Some days are better than others....

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for friends or family of an infertile person to understand is the wide variance of moods that they might encounter in their infertile friend or family member.  How is it that one day they seem perfectly fine and and can chat about so and so's new baby and the following time you see them, they are a vulnerable hyper-sensitised mess in front of whom you must censor your every utterance for fear of offending or upsetting them?

Us infertile women are sometimes perceived as uptight, neurotic, kill-joys, depressive basketcases etc. and if I were not one of them I would probably not have a lot of time for them. I would think, "ok - you can't have a baby, but it is not the end of the world, so adopt and get over it..."  If only it were that easy and there was not so much grief anchoring you to the bottom of the sea.

I once tried to explain it to one of my oldest girlfriends, who was no doubt perplexed by my emotional reaction to an email (I was trying to explain to her why it upset me so much when she sent me a scan of her pregnancy ultrasound):

"I have been having a particularly bad week - a girlfriend who was staying at our home whilst I was injecting for IVF no. 5 just included me on a group email birth announcement with a photo of her newborn baby girl and that made me cry and cry- so I wrote to her and told her I thought it was insensitive to do that when she knew DH and I had just had our 5th failed IVF cycle and that we had previously lost 3 pregnancies- she wrote back to me to say sorry she had 'hurt my feelings' but obviously still just didn't get it - it was like she was saying, I am sorry you are emotional and unreasonable and that she could not or would not say sorry for being thoughtless or insenstive.  She could have sent a personal email to me telling me her news and not included the photograph - which was so raw....

Just so you are aware, DH and I are both hypersensitive at this stage - we have no hope left of ever having our own genetic child, so we are in as bad a place as we can be really....  the ultrasound picture [you sent] .........struck at me in a painful way because I had seen two of my babies heartbeats in the first ultrasounds (and felt the excitement that you were trying to convey to me) and then on the second visit they were dead, so the ultrasound was the way that their deaths was broken to us. I still feel sick when I see pregnant women being ultrasounded on TV for documentaries etc. .....

No matter how much someone else has struggled to conceive (and how happy you are for them because of that fact) it still hurts to always feel like the failure and also to be mourning your babies that were never born. ....DH's and my family have expressed their anger/frustration with us by saying they never know what will upset or offend us and that they feel like they cannot do or say anything right.  The best answer to this is to say; infertile couples will have good and bad periods or even days - some days, couples are just about to enter a new IVF cycle and feel full of hope and expectation so that when they hold a baby or congratulate a couple they genuinely feel happy and excited and tell themselves 'this will be us soon'.   But then things don't work out on the next cycle and you both feel angry and full of despair.  Every smug photo or birth announcement or insensitive comment stings. It is always hard for us to hold a newborn baby or see photos or deal with announcements, but somedays it is easier or harder, depending on what is going on in our, seemingly, neverending journey to become parents. "

I have been upset by my sister posting photos of her pregnant friends on her Facebook site (she does portrait photography from time to time and has done alot of pregnant mothers/new born sessions), by group birth announcements attaching photos of new borns and euphoric looking mothers in the radiant hours post birth (such raw arrows, these photos are...), by pregnant friends and newborn mothers complaining how tired they are or how 'lucky' DH and I are to have so much spare time to ourselves and not to have to worry about babysitters.

After many years of battling miscarriage and infertility, I have to give family and friends credit and say for the most part they are very supportive and sensitive; those that still make painful statements in front of us for the most part, are either not part of our loyal circle of friends/family or emotionally retarded and/or really don't care about us at all.

