In Vitro Fertility Goddess
According to my naturopath who was intrumental in helping me achieve a successful pregnancy, you can take drugs (of the IVF variety) while on herbs, but according to my doctor you can not take herbs while on the drugs. Who is right and who is wrong? Both and neither.
What it comes down to is that when you've put an exorbitant amount of money (equivalent to the down payment on a BMW) in the pocket of a doctor and their clinic but only paid fifty dollars for a bottle of herbs, the strong inclination is to go with what the doctor said. It's a form of looking after your investment, making sure it gets a return. You can gamble with fifty dollars but not five thousand.
There's also the emotional investment. To undertake the rigorous and demanding IVF drug routine and procedures takes a lot of inner strength from you, unlike putting a tablespoon of herbs in a glass of water. So when subjected to the former the inclination is to do it as the booklet requires.
However, in terms of success rates for either approach on its own, there is overwhelming research to support either. It is what you feel comfortable with. I couldn't have thrown myself into the rigors of IVF in the early stages of my struggle to conceive, I just wasn't psychologically prepared for it and, whatever approach you choose, it is extremely important for you to feel right with it, to believe in it.
I have no doubts whatsoever that the herbal regime that I was on until succumbing to IVF played a major role in the success of IVF. The herbs cleaned out and toned out my reproductive system and in that way were immeasurably helpful.
So, IVF herbs vs IVF drugs - both have their usefulness and to my mind both played a role in the conception of my daughter.
To find out how herbs can help prepare for a successful IVF cycle, do have a look at Stacey Roberts' aka "The Baby Maker's" eBook ‘Herbs and IVF' here »
I'm convinced it was her ground-breaking formulas that got me across the line at my first attempt at IVF.
Jodi Panayotov
During my darkest hours, when I thought I'd never be a mother, I turned to a number of shows for comfort that showed a sizable lapse in judgement on my part.
I have no way to explain it other than I was in an altered state of consciousness and these programs, obviously designed for people like myself, filled a kind of void.
The void was created when I gave up my job, my leisure pursuits and most of my friends in the obsessive pursuit of parenthood and there was something about watching shows like Jerry Springer, where a cast of freaks aired their cataclysmic lives on stage, that distracted me from my own impending madness.
The truth is, I was feeling like a bit of a freak myself and therefore identifying increasingly with his guests. Had there been a show entitled, ‘Women Who Can't Stop Taking Their Temperature and Checking Their Mucous', who knows, I may have signed up. God knows I needed to get out more…
A curious piece of knowledge I unwittingly gained when watching Jerry Springer, was that the vast majority of his guests had achieved parenthood in some shape or dysfunctional form. It didn't matter what their circumstances were, what shape or form their lives took, whether they were a pimp or a paedophile, they had an offspring or ten out there. If my memory serves me correctly there was even a man who had managed to impregnate an unidentified farm animal.
Now clearly either this show or the people who applied to be on it had some secret fertility ingredient that loving couples at IVF clinics missed out on. I don't know what it was but I do intend on studying the show further to find out.
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A guide for relatives, friends and acquaintances who wish to remain relatives, friends and acquaintances:
1. Just relax and it'll happen
2. It (the miscarriage) was meant to be
3. Have you tried having lots of sex?
4. You're trying too hard
5. You just have to try harder
6. Forget about it and it'll happen
7. You've left it too late
8. Don't panic
9. I told you that you should have started earlier
10. I can't imagine what it's like but then I fell pregnant first go with all four of my children
Further explanations that may be necessary for R, F and A's that still don't get it.
To make a point let's substitute the struggle to conceive with the struggle to pay off a steep mortgage, with a few alterations to the above comments.
1. Just relax and it'll happen
2. It (the large mortgage) was meant to be
3. Have you tried earning lots of money?
4. You're trying too hard to pay it
5. You just have to work harder
6. Forget about it and so will the bank
7. You've left it too late - you'll never be debt-free
8. Don't panic even if your house is repossessed
9. I told you you should have bought a house earlier
10. I can't imagine what it's like but then I own four houses and have mortgages on none of them
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Just when you think the odds are against you, think again. This true story is a triumph over everything that shouldn't have happened and did, an extraordinary beating of the odds. It's along the lines of a person cutting off their own head, eating it and surviving - just as strange, but in this case true.
Right. Take a seat while I try and work out where to begin. Pour yourself a drink if you're in between IVF cycles. OK, here goes.
