\n<\/p>\n
So we did another retrieval, followed it up with a fresh transfer, and it worked\u2013that\u2019s my son. Then, when he was one, I discovered I was pregnant just as we were ready to do another transfer. I was happy but anxious about the pregnancy, so I was doing ultrasounds every week at work. At nine weeks, there was no more heartbeat.<\/p>\n
Once I confirmed with my doctor that there was no heartbeat, he had me take the abortion medication and collect what came out in a bucket so we could take it for genetic testing. It was a lot. Disgusting, really. My friend who\u2019s also an OB-GYN helped me package everything in the bucket, and I was like, \u201cThanks, doctor, for making me do this.\u201d Turns out it was genetically abnormal, which made us feel so much better because it gave us a reason for the miscarriage.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re on a waiting list for a surrogacy agency, but we\u2019ve continued to do transfers in the meantime. Fortunately, we have enough embryos to keep doing transfers\u2014making embryos is not our issue. But they\u2019ve all failed. We thought our 10th transfer was successful, but by 11 weeks, it was very obvious there was an anomaly, and I had to terminate. I thought I was at a low point before, but having an anomaly not compatible with life that I had worked so hard for put me in a very, very dark place.<\/p>\n
We just completed our 11th transfer. And again, it was unsuccessful. For the first time, I think I might be done with transfers. I\u2019ve never felt that way before, so now I think we\u2019re just going to wait for the surrogate. When I\u2019m in the clinic waiting room, with all these other women trying to have children, I appreciate my son so much and realize what a miracle he is. I don\u2019t want to be greedy, I just really want him to have a sibling.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoving forward\u2014as opposed to moving on\u2014hasn\u2019t been easy. I\u2019ve had to put as much effort into living a happy life without children as I did when trying to conceive.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Egg retrievals: Too many to count My health issues began when I started experiencing severe menstrual pain as a teenager. My mum took me to the doctor immediately, but my pain and bleeding were dismissed and then dismissed again. And again. I continued to suffer for years. It was only when I was married and started trying for a child at age 29 that my pain was believed. After a year of not being able to conceive naturally, I went to a hospital that specializes in fertility and they performed a diagnostic laparoscopy right away. I had stage four endometriosis. My bowel was attached to my uterus, and my ovaries were kissing, [meaning they were stuck together]. I was devastated that the condition was left undiagnosed for so long that my organs had fused, and I worried what that would mean for my fertility. The doctor recommended trying IVF immediately to give me the best chances of conceiving.<\/p>\n That was the beginning of my 10-year IVF journey. My husband and I made the difficult decision to stop treatments five years ago, after more than 11 unsuccessful embryo transfers and four miscarriages, including twins in my second trimester. After going through constant IVF fails and multiple surgeries for 10 years straight, I could no longer continue trying to conceive. I was exhausted, and the constant no\u2019s had taken a big toll on my mental, emotional, and physical health. I can hardly even recall what my protocols were back then, because my journey was so long and the science changed so much while I was going through it. I witnessed and experienced the evolution of IVF.<\/p>\n When Jennifer Aniston came out as childless after IVF a few years ago, it was one of society\u2019s first introductions to the idea that IVF doesn\u2019t always end with a \u201cmiracle baby.\u201d We need to hear more of these stories in the media and online\u2014especially coming from someone who looks like me, South Asian and Muslim. The infertility and endometriosis spaces are dominated by stories of white women, which is why I have made it a point to share mine. Many women in my community don\u2019t talk about their fertility journey openly due to taboos, tradition, and stigma.<\/p>\n Growing up in the UK, I felt \u201cothered.\u201d Being mixed race wasn\u2019t common all those years ago, and I felt as though I didn\u2019t belong in either group, South Asian or English. Eventually, I overcame this struggle and fully embraced who I was, only to feel \u201cothered\u201d again when diagnosed with endometriosis. It seemed I was the only person my age who was living with a debilitating chronic illness. Once I began IVF, I felt even more \u201cothered,\u201d because I was not able to conceive naturally when so many women around me were. I was surrounded by mums, and when my long fertility journey ended, I was surrounded by \u201cIVF mums.\u201d When I finally stopped fertility treatments, I didn\u2019t feel I belonged to any of the various online reproductive communities. I didn\u2019t fit into the \u201csuccessful IVF\u201d community, or the rainbow-baby community, or the trying-to-conceive community, or the motherhood community. I had many moments of, Where do I belong?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So we did another retrieval, followed it up with a fresh transfer, and it worked\u2013that\u2019s my son. Then, when he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veefind.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Embryo transfers: More than 11
Miscarriages\/chemical pregnancies: 4
Additional surgeries: 3
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 10<\/p>\n