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How could wanting something as simple as a child of our own become the greatest, the most all consuming challenge I could ever imagine facing. Surely people conceive, give birth, every day without apparent difficulty and without the necessity for any real skill or application to the task.
Len had told me right from the start about his vasectomy. It was never a secret and for the first couple of years it wasn’t a problem. I threw the contraceptive pill away a month after we started living together and it seemed to give a wonderful freedom not having to worry about contraception or the chance of pregnancy. I had my career and a wonderful new life with the man I loved and the desire for children wasn’t part of the equation.
I don’t remember exactly when the idea of a baby started to appeal but looking back it seems the first dim flickerings coincided with my 30th birthday. We had been married a year and as each month went by the idea seemed to appeal more and we started to tentatively explore the subject, the possibilities. Len made some initial enquires with his GP about the possibility of a vasectomy reversal and the likelihood of a successful result, but the response was blunt and actively discouraging. The vasectomy had been performed more than eight years earlier and he was told that any attempt at reversal was likely to be a failure - the GP seemed to think this was just a passing whim of his patient’s much younger wife.
As much angered as disappointed by this refusal to explore the options, I spoke to my GP who suggested the idea of conception using a sperm donor. A referral was given to the only doctor in Toowoomba at that stage offering donor insemination services and, with some hesitation, we attended for an initial consultation.
The consultation involved discussing the mechanics of DI and the high likelihood of a successful outcome – I was young and healthy with no history of gynaecological problems. There was no real offer of counselling to discuss the emotional issues associated with donor insemination. We were sent away with some graph paper and instructions on monitoring my basal temperature to identify ovulation over the next three months and we would then proceed with what now seems to have been a very low tech approach to assisted reproduction. Toward the end of this three month period the doctor involved, who operated a sole practice, died suddenly, putting an abrupt end to this avenue of assistance.
I returned to my GP for a further referral to clinics offering donor insemination services but the first available appointment was not for several months. While I made the appointment, I was struggling to overcome my concerns about DI – would Len really ever see a child conceived by that method as truly his particularly when compared with his two older children?
At about this time I found an article about the early successes with ICSI and it seemed that there were other options we could look at and which we hadn’t had the opportunity to fully explore. Len returned to his GP and finally got a referral to a urologist to discuss a reversal. Coincidently I had seen my gynaecologist (Dr John) at the same time to try to find a solution to recurrent thrush infections and briefly discussed our plans with him – he strongly supported the idea of the reversal and highly recommended the urologist, opening the door on my hope just a little further. Little did I know then how very involved with our quest for a baby John was to become.
We cancelled the appointment with the DI clinic and in mid February 1995, Len had his reversal. I remember the feeling of guilt when I saw him in hospital and in extreme discomfort when he was released the next day – how could I cause the man I loved to go through so much pain to try to fulfil my dreams.
We were told it would probably take several months for any viable sperm to be produced if the reversal was successful but were encouraged that sperm had been present in the vas and the mechanics of the reversal were fine so it seemed just a matter of time before we would conceive. We accepted that nothing happened the first few months but as month succeeded month and then a year had gone by without me being pregnant I started to again feel like our hopes were disappearing. As a second year went by I felt like a small part of me died each month as my period started.
In mid 1997 we had a wonderful holiday in the US and joked about the possibility of conceiving a child in one of the many cities or states we visited. It seemed that it ever there was a ‘right’ time or environment to fall pregnant, this was it. That old adage which must come to haunt every infertile couple and which says ‘just relax and it will happen’ was proven wrong yet again. We were relaxed, all the stress normally associated with work was well forgotten but still, when we returned home, my period turned up right on schedule.
I was 34 and the desire for a child was becoming a physical and mental ache that I could not simply put aside or shut off from any longer. It was there every time I saw a pregnant woman or a small child or a magazine article that even briefly touched on this whole issue of reproduction. In the background, I kept remembering everything I had ever heard about a woman’s declining fertility and age 35 seemed to be the medically agreed point at which the rollercoaster suddenly went down hill – fast. Suddenly it seemed there was a sense of urgency in all of this.
So it was back to my GP to talk about our other options. During this time, Dr John had established a local IVF clinic, and the outcome of these discussions was a referral to this clinic combined with the GP’s warnings about the potential side effects of the seemingly huge range of medications used during IVF and the relatively low levels of success attached to assisted reproductive technology. In hindsight, I suspect I understood very little of her warnings – I know now how little I understood of the IVF process and at what price this understanding would be gained!
We had an initial consultation with Dr John, discussed our medical backgrounds and he agreed that we seemed like the ideal IVF candidates. An obvious causality of infertility, with sperm related infertility apparently being a relatively straight forward cause to ‘treat’ and no known gynaecological problems. A sperm analysis showed a low count and low motility so we would have IVF with sperm injection using ICSI.
The next step was a meeting on 29 December 1997 (coincidently my brother’s birthday – was this a positive omen) with Sherry, the Clinic Nurse Coordinator, who provided all the background on the treatment protocols. This meeting was probably the beginning of the end of our naivety about just how invasive IVF was.