A 57 year old woman, Susan Tollefsen from Romford, East London walks into an IVF clinic in Russia, hoping to have a child with her 46 year old partner. At this point her odds of achieving a pregnancy with IVF are zero with her own eggs, and, using the rates of success in Britain at private clinics treating women over 50, roughly twenty five percent with donor eggs.
She has already tried a few other ‘foreign' clinics over several years without success. She undergoes treatment and has 2 embryos implanted.
The first miracle occurs - she achieves a pregnancy but less than four weeks after transfer starts bleeding and miscarries. The odds of miscarrying at 45 or over are greater than fifty four percent.
Her GP confirms the miscarriage as does a negative home pregnancy test. (HPTs are 99% accurate in the lab but do have a higher rate of false negatives than positives).
Susan reluctantly relinquishes her dream.
Fast forward to twenty-four weeks later when she has been suffering from a swollen abdomen and presents at hospital with what her GP cited as a ‘hard abdominal mass'.
The fear is that she has ovarian cancer - the odds being high for a 57 year old with a swollen abdomen who has never been pregnant. It is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in women of this age.
She is fully expecting the sonographer to relay some grave news but instead he says, "Congratulations. You are pregnant." Thirty weeks pregnant to be exact and the baby is healthy.
Susan has now given birth to her first baby, a girl she has named ‘Freya'.
And if that's not a miracle, I'm not sure what is.
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Anger and infertility go together like a horse and carriage, love and marriage, like bad hair and Donald Trump. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Whilst there may be serene and blissful pregnancies the battle to conceive is anything but.
I don't think I was ever so cranky as when I was trying unsuccessfully to have a baby, culminating in the IVF process. And giving IVF drugs to an already emotionally fraught woman is like waving a red flag at a mallee bull.
For the first time in his life my two metre tall husband was actually scared of me. I'm not sure what he thought I was capable of but he didn't want to find out. Which is why, when we were halfway up the mountain on our weekend away and I yelled that we had to turn back as I'd forgotten my basal thermometer, he did. Without arguing. Just went a little pale before putting the indicator on and doing a swift U-turn.
In a past life, BTTC (before trying to conceive), it would have been out of the question but this was now, I was mad and he was nervous.
Not that I ever shared what was going on in my head or anything. No, I kept the homicidal thoughts towards pregnant women, people who blew smoke in their children's faces and power walking pram groups to myself. Nor did I share any of the ideas I had about what should happen to people who abused their kids, Courtney Love, Jordan and other abysmal celebrity mothers.
Then there was the small stuff - the ‘you left the light on', ‘you forgot to buy parmesan cheese' and so forth. It was quite fortunate by the time it came to IVF and no sex was required because there couldn't have been any with my moods, unless it was of the make-up variety. But you better get in quick, I just spotted a mould spot on the ceiling and it's making me furious.
Seriously though, why do we get so angry? And why do we get so down on ourselves for being that way? The answer to the second question probably lies with the fact that there is still some expectation, stemming from last century that women aren't supposed to get really angry. Bulldust!
All those 1950's magazines with the perennially happy homemakers, grinning whilst they ironed, beaming while they vacuumed, twinkling as they fetched their husband's scotch and slippers set some pretty warped notions of how we should be. Had there been IVF then, no doubt the woman would have been pictured there in backless gown and matching paper hat sunnily beaming her way through the egg pick-up, or smiling beatifically in wasp waisted dress as she injected herself with Puregon.
As for why we get so angry, well, aside from the sense of injustice that this is happening to us, and the lack of understanding and insensitivity we often experience from others, including loved ones, anger is a part of grief. A healthy part.
The grieving process comprises four parts - denial, anger, sadness and acceptance and when we suffering infertility which is something we struggle to deal with we will experience these emotions before we can either resolve or learn to accept the situation. Anger has as much of a role as sadness though different people experience each in different measures.
In accepting that anger is OK you can start to tame the beast, not feel so out of control with it. This doesn't means trying to suppress it - it will reveal its ugly head again later anyway, usually when you're at an important work party with your husband.
There are things you can do to take the edge off it - yoga, various forms of exercise, boxing, counselling, just putting headphones on and going off for a walk.
And if it's your partner that bears the brunt of it, talk. Tell him that this is how you are right now and it's not about him. It's about the situation. 
Unfortunately for him you can't shout at your ovaries or your IVF doctor.
The other thing to know is that it will pass, either when you fall pregnant or when you have worked through the process and reached a new place to be in.