I offer the following advice:

- don't make a face to face pregnancy announcement - send a text or email so a couple have time to process the news and can congratulate the expectant couple in their own time

- do ask an infertile couple to things like birthday parties and christenings (not asking increases feelings of isolation and being excluded from 'normal life'), give them plenty of notice but don't expect them to attend or be offended if the couple feel they are not up to it that day - they could be having a bad day and want to insulate themselves - let the couple know it is ok they don't attend

- don't email photos of newborns or give infertile couples birth announcements with photos of newborns or drop around to an infertile couple's house unannounced with a newborn baby.  Even where couples with a new baby have had to struggle themselves to conceive that baby, it is still painful for the infertile couple, left behind yet again, to witness such a pregnancy/birth. A couple who was once one of them, has crossed over and become part of the lucky gang.

- don't complain about your pregnancy, babies or children or how tired you are in front of infertile couples - remember a woman may have to inject 40 needles for two weeks just for a 5% chance of becoming pregnant (leaving aside miscarriage risk) on IVF. You can complain about day to day childrearing/challenges to your other fertile friends.  Don't expect your infertile friends who are desperate and would do anything to become parents to sympathise with you.

Example of Bad Days

The day I compulsively read of Sydney woman, Kelli Lane, being found guilty of murdering her newborn daughter, Tegan Lane...see http://www.smh.com.au/national/keli-lanes-problem-child-20101213-18vhu.html  She kept falling pregnant over and over and adopted two of her babies but was found guilty of murdering a third.  I puzzle over the lengths I have gone to just to get pregnant and wonder how she could kill her own child.  I don't judge her; really - I don't.  I understand that infanticide is a complex and tragic area.  It is just the unfairness that strikes at me.  Why did she have to go through all that stress, trauma, the ruination of her life and she never wanted a baby.....when I so desperately do?

Another day I was going to a client meeting at Inchicore in Dublin and the taxi I was in on route stopped at a red light on the main street.  A young mother was abusively yelling obscenities at her young child on the pavement, whilst the car idled waiting for the lights to turn green;  the child must not have been any old than 24 months.  He had made a break for freedom, dashed away from her and incurred her invective.  It was not just me that felt the cruelty and pain of the abuse she was hurling at her little boy.  The taxi driver muttered under his breath; I made out the words, "disgrace" and "jaysus, only a little child....".  I felt an overwhelming desire to hurl open the door, pull the little boy inside and steal him away from a lifetime of misery.  But I stared ahead.  The lights turned green and I went on to my client meeting.

Another hard day; receiving news from Australia after being offered to parent a child of a friend of a friend, who fell pregnant unexpectedly as a single woman and did not want to become a mother.  Through no fault of her own, my friend's friend has had a hard life; she is a sweet, lovely, warm hearted, if slightly damaged woman.  She apparently felt whilst she was pregnant that she was not up to parenting her baby daughterbut did not want to place her with strangers on her birth.  She offered through our mutual friend to give her baby to us to raise.  For obvious reasons this could not work under Irish/Australian law.  Private adoption is outlawed in Australia and our friend's friend could only appoint us 'guardian' once the baby was born, because we live in Ireland.  As guardians only, it would be hard to obtain for the baby any visa/legal entitlement to live with us in Ireland and at any time, the baby's mother, our friend's friend could ask us to relinquish the care of her baby back to her..... I spent many weeks trying to work out a way for this to work....but it just couldn't.  A few months later our friend's friend had her baby daughter and decided to keep her.  Not long afterwards, the baby was officially taken into care by the State.  Our friend's friend had not been properly feeding or caring for her daughter and child welfare services arranged for her to be placed in foster care.  I cried when I heard the news.

Examples of Good Days

A girlfriend from high school, whom I have not seen for about 15 years getting in touch with me via Facebook and through a friend telling her of my attempts to become a mother, offers, completely unsolicited, out of the blue to be a surrogate for my husband and I.  Wow.  Very humbling.

A dear Australian friend, whom I met in Dublin, emailing and saying, "I am really very proud of you and [DH] of all you're going through to have a baby, I know it must get you down all the time and you are both amazing to explore all options and to maintain your strong relationship and sense of selves also. I think about you guys a lot and know how much love you have for a baby and how great parents you would be....."

