IVF: An Emotional Companion. Brigid Moss

sperm is injected into each egg), explaining it would give us the best chance of fertilisation.

      The staff, who were friendly and professional, put us at our ease, and made us both feel confident. The only thing that made me feel a bit sick was the thought of injecting myself with the ovary-stimulating drugs — I’m not good with needles or inflicting pain on myself. So Adam said he’d do them.

      We had to do our first injection at a friend’s wedding — in a Portaloo, of all places. Holding the little bag of needles and drugs, we were trying to stay calm when someone knocked on the door. The injections are dispensed by a type of pen, and we’d been told to hold it down for five seconds. But because we were so paranoid, we counted out loud to 10, just to be sure. Goodness knows what the person waiting for the loo must have thought!

      I dealt with IVF by going through the motions quite mechanically. Fortunately, the drugs didn’t affect my mood or emotions, so I was able to carry on with life as normally and unemotionally as possible. But, doing my last injection, I accidentally knocked the glass vial on to the ground and it smashed. So at 8 p.m., we had the panic of trying to get a replacement. Luckily, the clinic said they could fax a prescription to a pharmacy near us. But it took ages to find one that stocked the right drug, would accept a faxed prescription and was still open at what was by then 9.30 p.m. Looking back, it was farcical, but at the time, it felt like a disaster.

      When it came to the day of egg collection, we were pleased to get 12 eggs. We felt as if we’d got over the first big hurdle. Three days later, we had nine good embryos and the choice of putting one or two back. We automatically said two, as we wanted our chances to be as good as possible. Once the embryos were in, I felt that there was nothing more I could do. It was in the lap of the gods.

      A week after transfer, we took the Eurostar to a family wedding in Paris. When we arrived, I tried on my outfit — a black A-line skirt in a size 12 and a matching top — but I couldn’t do the zip up as my belly had expanded so much since I’d left London. I had to go shopping for new clothes and borrow a pair of my sister’s maternity tights (she was by then pregnant with her second child). I looked five months pregnant and a man in Galleries Lafayette actually gave me a chair because he thought I needed a break!

      At the wedding, I felt uncomfortable because I thought people would assume I was pregnant too. I knew the bloating was probably caused by mild OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome), which I’d been warned about by the clinic. The main advice is to drink a lot of water, so I was going to the loo all the time. I could hardly move, I didn’t dance, and I felt huge. Towards the end of the evening, my sides started hurting too and I began to feel really uncomfortable and knackered.

      When we got back from Paris, I called the clinic, and told them about my bloating. They asked me to come in, in case they needed to put in a drain to take out the excess fluid that builds up with OHSS. The first thing the nurse asked was if I’d done my pregnancy test. I said no, because I thought I wasn’t due to take it for another two days. And she said, ‘No, you were supposed to take it yesterday!’ How the hell had I got my test date wrong? Probably because I’d been so determined to go on with normal life, and not think about IVF, that I’d pushed it to the back of my mind.

      In shock and on autopilot, I went to the toilet and peed on the test stick. I didn’t even look at it. In my mind, I wanted to give the test to the nurse, go home and for her to call me with the result. As I passed the test to her, a faint line on it caught my eye. I said, ‘Oh, I guess that means the treatment didn’t work; there’s only a faint line.’ She said, ‘Actually, that means you are pregnant.’

      I couldn’t believe it. I was elated, but made myself stay calm as I knew it was early days for the pregnancy. I went through the rest of the examination in a daze. Luckily, I didn’t need any treatment for the OHSS, and was just told to drink more water.

      I called Adam, told him that the OHSS wasn’t serious and rambled on about my appointment before saying casually, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m pregnant’. He was ecstatic, of course. We decided not to tell anyone for a while, because of losing the previous pregnancy and the fact that this one was still so new.

      Two weeks later, I started bleeding at work. It’s just not fair, I thought. It’s happening again. Adam called NHS Direct, who told us to go to A & E. After waiting for hours, we finally persuaded the doctor to do a scan. Incredibly, we saw one heartbeat, and that was a huge relief. There was another sac, but it looked like a dark circle with nothing in it. The doctor said, ‘There’s one heartbeat, but it looks as if the other embryo didn’t make it.’

      That was the first time that the idea of twins had crossed either of our minds. I actually felt a loss for the second twin, thinking that it had grown inside me for a few weeks. But, as Adam said, we should be very grateful for our one healthy heartbeat. My mum, who has a medical background, said it was probably a good thing that we’d ended up with one, as twins can be such a difficult pregnancy, and often one or both of the babies is sickly or they’re premature. Everyone put a positive spin on the situation but, for me, it was still bittersweet.

      Then, at our first official scan at the IVF clinic, at eight weeks, just as I was telling the doctor we’d only seen one heartbeat, she said, ‘Well, now you’ve got two’. I practically fell off the bed. She explained that the heartbeat comes between six and eight weeks of pregnancy, and the first scan was probably too early. We were shocked, but also delighted.

      Even though I was only a couple of months pregnant, my stomach was very big, so I told people at work that I had something wrong with my digestion (I’d had digestive problems in the past). It wasn’t until after the 12-week scan, when we found out that both babies were healthy, that we finally felt confident enough to share our news. But, at 15 weeks, I suddenly started bleeding again. I kept thinking: I don’t want to lose one, they come as a pair, but, despite feeling well, I could only assume we’d lost one or both babies, as there was so much blood.

      At A & E, after several examinations by different doctors, none of whom could find anything wrong with the pregnancy, it was discovered that I had a burst polyp — a little growth on my cervix — and that this was what had bled. The doctor was very kind and understanding and I’ll always remember him saying to me: ‘All babies are miracles, but IVF babies are real miracles.’

      For the rest of the pregnancy, I had scans every two or three weeks, which made me feel safe. Nathan and Dylan were born healthy, by C-section, exactly a month early (they did go into special care for two weeks because they couldn’t yet feed). After they were born, all thoughts of Clomid, IUI and IVF disappeared. It’s no longer relevant to me how the boys were conceived. All that matters is that we have two healthy, lovely children.

      Q: WERE YOU OFFERED ANY OTHER TREATMENTS FOR PCOS?

      After we decided to stop having IUI, I did see a consultant who recommended a procedure called ovarian drilling, where a surgeon makes holes in your ovaries in order to restart your cycle. I did consider it, even went on the waiting list, but it seemed very extreme. I thought of it as a last resort, if IVF didn’t work.

      Q: HOW ARE YOUR PCOS SYMPTOMS NOW?

      The boys were born in January and I was thin within a couple of months, but by June of that year, I had put on loads of weight again. I could also see that I was a little more hairy too. Even though metformin had suited me so well, and the doctors were happy for me to go back on it, I didn’t want to take it. I didn’t like the idea of being on medication for ever. And I didn’t think, with the babies, I’d remember to take it three times a day, in any case. I kept thinking: maybe the symptoms will calm down or I’ll eat less. When the twins were three, I decided to go back on metformin. It has made a difference – I’m definitely less hungry and I’m down to a size 10/12 again.

      Q: DID YOU TELL PEOPLE WHILE YOU WERE HAVING IVF?

      I was quite happy to tell some people about our fertility treatment, but not everyone. I worked up until twenty-nine weeks; one of my fi nal tasks was organising a celebrity event. Everyone there kept saying to me, ‘Oh my God, you’re massive,’ assuming I was about to drop there and then. So I had to explain it was a twin pregnancy, and the inevitable next question