Unlike Donald Trump who is stuck with his hair forever, you won't be stuck with the anger.
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Tis the season to be jolly, but try telling that to the women and couples out there who have tried and failed to conceive this year. Or those who have lost a baby through miscarriage.
If any season brings home the feeling of emptiness and sadness to the infertile it's Christmas. For Christmas has children at its heart whether you look at it commercially or religiously.
While the Christian world celebrates, of all things, the birth of a baby and stores have Santa trails especially for children nothing emphasises a state of childlessness in such an inescapable marked way.
So what to do if you are involuntarily and regrettably childless?
‘Carols by Candlelight', an event awash with families and ringing with the sound of excited children's voices is clearly to be avoided at all costs.
You'd escape to the cinema except everything playing features Ben Stiller or Tim Allen as a Christmas elf and besides, the audience are mostly elf-size themselves.
Similarly shopping centres have stages with non-stop children's entertainment and you can't even get past them for the dancing toddlers and Hummer-sized prams.
You'd go to the ballet but they're performing the children's Christmas favourite ‘The Nutcracker'. And the Eagles, Silverchair and Kylie are long gone from the Entertainment Centre, instead it's the Wiggles if you please and of course you don't.
Meantime the advent of Christmas feels like the build-up of an enormous pressure cooker, a forced time of celebration when all you feel like is fleeing to a desert island where there are strictly no children allowed.
Anything to avoid Christmas Day either with ‘unrequited' grandparents or nephews and nieces, oh so cute in their Christmas finery. These are the nephews and nieces you had to negotiate hundreds of children and their frazzled parents at ‘Toys R Us' to purchase presents for.
It's the frazzled parents that get to you the most, you don't understand them at all. How could anyone who's a parent possibly be frazzled? When you've been trying for years to become a parent yourself it's beyond comprehension.
Possibly it's the John Lennon Christmas song that is the worst of all the Christmas songs. ‘Another year over and what have you done' is haunting to the point of being disturbing. Especially when the answer is you spent the whole year trying to conceive and didn't get anywhere. Another year over and still no baby.
And spare a thought for those going through IVF over Christmas, it's highly incompatible with feeling festive and the drugs don't help. Imagine having to run off and inject yourself with a follicle-stimulating hormone during the turkey, come back and resume your seat and your paper hat with a big smile.
Yet if there's anything good about Christmas it is that it's followed by the New Year. A chance for new beginnings, the hope that this time next year you'll be pregnant or have a baby and this will have been the last childless Christmas.
A time when like people the world over you'll be celebrating the birth of a baby but this one will be your own.
When you are focussing on trying to conceive a baby, the last thing that usually occurs to you is the possibility that you might lose it, unless of course you have previously suffered pregnancy loss.
This is especially true when experiencing the type of euphoria that overwhelms you when you find you've been successful after a long time, it can be virtually impossible to allow such an awful possibility to gain access to your head.
If, like me, you haven't devoured an entire library of pregnancy books, spines and all, before becoming pregnant you can be blissfully ignorant of the things that can go wrong with pregnancy.
And even if you do like to be prepared for all eventualities, in the effort to remain positive and uplifting, to convey the joy of pregnancy, most of the pregnancy books devote little coverage to topics such as what to expect during miscarriage or what a miscarriage looks like.
For that you need to go straight to the books entitled ‘Miscarriage' and who, when newly pregnant, is doing that, no matter what paranoid tendencies they may possess? Even when I was finally pregnant again after my first miscarriage I was not tempted. Well, not much, only a bit. I confess that I may have picked one up and peeped inside before realizing I was on the verge of taking leave of my senses and put it hurriedly back on the shelf.
So, how do you know if you've had a miscarriage and not realized it? Especially if you hadn't heard or read anything about it beforehand, it is entirely possible to have missed it altogether.
Miscarriage statistics are based on ‘known pregnancies' and do not take into account women who miscarry when they didn't know they were pregnant. Generally it is passed off as a particularly heavy or nasty period, with heavier than usual bleeding accompanied by some clotting. A pregnancy test when taken up to several days after a miscarriage will still show a positive result. My state of denial after my second miscarriage was so strong that I frantically took two further tests, despite an ultrasound having shown nothing but an empty sac and the fact that I'd bled the equivalent of small dam, and both of them showed the strong double line. I called my doctor, who told me that the pregnancy hormones could remain in my system for up to a week.