You know that is the first time that any friend or family of ours has said they are proud of us?  I cried when I read my friend's email and thank her for it.  It is deeply loving thing to say (my father allued to it once, when he said, "you are made of tough stuff..", an admiring tone in his voice).  Take note you friends and family of infertile people!  People tell infertile couples they need to toughen up, to give up, to try harder, to wake up and smell the coffee, stop feeling sorry for themselves, stop throwing good money after bad, that they were silly to be taken in by that clinic or that doctor, that some people weren't meant for parenthood, they maybe they should 'relax' or that they should adopt... Next time you are looking for something to say, what about "I support you no matter what you decide is the next course fof action for you both" OR "I am proud of your tenacity, strength and determination to become parents..."

Another lovely friend [and her husband], who went through their own unique and challenging journey on the path to parenthood, emailed me to offer to swap her place/number in the adoption approval queue in Ireland; so that DH and I might get moved through the bureaucracy more quickly.....

Taking the positives from infertility.....yes really, there are some positives!

Many infertile women don't like to hear cliches or platitudes, especially not from people who may not yet have experienced a major life crisis, but I can promise other women out there, there are some small (or maybe not so small) dividends that I have received over the past 7 years...small gifts from the universe or God or fate....

I have often thought that the trajectory of life, the way the future unfolds for those couples who have no problems either conceiving or giving birth, allows them to progress quickly and easily from one milestone to the next.  Courtship, engagement, marriage, children...  Life happens, it is so full and busy and often conscious choices are not required to be made; the really big questions don't necessarily crop up.  Couples just happen to fall pregnant.  The biggest decision might be how many children do we have/when do we decide our family is complete? The most significant issues are usually money, work and juggling those with relationships, school-runs and childcare.  I am not judging my many friends and family who are married with children.  What I am saying is that the big question, "what the hell are we going to do with the rest of our lives" perhaps does not open up like a massive fissure before them, like it did for us. 

For me, the dilemma is what to do with you life, during the spare hours when you are not at work, when you don't have children, but pretty much all of your family and friends do and when you have lived hard through your 20s and have no more interest in going to nightclubs, live music gigs or bars every weekend? It made me confront what I want from life, who I am as a person and what interests me.  DH and I both asked ourselves, 'well, what are we passionate about?'  Often when you go to BBQs or parties these days, couples stand around and talk about schools, kids sports clubs or family-friendly destinations for holidays.  I wonder what would these people talk about if they had no children?  It would be a little like banning a workaholic from talking about their job. Topics of conversation would quickly dry up. What would these people have done with 6+ years of having no children to talk about?  Answer: they would have had to get busy getting to know themselves and each other, which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself.  But I disgress....back to us....what do we do with our future? Do I throw myself into corporate law and turn 'making partner' into my 'be all and end all' (not likely....).  Do we comfort ourselves with being DINKS (= 'double income no kids') who might one day be able to holiday in places featured on the glossy pages of Conde Nast Traveller magazine?  We asked ourselves all these questions and the same conclusion was arrived at over and over again; a future without ever having children or being parents seemed so empty.



DH and I decided a few years back that whilst we were waiting and waiting to become parents that we should really try and make the most out of the time we had to ourselves (after hearing from so many other couples with children how lucky we are).  DH started guitars lessons, after a lifetime of wanting to play guitar and I recommenced piano lessons, which I had done as a kid.  So we now sometimes spend Sunday afternoons listening to jazz, then each practising for our weekly lessons for an hour or so.  We got a dog (see post on "My Canine Baby" http://lastoneofmykind.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-canine-baby.html) and started going for nice long walks along Dublin Bay and in the Wicklow Mountains on the weekend.  And I wrote out a list of the the things I had always wanted to do with my life (Americans call this a 'bucket list'??!) and have tried to set about doing them.



