What I wish I’d known...

When we started fertility treatment, I thought I would be pregnant within a couple of months. I never expected it to take six years, multiple IVF transfers, miscarriages, and finally gestational surrogacy.

Thanks to IVF and gestational surrogacy, we have a beautiful two year old son. But reflecting back, there’s many things I wish I had known before starting fertility treatment.

For anyone who’s embarking on IVF, here’s what I wish I had known:

• It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I assumed that IVF would guarantee a baby, and the first transfer would work. But sadly, for many people, it takes multiple transfers. I think if you go into IVF with those expectations in mind, it will make it a bit easier if it doesn’t work right away.

• It’s a waiting game. There’s lots of waiting when you’re in the throes of fertility treatment, whether it’s waiting for an appointment, waiting to get started, or the Two Week Wait. The waiting can be incredibly hard. I found it useful to distract myself and do things that made me happy while I waited. Often that meant going for a long walk, catching up with friends, having a massage or binging a reality tv series!

• Self-care is crucial! There’s no sugar coating it, infertility is freaking hard. It’s an emotional roller coaster. It can be emotionally, physically, and mentally draining so be kind to yourself and put yourself first, whether that means saying no to certain things (i.e., baby showers!) or doing something just for you.

The medication side effects can also be awful. Everyone is different so you may not have any side effects, or you may experience a truck load. If you fall in the later, self-care is so important.

• Be your own advocate. It took me a while to advocate for myself but once I did, it was invaluable. Come to your appointments prepared with questions, do your research, talk to others going through treatment and get a second or even third opinion if you feel you need it.

• Some people will get it, others won’t. I was surprised how many people – who weren’t medical specialists – had an opinion. You’ll probably get all kinds of advice from “you just need to relax” or “it will happen when you stop trying”. While it’s made traction in recent years, I think we still have a way to go until infertility is understood and accepted as a reproductive disease. It affects 1 in 6 couples worldwide - “Just relax” is not a medical cure.

• Speak to someone about what you’re going through, especially someone who is going through the same thing. It can make all the difference and help you feel less alone. The online TTC community is also so supportive so lean on them when you need to.

Infertility can be brutal, raw, and often lonely. It’s frequently misunderstood. But for anyone struggling with infertility, you are not alone. There’s many of us out there. Find those people. Talk to them. Lean on them. Surround yourself with love and support. Don’t suffer in silence.

My surrogacy journey

The day we met our beautiful surrogate Leigha, she sent me an illustration of a joey in a kangaroo’s pouch and the words: Ryan and Kirsten. I hope I can take some weight off your shoulders and bring you some joy in the years to come. I would be ‘honoured’ to carry your joey.

It had been a long road to get here so I can’t begin to describe the happiness we felt reading those words.

But why did we pursue international surrogacy rather than domestic? Ninety-two per cent of surrogate babies are born overseas and only eight per cent are born in Australia. Why? Australia has extremely tight surrogacy laws (State laws), with the penalty ranging from fines to imprisonment with commercial surrogacy. This leaves altruistic surrogacy, but the approvals process is usually long and arduous. There are also no surrogacy agencies and it’s illegal to advertise so it can take years to find someone.

When we met with Rocky Mountain Surrogacy (Idaho, USA), within minutes it felt like a chat with an old friend. A boutique agency, I could tell right away the owner Tess was personally invested with all her surrogates and intended parent(s).

Through Tess, we met Leigha.

On Skype, we formed an instant bond with our beautiful surrogate Leigha and her husband Josh.

We then met on Skype with Dr Russell Foulk from The Utah Fertility Center and we were immediately impressed. We found him extremely knowledgeable and you could tell Dr Foulk and our nurse Tonya were determined to give us the baby we so desperately wanted.

Leigha was confident. With two boys of her own and a surrogate baby she had carried previously for a couple from Spain, she was optimistic. I, on the other hand, was petrified of another failure. It felt like the US was our last dance.

Our first transfer with Leigha sadly failed.

Three months after our first attempt, we geared up for transfer number two.