Miscarriage emotions, on the other hand can last a lot longer and can vary widely: from hysteria involving wailing uncontrollably and flinging oneself at objects like a Greek widow at a funeral, to the depths of despair causing curling up in foetal position for days at a time, to a kind of blank dissociative state where you go through the motions of living without feeling anything.
Is it harder to conceive after a miscarriage? Personally I found it hard to conceive before and after my miscarriages but this was due to a whole host of reasons, which may or may not have been linked to the miscarriages themselves. My doctors, after each miscarriage, advised me to ideally wait three months before trying again, to ‘allow the system to get back into order' or words to that effect. Yet I've met many women who didn't even wait to have another period, they resumed trying again right away and fell pregnant first go.
Even after loss of infant due to miscarriage, when the miscarriage is later in the pregnancy and not far from a still birth, women conceive relatively quickly and successfully. I had a work colleague who lost a baby at twenty weeks and just over a year later she gave birth to a healthy child.
So, achieving pregnancy after a miscarriage is more likely to be difficult if you had difficulties before the miscarriage, like myself. Some women, after the initial ‘hiccup' will sail through and never have another problem whereas there are those of us who will experience a spectrum of problems in our endeavours to have a child. Something to remember is that, if one in four (including the unknown) pregnancies end in miscarriage, the more pregnancies you achieve there is some chance that you may lose one of them.
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The following is an opinion piece published in Australian Parents Magazine February-March 2008 in response to a column by author Alison Rushby
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I am infertile. I will always be infertile even though I've had a child. You see, I didn't have the child in the way nature intended. I had the child courtesy of that great 20th century invention, In Vitro Fertilization. And I consider myself one of the lucky ones, as IVF doesn't work for everyone. Many of those who sign up for it leave the clinic empty-walleted, empty-armed and broken-hearted.
Three percent of babies born in the western world today are the result of IVF and over one in six couples of reproductive age find it difficult to conceive. Yet until recently when the media has picked up on the issue, who would have known?
People certainly don't discuss their fertility problems. During the years I worked as a flight attendant I was the unwitting recipient of every gory birth story and every pregnancy tale told by my fertility goddess colleagues but not once did I hear anyone's infertility story. And I ask, why? Why, if it's kosher to be infertile, is it something you don't talk about? To not tell anyone you've had a miscarriage or are undergoing IVF? To not tell anyone how you've been trying for five years to have a child with no success?
I went on to write a book about my bumbling quest to become a mother, because of this and because there is scant literature available for those who struggle to reproduce. Whole shelves and even sections of bookshops are devoted to pregnancy and babies but you'd be lucky to find one book devoted to infertility.
To the pregnant women I lampooned in my book, I'm sorry. It was the IVF drugs I was taking, combined with the ragged mental state I was in after those years of trying to conceive. I know you don't all purposely flaunt your pregnancies, (those that do, you know who you are). Now that I've been pregnant and rejoiced in it, I can understand why you wouldn't want to hide it and nor should you. And I don't for a minute think that pregnancy wear should be confined to curtains for the stomach, i.e. smocks. Goodness knows there are enough fashion obscenities out there already without adding to them.
Yet I must explain on behalf of the other fertility-challenged women out there why we are like we are to the point of occasional militancy. Why we shun parties where there are young children or babies, why we can barely manage a smile when you say you're pregnant, why at times we can't stand the sight of you.
It's nothing personal, but it's borne of an aching emptiness, like a hunger pain that isn't confined to your stomach but cuts to your very soul. And like a hunger pain it gnaws at you day and night. We can't control it, it exists as part of our being and once unleashed it's impossible to bury it. There is no cure for it either, except of course a baby.
So when we're out and about the sighting of a pregnant woman or a baby is like a sighting of someone tucking into a hamburger when you haven't eaten for days. The pangs you feel are similar but a hundred times more intense.
If and when we do manage to have a child it is like being presented with a gourmet meal when you've been starving for a long time. It's only natural therefore to think that the person who's only been waiting a few hours for food perhaps won't savour and appreciate every mouthful in the same way. It's not based on fact but on feeling.
Had I known that my fertility would take off to an uncharted destination sometime in my thirties and not left a forwarding address, I would probably have done things differently, not attempted to get ahead with the mortgage and enjoy my career. How could I have known though, when nobody talked about it? Media coverage was practically non-existent and women's magazines focused on things like ‘Multiple Orgasm', not ‘Multiple Birth as the Result of Fertility Treatment'.