Horse riding in Victorian High Country

In the last few years I have finally learnt how to ride a horse and went on a trip I had always fantasised about, as a novice horse rider, by myself to the Victorian High Country in Australia.  I researched my family tree, uncovered a major skeleton in the closest, spent hours reading archives and wrote a non-fiction manuscript about my great great grandmother (which I am trying to still get published), I bought a lot of cook books and learnt some great recipes.  DH and I have had trips to Rome, Paris and New York together (as a child growing up in Brisbane I always thought my life would be complete if I could visit London, New York, Paris and Rome as an adult - as an adult, I think my life will be complete when I am a mother!).  I have spent hours and hours reading fantastic books (which mothers of young children rarely get to do); I love to read.   I bought a sewing machine and got back into the patchwork quilting my grandmother taught me as a girl.  DH gave me digital SLR camera as a present and I have undertaken various photography projects.  I joined a choir a few years ago and got to sing in wonderful concerts, like Verdi's Requiem and Handel's Messiah.  DH plays tag rugby, indoor soccer and has done volunteer building work in Haiti and I have volunteered at a local free legal advice clinic.  This is the gift of spare time.  In between feeling sorry for myself, I (we) have tried very hard to use our time well.  I like to think that one day when our child/baby arrives, that we won't begrudge him or her anything. Because we surely will have had plenty of years to indulge our interests. 

There is a gift in being able to see that despite miscarriages and failed IVFs that you have each other.  That the two of you are a couple and that the journey makes you stronger and more resilient.  It is reassuring to know that the early years of your marriage have been forged in the flames of adversity and that you have survived the worst part (hopefully) and love each other more than you possibly could have at the beginning. 

Infertility has given me the gift of richly rewarding and deep friendships with other infertile women, who wage their own lonely battles with IVF and miscarriage.  I don't think a woman truly knows the meaning of sisterhood until she has bonded with another childless infertile women; I have many 'cycle sistas'.  Motherhood seems like membership of such an exclusive club; infertile friends hang out together like the bullied nerds in the school yard.  We understand and support each other and it is life affirming.  And I have had some lovely heart-warming messages of support, cards and hugs from my non-infertile friends and family too.

Infertility and childlessness also teaches you empathy with others that that are going through similar trials and tribulations.  I speak to a friend with a disabled child or a neighbour whose parent has dementia and understand their experience of constant anxiety and grief.  DH and I have the gift of knowing that life is not about getting all that you want; it is not about having it all.  Life is about loving each other, learning lessons and surviving; and it is still good.  The English crime novelist, Agatha Christie, once wrote:

I like living.
I have sometimes been
wildly, despairingly,
acutely miserable,
racked with sorrow,
but through it all I still know
quite certainly that just to be alive
is a grand thing.

I really like this blog called "The V-List, Adventures for the Reproductively Challenged": http://thevlist.wordpress.com/  It celebrates living in the 'now'; optimising the time before a baby arrives, when you are still desperately trying to become a mother but embracing the journey.  The creators of the blog say, "Since struggle with fertility can quickly suck the joy right out of life, we wanted to inject some back in".  It is inspiring and I agree wholeheartedly with the approach of using every moment right now and seizing the day.  It is either that or being sucked into the big black vortex of despair.  A co-creator of The V-List blog says:

"For me it was the desire to live your life.  The actual one I have instead of the one I wished I had or thought I should have, as in, I'm not pregnant, okay let's get on a rollercoaster today or jump out of an airplane or just do something silly and fun that makes me feel like a teenager.  I did not want to look back on the time I was trying to build a family as an entirely dark time, but instead look back and say I'm so glad I did all those things!  The V-List helps me remember to live my life now, instead of always living moments that might be months or years down the road". 

