weeks until we would find out whether this round of IVF had been successful. The two weeks felt like two years and then a couple of days short of the two weeks my wife started to get spotting. I was already convinced it had failed, but that little bit of hope still inside me hung on until I would get it confirmed by the pregnancy test. I was in the bath when my wife came in and dropped the bombshell that the pregnancy test was negative. I put my head in my hands and cried, I couldn’t believe it hadn’t worked. I wanted my wife to do the test again, but I knew in my heart of hearts it would still be negative. I knew my wife wanted to talk about the loss, but all I wanted to do was bottle it up and move on to the next round of IVF. It was hard watching my wife crying at the loss of the first cycle and I of course blamed myself as it was my sperm that is damaged. Well if I’m blaming anybody it should be that Iraqi sharp shooter that hit me in the spine.
After the failure of the first cycle we wanted to get straight back in to the next one and after a lengthy chat with the consultant he decided it would be best to reduce my wife’s drugs when it came to down regulating, so we would be going for quality of the eggs rather than quantity. The second cycle took a little longer to down regulate and the day before egg collection my wife started getting a lot of pain in her stomach. She was in such agony so I took her to A&E where they gave her some morphine while I stressed and self prescribed caffeine just to keep me awake. If she hadn’t have been going into the clinic for egg collection the next day the hospital would have kept her in over night as a precaution. When it came to egg collection we told the nurses what had happened the night before and asked if the morphine would affect the eggs in anyway. We were assured it would be fine so after the harvest we had 20 of them all good quality. Egg collection this time round was not as brutal as the first, however the pain after was just as bad. When it came to fertilisation once again we had one fertilised and the Doctors had never seen this before, which meant they had no idea why it was happening. With one fertilised egg and a lengthy chat it was decided that we would wait and see if we could get it to a day five blastocyst and then go for transfer. That didn’t materialise as after day four it sadly died.
As anybody who has been through IVF knows how much of an effect it has on your body and I could see that my wife was physically and mentally exhausted, so we decided to take a couple months rest so my wife could recover and enjoy life and just reconnect with the world once again. While on our IVF break we had a stroke of luck or a miracle one might say as early January 2013 we found out my wife was pregnant. I was speechless and so happy I could barely contain my excitement and as a wave of warmth entered my heart I could now start picking out baby names. We came to the conclusion that we would tell our family after the first scan, which would be on week six rather than at the end of the first trimester as in a normal pregnancy. After the scan everything was looking as it should and I couldn’t believe our luck was finally turning, maybe I should go and buy that lottery ticket now?
Well low and behold after the second scan something wasn’t quite right. The Clinic said we had either got the dates wrong for conception or the embryo wasn’t developing as it should have. So every week we had to go in to the clinic and get a scan just to make sure the baby was growing properly. Weeks were going past and it was clear that something was wrong, we weren’t sure what it was at this stage, but we were still being optimistic that this would change into that one little darling baby that we both had longed for.
It was now February 2013 and I had to leave my wife and go to Whistler Canada for a winter sports camp. I was loathed to leave my beautiful wife for two weeks with what seemed like a failing pregnancy while I had fun skiing, snowboarding and playing sledge hockey. While I was away my wife had a scan at the clinic where they said the baby had stopped growing and it looks likely that the clinic will have to do a procedure that will force a miscarriage. How could the world give us hope and snatch it away again like a toy from a child’s grasp? If we ever got pregnant through natural means again we would not be celebrating like so many couples would because there would always be doubt in the back of our mind if this pregnancy was viable. It was just another way for the world to show how cruel it could be and we now have to tell the family of our disappointment. I don’t think we will tell anybody if we get pregnant again until it is born and in our arms. It’s just too heart breaking to see my wife share the burden of her whole family’s disappointment on her delicate shoulders.
Well, with every negative somewhere deep, deep… deep down there is a positive to be had, for us it was the fact that Doctors said that it would be virtually impossible to get pregnant through natural means and they even said it would be like winning the lottery twice in a row, that’s how much of a chance we have. I only wish it was our luck in the lottery that would give us a win, but with this positive in mind it made us aware that if it’s happened once then there is a chance that it will happen again.
The third cycle down regulated just fine, but my wife started to get pains in her stomach. These were different than the ones she had had before so it was off to the clinic for a scan, and yes more bad luck. There was a cyst about a three centimetres big, and it was growing rapidly while the rest of the eggs stayed small. The cyst had gotten to be very large now and the consultants could do nothing but abort the third cycle, and start all over again. This was another bitter blow, but after a rest and a little regrouping we sailed into the fourth cycle.
The fourth cycle medically was the best yet with the down regulating going perfect for a change. At the end of that we had 13 eggs 10 of which were mature and as we were going for quality not quantity, like we had in other cycles, we were pretty hopeful. This cycle the consultant wanted to use fresh sperm instead of the frozen stuff I had in storage. So a hollow point needle in the testicles and as much sedation and pain relief as one person is medically allowed, they had what they needed. Now, it was down to the embryologist and my sperm to get the result we want.
The next day we waited for the phone call that would hopefully bring us the news that would put us on our way to having our own child. Once again out of 10 eggs we had only one fertilised and all the medical professionals still couldn’t give us an answer as to why out of all the combined cycles of 60 eggs that only one would fertilise on each consecutive cycle. Sadly though the last cycle failed on day two as the fertilised embryo died, probably along with our chances of having our own genetic child and we were once again left wondering if our dream of having a child would ever materialise.
The consultant sat us down for a good lengthy chat about our options and after much debate we came to the conclusion that we would never be able to have our own genetic child and that it would be down to donor embryo now. That was a huge blow for us as I always wanted to pass on my DNA, and keep the bloodline going for the family, so mentally, I had to deal with that as well as console my wife.
The clinic would not let us do another cycle using our own eggs and sperm, due to our failure rate and as they could not tell us why we only had one fertilised egg each time we did a cycle they couldn’t really do anything to rectify it so we were left with only one option now, and that was donor embryo. We would go straight to the top of the donor list, but to put into contexts; last year (2013) they only had two embryos donated and the year before that only one.
However, people often say that nothing is certain until hope is dead, and it seems that hope has recently been re-ignited for us. You see, my wife received a call from our fertility clinic just the other day and the embryologist told her that they have a new technique that they’re now using that might help us. This news has thrown everything into a new light, and we’re hoping and praying that our clinic allow us one final shot to have our own genetic child. They do say five times lucky don’t they? Or was that three….?
What does the future hold for my wife and me? Well, I can only dream that one day the calm night air will be pierced by the shrills and screams of a little baby and when that day comes, I won’t complain, too much when the wife nudges me in the back and says it’s your turn to feed the baby, because I will know how long and hard the road was to get us to that day.
Until next time folks…