Real Stories | Katy’s Story – Infertility, Loss & Success

I have always shared our story in the hope it can help others and raise awareness.

We started trying to conceive in 2015. Unfortunately, after two losses within a year and two more difficult years of trying to conceive naturally, without success, we decided to seek help from our GP. We both had the initial fertility tests and everything was within the normal range. We were then referred to our local fertility clinic, where we had a few more tests and Tom had a semen analysis, which also came back normal. Our fertility doctor diagnosed us with Unexplained Infertility - approximately one in five couples are diagnosed with it.

A diagnosis of Unexplained Infertility is really frustrating. We wanted a reason why getting pregnant naturally wasn’t happening for us, but at the same time we were grateful there wasn’t anything serious.

Our fertility consultant referred us for IVF straight away, which we began in 2018. I started my cycle with down regulation and the medication ‘Norethisterone’, which really did not suit me at all – I experienced all the symptoms of menopause which was challenging. We both had a “go with the flow” attitude at the beginning of our IVF journey - I remember it being exciting at first. My parents had me through IVF many years ago and it worked first time for them, so we assumed it would work first time for us too.

I started medication to make my follicles bigger in my ovaries, in the hope I had lots of eggs to retrieve. I was awake for my egg retrieval - I had some pain relief but knew what was going on. I lay there on the bed and the embryologist kept counting each egg they managed to retrieve – it was so exciting. 

The embryologist told us he retrieved 17 eggs, which we were happy about, but I hadn’t researched what was going to happen next. We were very naive and really didn’t have a clue. Out of our 17 eggs, eight were fertilised via ICSI, which is when they inject sperm straight into the egg. Five of these eggs fertilised and developed. The remaining eggs were fertilised the conventional way and three eggs fertilised, with one not maturing at all. It felt like we had lost lots of eggs after everything we went through, but now I know more about IVF, we were very lucky to get the number of eggs we did.

They monitored our eggs daily and watched them divide. By day five we had five top quality blastocysts, with the possibility of two more catching up. We were very happy, as this meant we would have a few chances at IVF. It also meant we could have a fresh transfer on day five. On 21st January 2019, we transferred one 5AA ICSI embryo and the other four embryos were frozen.

Transfer went smoothly and I had the usual ‘scared to wee’ in case the...