I think that what the V-List Blog is all about is "mindfulness".  Alice Domar, author of  a wonderful book called "Conquering Infertility" explains mindfulness as follows:

"Being mindful means appreciating the here and the now - the soft breeze on your face, the smell of the stew cooking in the kitchen....Mindfulness is important for infertile women for several reasons.  Because of the cyclical nature of nature of reproduction, you are constantly thinking of the past and the future - the period you had last month, the period you're hoping not to get this month, the medical procedure scheduled for next week.   What's more, infertility is so stressful that it can overshadow everything else in your life - even the good things.  Mindfulness can help you remember that even though you've got a terrible, horrible stressor in your life, it is not the only thing..."

I am in perfect physical health (apart from premature ovarian failure), have a wonderful, gorgeous, loving supportive husband, a lovely dog, a comfortable home, a decent job, I was privileged enough to grow up in Australia where I had the opportunity to get a good education, had an amazing mother and still have a father and two sisters who love me.  Right at this moment, living in the now, I am happy.  A baby really would just be the cherry on top.

This was me when I was little....

This was me when I was about 4 years old.  I sometimes wonder if I had been able to have my own genetic child if he or she would have looked like me when I was little....

Ever since I learnt that I would probably never have my own genetic child, I have closely observed relatives, friends and even strangers in the supermarket to detect which physical characteristics or traits people have inherited from their parents.  I am altogether fascinated by it these days.  We all take for granted the little clues and symbols of belonging that we are born with - those things that connect us with our parents, the people we love most in the world.  It is part of a person's unconscious expectation that their children, being born from them, will look, sound and act like them.  I have my father's eyes and legs and knobbly knees and sneeze the same way as him and my nose, chin, face, voice and general body shape is very like my mothers'.  As an adult I look very like my mother.  My personal circumstances made the yearning for a genetic connection with my parents especially intense.  My parents separated when I was 11, after which I had a disjointed relationship with my father for many years (prior to that I was a bit of a 'Daddy's girl') and then in my 20s my mother died at a relatively young age from cancer.  Hence the longing to have a child that connected me with both of them.

As a child, I was fascinated by stories of my dead grandfather; small details such as hearing of his love of listening to opera singer Joseph Schmidt on old LPs.  And stories of my great- grandmother, his mother, who was a nurse and mid-wife and delivered all the babies in the local district (and saved the life of a woman haemorrhaging during childbirth).  On my mother's side, I learnt about a great grandfather who emigrated from Paisley in Scotland to Queensland, only to die back in Europe in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  I threw myself into school projects on ancestry and was eager to seize upon any scrap of information that added to my family tree.  I pondered particular family characteristics, speculating that some of them were passed down to subsequent generations, such as a stubborn streak or a pioneering feminist spirit.  I poured over photographs of my parents from their working holiday to London in the Swinging 1960s.  This is the mythology of my life and I had formed a narrative in my head; added my own set of individual stories (and took numerous photographs) in anticipation of passing it all on to my own children (completely overlooking the fact that a biological child might not have the slightest bit of interest in all this sentimental schloss).  But if I could not have my own genetic child, what was the point in learning any of this, of carefully assembling photo albums and keeping careful notes of family trees and interesting anecdotes?

I desperately wanted a child that was part of my family, part of both my mother and my father and part of me.  I think I have mostly, and with no small degree of pain and grief, worked through these strong emotions many years later and concluded that the desire to have a genetic child, more than wanting a connection with my past and my family, is actually rather narcissistic.  It is a form of self-fixation, a quest for immortality (because by producing genetic offspring there is a sense of defeating death and having a little part of yourself live on)....  It is egomania in many respects.... I ask myself, what is more important to you?  Cloning a little version of yourself to show off to the world or being a mother and parenting a child?  Motherhood is bigger than genetics...... and it is motherhood that matters to me most.  And finally, I suspect (I hope) that my child will be just as interested in hearing my family stories recounted to them as I was as a child, because those stories are part of me and by being part of me, they too will become part of my child, shape its personality and outlook and form part of their inheritance from me, their mother.