Results day. It was early when Ryan got the call, around 5:30 am. Vigorously shaking my shoulders, he woke me up to tell me we were pregnant. We were ecstatic. We Skyped Leigha and Josh right away and they were just as happy.

As soon as we got off the call though, I had a pit in my stomach. I reminded myself it was early days. A lot could still go wrong.

During week seven, we flew to Hong Kong for a mini break. But it meant our first scan was mid-way through our holiday.

With the time difference, the scan was at 3:00 am. That night, I told Ryan I was too scared to Skype in. I thought back to a previous missed miscarriage we’d had, and I didn’t think I go through it again. So, we decided Ryan would take the call in the hotel lobby.

The first text I received from Ryan at 3:00 am was: “They’re running behind with ultrasounds, she’s still waiting.” Ten minutes later, and riddled with anxiety, a follow up text, “She’s going in now”. And two minutes later: “Strong heartbeat, everything looks perfect”.

I jumped on the call and listened to the magical sound of our baby’s strong heartbeat, happiness consuming me.

Our 10-week scan was again at 3.00 am (our time). Given everything had been tracking along so well and Leigha’s hormone levels were high, we decided not to Skype in. Josh would video the scan and we would call them once we woke up.

I woke up at 6:00 am and checked my phone. No messages. With a ball of anxiety aching in my stomach, I checked Ryan’s phone. There was a message on his home screen from Josh: “I’m so sorry but we’ve lost the baby…”.

Words screamed in my head: No!!!Not again!! Please God, don’t let this happen again. We were so close this time. I beg you, please let this be a mistake. But even though I never read Josh’s full message, I knew it was over.

At the 10-week scan, our baby had already passed. Dr Foulk estimated our baby had died around nine weeks. We were shattered. It was gut wrenching for all of us.

Our obstetrician, Dr Jensen, later told us Leigha is the only person he’s ever known to have been crying so hard while the general anaesthetic was taking effect. He had tightly held her hand at the start of the D&C and right up to the second before she fell asleep, she was sobbing.

The hardest part of international surrogacy is when something like this happens. All we wanted to do was see her and Josh in person and all comfort each other. But we couldn’t.

At this point I resigned myself to think we would never have a child. I wanted to scream and cry and be done with the whole thing. With every set back, I had faith. But this time the fight had vanished. I was struggling to move past the fact that we were here again.

I’ll admit I went into our final transfer half-heartedly. I wanted it to work but my thinking had shifted: It won’t work and if by some miracle it does, then it will be a dream come true. But don’t expect it to work as it probably won’t. I didn’t mean to sound pessimistic, but I had to protect myself. I didn’t know how much more hurt I could withstand.

Leigha felt anxious but she defiantly charged into the final transfer giving it her all. It reminded me of a quote from Attius Finch from one of my favourite books ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’: “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what”.

On 25 October 2018 we did our final transfer, our last hurrah.

Results day. With our nurse Tonya away that day, we had been told another nurse would contact Leigha. When I woke up, there was no news.

To distract myself, I checked my emails. There it was. An email from one of the nurses had been sitting there for hours with the subject line ‘GC Update’. We had never expected an email, so I hadn’t thought to check. The email simply said: “Hello Kirsten. We received Leigha’s results and they came back positive!!! Her HcG is 297! This is a wonderful start!!!”.

It was indeed a wonderful start.

At eight weeks pregnant, we had our first scan. Similar to our last pregnancy, everything looked perfect and the heartbeat was strong. But there it was, what had caused our last miscarriage, a Subchronic haematoma.

The sonographer noticed our uneasiness and told us unlike last time, it was tiny and nowhere near the placenta. It would most likely resolve itself in time. We had to trust that everything would be ok.

After our miscarriage, we had booked a Christmas holiday to Europe, something to look forward to. But our 12-week scan was the night we flew out. About a 22-hour flight, the scan was 12 hours into our flight.

