In Vitro Fertility Goddess

Secondary Infertility

This is a subject rarely given the same gravity or sympathy as first-time infertility, as the assumption is that you already have one or two, or however many children so count your blessings and shut up.

The latter is what I felt like saying to the woman I met going to my first IVF information night. How could it be a problem? But it is, and women who fell easily pregnant with their first child or children can find themselves with a type of ‘unexplained infertility' or ‘secondary infertility'.

The reverse of secondary infertility is also common. Women who experience infertility issues and end up using assisted reproductive techniques to fall pregnant for the first time may find that after the birth of their child, they fall pregnant again naturally and without really trying, soon afterwards. During my visits to the obstetrician I met at least two pregnant women who were visibly still in shock to find themselves with this ‘unexplained infertility'.

At about ten months after my daughter was born we too decided to try again as I'd weaned her and was now forty years old. Unfathomably I fell pregnant straight away, on our first attempt, and like these other women, I was shocked and amazed. Just as I was thinking that maybe at last I'd found my inner fertility goddess, on my daughter's first birthday and at eight and a half weeks pregnant, I miscarried. This time I didn't wail uncontrollably, I just held her close and cried silently, for my loss and her lost sibling.

Having once again lost faith in my own capabilities, and clearly a ‘faux fertile', I signed up for IVF once again, to have my one frozen embryo implanted. The cycle was unsuccessful as the drugs didn't take and I had to wait a month before going onto the next cycle. The embryo was implanted but also didn't take, resulting in a kind of ‘early miscarriage'.

After another few months I signed up with a new and local clinic and once again didn't get to complete the cycle due to wrong hormone levels.

Another laparoscopy and preliminary appointments with yet another clinic followed but somewhere along the way I ran out of steam and lost heart. Two years after the birth of our beautiful daughter, my husband and I came to the conclusion that our family was complete and we would accept and be happy with what we had. We didn't set out to consciously think in this way and even today, another three years later, I have the odd tinge where I wonder whether we should have pursued a sibling for her. It was just that there came a point where we decided to get on with our lives and not look back.

Jodi Panayotov