My Canine Baby

I can't properly describe in words how much solace our West Highland Terrier, Hamish has given both myself and DH over the past 4 years since we got him.  He is full of cheek, charm and a zest for life that is infectious.  We lavish attention on him and he pays us back tenfold.  I love the way he waggles his bum and tail when he is happy (he has a backside like a wombat!) and the simple pleasure he gets from a walk or a nice bone.  It was particularly lovely having him from a tiny puppy, holding him to our chest in warm blankets, training him and watching him grow.  His first bark, his first doggy howls, first trick...

Miscarriage and childlessness pulls you down into a dark pit.  Melancholia requires constantly fighting off but having Hamish around is like medicine.  He stares intensely with his beautiful brown eyes and has often licked salty tears from my face on particularly hard days. He gets us out walking - which in itself lifts heaviness, eases grief and reduces stress.  He plays with my neighbours children' and those in the local park, so when I interact with parents of small children, I feel in a little way like I belong too, not so much the childless loser desperate outsider.  I have my Hamish to talk about and look out for in the mix of moving small people, I am known as 'Hamish's Mummy' by a small girl on my street.  I often think neighbours or observers must think I am completely bonkers about Hamish and probably think our joint affection for him is unhealthy (perhaps it is.....but how can love of a lovely little deserving dog be a bad thing?).  I used to kiss him so much when he was a puppy (I love his smell!) that he used to growl after a certain point in time, like, 'enough is enough Mummy!'.  He was very patient though. 

He has been taken to France and England with us on driving holidays, been sailing on the Shannon in Ireland (in his doggy life jacket of course), snuck into holiday cottages, has his own blankets, sofa, sweaters, seat belt, regular appointments at Dapper Dogs (dog groomer) and he sleeps in our bed every night.  DH is devoted to him and Hamish is to him.  He is variously referred to as 'puppy', 'H Man', 'fatty', 'baby boy', 'the little fella' and 'Mr H'.  We fuss over him constantly and declare to each other, 'isn't he gorgeous?'. When I ring DH from work, as he is first home, I always ask after Hamish straight away.  If we are ever out at a bar or party we ask one another how the other thinks Hamish is doing and worry about him being home alone.  We monitor his poos (DH will be embarrassed by this admission!) and comment to one another on the quality (I often get blamed for giving him 'junk').  Indeed, our affection for Hamish is so intense I sometimes worry if a negative inference about our relationship with each other can be drawn (I have concluded not).  I think we are a couple that love each other very much and desperately want to become parents and share the experience of parenting together.  I imagine how we feel about Hamish is what it must be like to be parents together.....sharing an intense love of a dependant little thing that belongs to just the two of you, a family unit spinning around in our own little universe.  No matter what happens, whether we ever get to be parents to a human baby or not, Hamish will always be our special first living baby.

What is Asherman's Syndrome?

Asherman's Syndrome or intra-uterine adhesions is an acquired uterine condition, characterized by the formation of adhesions (scar tissue) inside a woman's uterus.  It can cause miscarriage and infertility and is most commonly caused by a D&C (dilation and curettage) after a missed or incomplete miscarriage, a retained placenta or elective termination of pregnancy.  It is thought that pregnancy related D&Cs account for 90% of Asherman's syndrome cases.

Adhesions (scar tissue) are more likely to occur the longer the period between fetal death and the carrying out of the D&C.  I find this very interesting as for my first missed miscarriage and D&C, I was told that our baby may have died around 8 weeks (as it measured this size) but I was 13 weeks by the time I had the D&C.  A woman is more likely to develop Asherman's syndrome the greater the number of D&C s she has had and adhesions are often explained by 'over-zealous' D&C.