As soon as we landed, I grabbed the sick bag while Ryan anxiously turned on his phone. Straight away his home screen filled with an ultrasound photo and the words: “Your baby is perfect”. We both burst into tears. Truth be told, we actually jumped up and down, squealed and hugged each other. Our fellow passengers looked at us like we were nuts. But we didn’t care. We were so incredibly happy. I had also never felt so energised after such a long flight.

The next few months flew by and before we knew it, it was time to head to Utah. We left Melbourne on a rainy Winter’s day and arrived in Utah on a beautiful summer’s evening.

We pulled up to Leigha and Josh’s house around midnight. The second I caught a glimpse of Leigha’s warm infectious smile, I turned to mush and was a babbling mess. We hugged each other so tightly, both crying.

Two of the most genuine and decent people you will ever meet, Leigha and Josh made us feel so welcome. For the next few weeks, their home was our home. That night I also got to feel some kicks. Throughout our pregnancy, Leigha sent me boxing emojis. Feeling her belly, I finally understood why. She joked that he had kicked her so hard once, she was scared he may have broken her ribs. Although once I felt him karate kick for myself, I wasn’t sure she was joking.

We were due to be induced at 7:00 pm on 5 July 2019. But nothing goes according to plan. At around 2:30 am on 5 July, half asleep I stumbled out to see Leigha leaning on the wall trying to hold herself up, crouched over and moaning. It was time.

We had been through this scenario a million times but even still, Ryan and I both froze. I remember asking Ryan if I had time to have a quick shower. I’ll never forget the ‘you’ve got to be kidding me?’ look he gave me. No, there wasn’t time.

For the next few hours, Leigha had contractions but suddenly they slowed down. This threw us. We had two choices – stay at the hospital and get her induced or go back home and wait until the evening. Of course, we decided to induce.

Once Leigha was induced, everything happened quickly. Her contractions came on hard and fast. Being a pro, she handled them exceptionally well. Witnessing it firsthand and up close, I’m in awe of anyone who gives birth. The tenacity and strength women have during childbirth is simply incredible. And I must admit, I now get the joke about how if men could give birth, there would be hardly any children born.

It wasn’t long before Dr Jensen was asking Leigha to do some final pushes and saying he could see the head. Ryan, Mum and I couldn’t stop balling. Thank goodness for the person who invented waterproof mascara. And then we heard him cry. His first beautiful cry. Spencer was here.

After six years, our long-awaited darling son was finally here. Our eyes flooded with tears, Ryan and I stumbled over and held Spencer’s tiny hand. In that moment, we knew it had all been worth it.

Shortly later, the midwife ushered us into our adjoining room so that Dr Jensen could check Leigha and we could feed Spencer. A few moments later, it was pandemonium. We saw an Emergency team rush into Leigha’s room. Ryan quickly followed but was told to wait outside as Leigha had started to bleed out.

With Spencer resting quietly in my arms, I prayed she would be okay.

Dr Jensen calmly took charge and stopped the bleeding. Leigha was okay, but she did lose more than 1.5 litres of blood. In the days that followed, she also experienced Postpartum Preeclampsia, a rare condition that causes high blood pressure and if left untreated, cause seizures or other serious complications. For Leigha, it was causing painful headaches, swelling, and dizziness.

It was another reminder of the extraordinary gift Leigha had given us. She had risked her life for us, for Spencer.

It may have taken us six years, but the day Spencer was born, most of the heartbreak and grief melted away. I had heard this from a friend who had battled infertility. That the day you have your baby safely resting in your arms, so much of the pain goes away. While I was sceptical, the mere thought of this was always a warm comfort. And she was right. The bubble did finally burst.

It was a long and often difficult journey but by the end we had our beautiful son Spencer. So I would do it all again.

Our Journey

On 5 July 2019 at 11.49 am, our beautiful son Spencer John Wilson was born through surrogacy. It had been a long journey and like most things worth fighting for, it had been a hard one.

I once counted how many times I had injected myself with artificial hormones: 700 times. And that was the easiest part. The injections didn’t come close to the heartache and unrelenting disappointment that followed.