Similarly had I been offered half the information about miscarriage and IVF at work that I received about episiotomies, I'd probably be the mother of two teenagers now.
Yet many women don't have the luxury of choice. Factors way beyond their control contribute to the postponing of motherhood, for example finding a partner who has not only evolved to a Homo Sapien, but is willing to have children NOW.
So please don't judge us but listen to us instead. You've been talking for years and we've just found our voice.
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Back at work after the failed conception trip to Paris, one thing I seem unable to avoid is Fertility Goddess workmates.
There used to be one on a flight per week, but all of a sudden there seems to be at least one on every flight.
Is like lambing season in the air, with protruding stomachs wherever you look. The main culprit (besides the husbands) is the Olympic Games which are fast approaching and nobody wants to fly during them. Girls have actually postponed/timed their families around the event to avoid it!
And worse, they've succeeded. The joke is that the maternity uniform is actually the official Olympic uniform. Almost every flight I find myself working with a pregnant fertility goddess and the most annoying attribute is their perception that because they are glowingly pregnant everyone else must be pregnant or at least trying.
Worse, the ones who know I've been to Paris get all ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink' with me, throwing meaningful glances at my stomach and making comments like "Oh Paris is the city of lurve. My friend went there and it was so romantic she got pregnant!"
What do they think, the sight of the Eiffel Tower and all that Haussman architecture turns you into rabbits bonking day and night for weeks on end?
And, like women in the newly engaged state who are incapable of discussing anything but wedding dresses and engagement rings, these pregnant women are incapable of talking about any topic save for ultrasounds and baby names. Is totally excruciating!
This morning I was on the end of a trolley with one such girl and by about halfway through handing out the trays, was practically at the point of forcibly opening an aircraft door mid-flight and getting self sucked into the upper atmosphere. The morning sickness, the cravings, the veins, on it went. Then she interrupted herself to throw in,
‘Oh, what about you then? You've been married for years now, when are you going to have a baby?"
With every bit of self-control I could find, I stopped myself just in time from inducing an aisle birth by way of trolley.
"Actually I just lost one, miscarriage, you know."
She went slightly green but it could have been her morning sickness.
There, I'd said it. Shouted it, actually, at thirty-nine thousand feet. The entire rear of the plane simultaneously looked up from their turkey rissoles and this was strangely liberating. Back in the galley the no-longer-smug girl apologised and the other girls went all quiet and seemed to whisper for the rest of the flight.
Later as we were leaving the aircraft a non-pregnant girl attached herself to my side and confessed that she too had had a miscarriage last year and I was the first person she'd told outside of immediate family.
"What is it, why don't we talk about it? It's like there's a hidden code of silence or something. I've never in ten years of working here heard of one miscarriage. And I've heard all about every birth."
"They're all proud of their births, nobody's proud of having miscarriage."
"But we don't deliberately cause our miscarriages."
What was wrong with women that they felt so ashamed to talk about their reproductive failings and so compelled to flaunt their fertility to each other?
Buy In Vitro Fertility Goddess Here »
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Wednesday 10 September 2008
Source: Human Reproduction
A new scientific breakthrough has the potential to prevent millions of unexplained miscarriages worldwide after the discovery that up to a third of them are caused by an excess of immune cells in a woman's uterus.
Researchers in Britain will soon start trials involving a steroid drug which will be administered to women who have suffered recurrent miscarriages.
Professor Siobhan Quenby from the school of reproductive and developmental medicine at Liverpool University who led the study says the treatment should be able to prevent up to 3000 miscarriages a year in the UK alone once it's available to patients in 5 to 10 years time.
Professor Quenby also hopes to develop a screening test to determine if certain women are at risk of miscarriage before they fall pregnant.
30 out of 40 of her patients who were suffering from multiple miscarriages have already given birth to healthy babies after receiving the steroid drug called prednisolone.
The research focused on the discovery of a link between excess blood supply and the failure of a foetus to implant in the womb which is thought to be caused by a type of immune system cell in the womb that promotes the growth of blood vessels.
This in turn creates an over supply of blood and oxygen undermining the foetus' ability to become implanted into the wall of the womb, leading to miscarriage.
But leading fertility expert Professor Lord Robert Winston warned that it was difficult to know how affective the treatment is until a full clinical trial had been completed.
He said: "It is a very important area, but a difficult one. There is always the chance of this being caused by the placebo effect."
Sarah Williams, IVFG Reporter
