In Vitro Fertility Goddess

Failing IVF Drugs Test

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There are many ways an IVF cycle can fail, too numerous and non-refundable to mention here so I'll focus on the less obvious ones, namely WHEN THE DRUGS DON'T WORK.

Notwithstanding the cries that can be heard in any late night venue pulsing with scantily clad young people and Doof Doof electronic music when they realize they've been sold a dodgy pill, every day there are cries on the line to long-suffering IVF nurses when women find the drugs they've been faithfully injecting or swallowing have not achieved ovarian and hormonal responses.

I was one of the latter when I attempted to have my second child via a frozen embryo implant. Surely, I thought at the time, this will be easier than the first go with the fresh embryo, like doing simple arithmetic when you've already passed Advanced Calculus.

There was no injecting, just a pill to take, and then after the implant some pessaries to insert. How easy could it be - this time I was designing nursery friezes in my head by the morning of the blood test and ultrasound. I happened to be getting a toenail removed at the doctor when the IVF clinic called that afternoon with the news that the drugs hadn't worked and the cycle was to be cancelled.

For a while I felt as numb as my toe, then the questions flowed in. Firstly, how could I not have responded when I did so well with the first try? Was it that I was two years older and therefore part of another set of less successful statistics?

Yet my doctor had assured me that as the embryo was of the same age as my first successful IVF implantation - now my daughter - the chances were only slightly less than they'd been then. But I didn't even get to first base and now I'd have to wait till a new cycle to try again.

The doctor didn't have any explanation for what had (or in this case hadn't) happened, but suggested we try the next cycle without drugs, just using my natural hormones, then after the implant, the pessaries. See, this is why I'll never begin to understand Assisted Reproductive Techniques (and I suspect doctors understand them less than they let on), they defy logic just as infertility itself largely does.

Surely, if the drugs hadn't worked that meant that my own hormones were simply trotting along their merry dysfunctional way, resulting in the cancellation of the embryo transfer, so why were we now leaving it up to them to do it correctly on their own? What evidence did we have that they could be trusted?

Anyway I had no choice but to trust my doctor, who, it was true, had been largely responsible for the beautiful one year old we now shared our house with.

Three weeks later I fronted for my blood test and that afternoon got the OK. I'd achieved what I needed to without drugs. And frankly there should be more of it.

Jodi Panayotov