By the end we had sixteen failed IVF transfers; four failed IUI transfers; seven egg retrievals; three miscarriages; and two international surrogacy experiences.

But we now have our beautiful son Spencer. So I would do it all again.

My husband Ryan and I married in 2011 and we always wanted a family. Being in our early thirties then, we naively thought it would be easy. But after a year of failed pregnancy tests, we knew something wasn’t right.

And so, our infertility journey began.

After failed Clomid and IUI cycles, we started IVF. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”, one friend warned me early on. How right she was.

For me, IVF was a roller coaster of emotions. Some weeks I felt despair, anger, and guilt - Why can’t I do the one thing women are supposed to be able to do? Other weeks, I was optimistic and full of adrenalin. Those contrasting emotions, for years, were mentally and physically exhausting.

It was hard to know who to confide in. At first, we only told a handful of close friends and family. But it was difficult to hide something which consumed our life. And then it dawned on me, Why on earth should we hide it? Whenever a friend has an illness, they often share their news. They rely on their friends and family for love and support.

The World Health Organisation defines infertility as, “A disease of the reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse”. A disease! Yet we hide it?

Once people knew outside our close family and friendship circle, the insensitive comments started to emerge. People were either uncomfortable or impervious. They just didn’t get it. In a misguided way, they were trying to help. Sometimes I would challenge people with the medical facts. Other times, I stayed silent. If there is one big thing I regret, it’s the times I stayed silent.

After several failed and cancelled IVF cycles and also a ‘Pregnancy of an Unknown Location’, the issue became clear. As one specialist put it, “You need healthy and thick soil for a plant to grow”. My endometrium lining was too thin to fall pregnant or carry a pregnancy.

We changed to a specialist in implantation issues. At our first appointment he hit us with the hard truth, “Only approximately five per cent of women have thin linings and we rarely know the cause”. He then told us surrogacy was our best chance of success. We didn’t know too much about surrogacy then, but it seemed overwhelming. And in my heart, I wasn’t ready to give up on being pregnant.

Accepting our decision, he made another suggestion: a stem cell procedure (day surgery) to help invigorate my blood flow and nourish my lining. It ‘somewhat’ worked. My lining slightly increased and while below the average measurement, we pushed ahead.

I had received the brunt of bad news phone calls, so Ryan took this one. I got Ryan’s text when I was at work, “We’re pregnant!!! Call me as soon as you get this!!!!”. The high was enormous.

For the next 24 hours, Ryan and I celebrated. We talked about our due date, the hospital where I would give birth etc. But the exhilaration was quickly followed by perpetual anxiety. We were petrified of something going wrong.

We had our first scan at 7.5 weeks. I’ll never forget the look on the nurse’s face: deadpan, not a shred of emotion. She told us the baby was measuring too small and its heartbeat was too slow.

On the drive home I felt numb. Not sad, not angry, just numb. My mind was grappling with what had happened, trying to make sense of it. We had had a ‘missed miscarriage’, which is why I hadn’t had any bleeding or cramping.

Later that week, we had a follow up scan. Silence. There was no longer a heartbeat. The nurse then told us I could let my body expel the baby naturally, which could happen any day or take a few weeks, or have a D&C. We chose a D&C.

Shortly after the miscarriage, our specialist called with the biopsy results. We had transferred a PGS embryo (Pre-Genetic Screening) so it wasn’t a surprise when he said the baby (a girl) was genetically normal and perfect.

But it was then that I knew for sure. It wasn’t the embryos that were the problem. It was the carrier. It was me.

We tried IVF one last time. Another crushing failed cycle. We decided to give surrogacy a go.

We started surrogacy in Canada with Julie, a selfless woman who simply wanted to help us. We flew from Melbourne to Toronto for the transfer. A long flight (18 hours) but we were eager to meet Julie in person.

What happened next still haunts me.

We arrived at the clinic where Julie was already waiting. Having a half full bladder for the transfer, she prayed we would be called up next. As if hearing her bathroom cries, a nurse miraculously appeared and asked if Ryan and I could go to the back area to meet our specialist.