I was diagnosed with Asherman's by accident really.  It was suggested to me that due to the fact that I was infertile after two missed miscarriages and D&Cs that before I consider egg donation, I should ensure that my womb was undamaged and that the prognosis for donor conception was good.  I had always assumed my premature ovarian failure - poor egg quality/number was responsibility for my infertility.  A surgeon at The Rotunda Hospital was amazed to discover a thick narrow band of scar tissue in my uterus, after performing surgical hysteroscopy.  He cauterized the scar tissue (surgical scissors are better).  My basal layer of endometrium is very thin and failed to respond to either viagra or nitrodur during a donor cycle.....v. depressing.  The surgeon said the scar tissue was caused by 'too much force being applied' during past a D&C. 

I subsequently made an appointment with The Master of Holles Street to make a formal complaint, as both of my D&Cs for missed miscarriage were carried out there.  He refused to accept liability (naturally) and said interuterine scarring can be caused by almost anything, including infection.  I asked how infection could cause a thick narrow line of scar tissue which seemed more in keeping with injury from an instrument such as curette.  I got no satisfactory answer.  I formally requested that the hospital provide clear warnings to women with missed miscarriages on the consequences of D&C and explain to them that Asherman's is a potential outcome which may leave them infertile.  I feel like I was not given enough information about 'conservative management' and it was implied that I would get an infection and probably have to come in eventually if I did not book in for a D&C in the first instance.....I try not to think about it too much these days otherwise I risk becoming melancholy and bitter.  I do however feel strongly that women are not given enough information about this devastating consequence of D&C. 

Dr Warren DeAmbrosis rocks!!!

Dr Warren DeAmbrosis is a leading doctor at The Queensland Fertility Group in Brisbane, Australia.  After having done IVF at The Lister in London, SIMS Clinic in Dublin, and Instituto Marques in Barcelona (not to mention numerous encounters with OB/GYNs for other surgeries), I can say with some authority that 'Warren', as he is known to his patients, is one of the most down to earth, compassionate, open-minded and wonderful doctors I have encountered in the last 6 years.  I think he has a special understanding of women who are truly desperate and at the end of the line.  He doesn't pull any punches, but that is ok with me.  More than anything though, he has a brilliant sense of humour, makes you laugh and puts you completely at ease.

It is easy for women to rave on about their favourite doctor when they have gotten their 'miracle' baby with the help of that particular doctor.  I never got a baby out of Warren but he restored my faith in doctors.  I did my 7th IVF cycle with him and truly wish I had been able to do the previous 6 IVFs with him as well.  He has a particular knowledge of premature ovarian failure, prides himself on taking on the 'hard cases' and is a self-described 'maverick'.  Sometimes infertile women desperately need a maverick.  Warren is prepared to consider all the latest research and anything that might help and does not do the same cycle over and over again. He tweaks and changes.  I did one cycle with him that did not work out but he pulled out all stops.  He treated my younger sister, who also has POF and after 5 cycles, with just two embryos available, she got pregnant with twin boys....so thank you Wozza for my gorgeous nephews and ensuring that part of my mother and my genetic family lives on - you are a legend!  Kisses and hugs from Dublin, Ireland.

One cycle of IVF drugs....

Pictured are 10-12 days of treatment consisting of: LH (lutenizing hormone - Luveris) injections, FSH (follice stimulating hormone - Puregon) injections, contraceptive pill (Cilest) and antagonist down-regulator injections (Orgalutran) to override natural cycle, Pregnyl (HCG) trigger injection to ripen eggs prior to collection, heparin (blood thining) injections, predisolone (steroids for suppressing immune system), progesterone pessaries (Cyclogest), progesterone (Gestone) injections for aiding implantation, baby aspirin (Nu-Seal) to thin blood, anti-depressants (Lustral) to ward off despair and estrogen tablets (Estrofem) to aid implantation....on other cycles I have also taken viagra pessaries and worn nitrodur glycerine patches (angina meds to engorge blood vessels around heart) to increase blood flow to womb, thicken uterine lining and aid implantation, injected estrogen valerate and worn estrogen patches, as well as taken oral estrogen....(to counter premature ovarian failure and problems with uterine lining due to Asherman's syndrome).