Elle Wright: ‘This Is Why I Write About Secondary Infertility After The Death Of Our Son, Teddy’

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Just doing IVF isn’t as easy as it sounds. Sometimes I think those three letters, although so well recognised in the world we live in today, are often so misunderstood. The magnitude and life-changing challenge of embarking on IVF treatment must never be underestimated. It is so much more than a quick trip to the hospital to have a healthy embryo popped ‘back on board’ in the hope of achieving a pregnancy. It’s the months and years of trying beforehand that will have begun to take its toll; the drugs many couples will have had to endure first to try and help them along their fertility journey. It’s the disappointment that comes with every unsuccessful month of trying; the negative tests and tears. It’s the not knowing if after all this you will be deemed eligible for IVF treatment, or what that amount of treatment eligibility might look like given the current postcode lottery of the NHS IVF funding.

Once you get there it can become even more of a minefield to navigate. The tests, the screenings, the paperwork, oh, the paperwork. The administrative tasks that need to be carried out before so much as an injection needle has pierced through its first piece of flesh. The entire process becomes a mission to get every last bit of paperwork signed and every test result approved, before you can get that all-important green light for treatment. The juggle of keeping up those appointments, and matching work diaries to suit ‘the plan’ can sometimes feel like a full-time job in itself.

Navigating those weeks, sometimes months, of treatment can also feel like you are keeping a huge secret from the world. As rounds went on we chose to tell fewer people about our treatment. Feeling that with less people knowing, that we would have less people to tell if it didn’t work out. The pressure of people knowing became too much to bear after our first round, which ended in us not making it to an embryo transfer. It felt safer, somehow, keeping it for ourselves. Perhaps because IVF treatment isn’t like any other kind of conception; you know dates and days in detail. Time lines are mapped out in front of you, with the end goal of a “test date” clearly marked; the very last thing on your treatment schedule, there in black and white. Telling people in circumstances outside of fertility treatment, would be similar to telling friends and family the exact dates you had predicted you would ovulate and planned on having sex that month. In many ways, for us, it just felt too much.

I always described to friends, that going through another month or round of fertility treatment felt like stepping back onto a merry-go-round. One that would pull you on, spin you around until you felt as though you might be sick, and then spit you out at the end; often feeling far worse than you did before you stepped on. It’s easy to get lost in the process when your heart aches, so much, for that end goal. A baby of your own to take home. You begin to live through months on end, either going through treatment, grieving losses, or waiting for it all to begin again. Years can whizz by; all the while you are cancelling plans in case you might be going through it again, or even better, it might have worked? It’s easy to feel lost, alone, and left behind as everyone else’s worlds continue to turn. It’s an impossible waiting game, one where you seem to be firmly stuck in the seat of the waiting room.

A huge reason I began writing about my own experiences of secondary infertility after the death of our son, Teddy, was to help all of us be better at those conversations surrounding it. So that those awkward silences of not knowing what to say might become fewer. So that more of us might be mindful of friends, or work colleagues who are facing it. I wanted to document conversations I had had with people along the way; what truly helped and what served to make me feel even more hopeless about my inability to procreate once more. Often the only thing we can say is “I am so sorry you’re having to face this, and I can’t understand what it feels like. But just know that I am here to support you and to listen if you ever do want to talk about it.” There is no need to try and ‘fix it’ with words, sometimes just being there is enough. The weight of carrying the complexities of this journey alone, or feeling as though you need to hide it from those you love the most, can become a very lonely place in which to exist. Facing infertility is hard enough, without feeling like the rest world doesn’t understand what you’re going through, or that you’re the only one going through it. I truly believe that it’s all of our responsibility to change that.

A Bump in the Road by Elle Wright is out now