He came into his office, slowly sat down behind his desk and with a grave face he told us the container of embryos we had transported over was empty.

That one word screamed in my head: Empty.

With a pounding heart and almost breathless, I kept asking him the same questions over and over, “What do you mean by empty? Who can we call?”. I remember the pity in his eyes, the sadness in his voice. No, we couldn’t call anyone. There was no one to call. They had opened the container to start the thaw process, only to discover there were no embryos inside.

The embryos were gone. And any chance of having a baby was gone as well.

Throughout our infertility journey, this was undoubtedly my lowest point. There is always something about the unexpected that can be impossible to understand. Transporting embryos is standard practice so what happened was extremely rare. Our lawyers and fertility clinics in Melbourne and Toronto had never heard of this ever happening.

We then faced a critical choice: keep going or stop. We decided to keep going. We pushed ahead with three surrogacy transfers in Canada. All failed. With heavy hearts, we knew it was time to move on.

Scarred with Canada, we pursued surrogacy in the United States, our last hurrah.

Through Skype, we had an instant bond with our beautiful US surrogate Leigha and her husband Josh.

I will always be in awe of how someone can do surrogacy. How someone who doesn’t even know you, hears your story and feels compelled to help you. How they are willing to go through fertility treatment, pregnancy and then birth to help give you the greatest gift of all, a child.

Our first transfer sadly failed. But our US specialist had some good insights and the second transfer was a success. We were ecstatic.

With excited anticipation, we heard the heartbeat at our eight-week scan, and we all felt at peace. For the next two weeks, we drifted by in a blissful fog.

Two of the most genuine and decent people you will ever meet, on a call one night, Leigha and Josh invited us to stay at their home in Gunnison, Utah for the birth. We were humbled by their generosity and we couldn’t think of a better place to stay.

Our 10-week scan was at 3.00 am. Given everything had been tracking along so well and Leigha’s hormone levels were high, we decided not to Skype in. Josh would video the scan and we would call them once we woke up.

I woke up at 6:00 am that morning and checked my phone. No messages. With a ball of anxiety aching in my stomach, I checked Ryan’s phone. There was a message on his home screen from Josh, “I’m so sorry but we’ve lost the baby…”.

At the 10-week scan, our baby had already passed. We were shattered. It was gut wrenching for all of us.

Our obstetrician later told us Leigha is the only person he’s ever known to have been crying so hard while the general anaesthetic was taking effect. He had tightly held her hand at the start of the D&C and right up to the second before she fell asleep, she was sobbing.

At this point I resigned myself to think we would never have a child. I wanted to scream and cry and be done with the whole thing. With every set back, I had faith. I was determined to fight. But this time the fight had vanished. I felt defeated. I was struggling to move past the fact that we were here again.

But we had a handful of good embryos left and Leigha was willing to try again. She was determined to see this through. I also knew Ryan desperately wanted to have one final try. He reiterated everything our specialist had said to us about what had caused the miscarriage - it was rare and highly unlikely to happen again. He convinced me to try one last time.

Nine months later, our beautiful son Spencer was born.

Michael Jordan once famously said his late father taught him to always, “Take a negative and turn it into a positive”. I think MJ is onto something.

And the greatest positive? Spencer of course. And the immense gratitude and love we have for him.

For the first six months of his life, not a day went by when I didn’t cry every morning when I picked him up out of his cot. Overwhelmed with emotion, the tears always fell. The poor kid probably didn’t know what to think as I saturated him with my salty tears. But I couldn’t believe that he was actually here. That he was ours. That we had finally been blessed with a child. Our own little miracle.

Infertility can be brutal, raw, and often lonely. It’s frequently misunderstood. But for anyone struggling with infertility, you are not alone. I know I felt that way. But there are many of us out there. Find those people. Talk to them. Lean on them. Surround yourself with love and support. Don’t suffer in silence.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Jimmy Fallon, “Just hang in there, try every avenue, try anything you can do, ’cause you’ll get there. You’ll end up with a family and it’s so worth it. It is the most ‘worth it’ thing.”