Liz Ellis - If At First You Dont Conceive

About If At First You Don't Conceive

Your medical, emotional and financial guide to: Causes of and coping with infertility | Low-tech fertility treatment | IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies | Complementary therapies | Donor conception | Surrogacy | Miscarriage

Former Australian Netball Captain Liz Ellis found herself part of the one-in-six couples in Australia and New Zealand affected by infertility, a road she stayed on for five years. With If At First You Don't Conceive Liz wants to help other hopeful parents-to-be navigate these often bewildering, almost always uncomfortable and sometimes utterly devastating waters.

Drawing on interviews with specialists and couples, and covering everything medical from alternative therapies, fertility drugs, IVF, donor eggs and miscarriages to the frustration, disappointment and heartbreak that such a journey brings, this book is a must-have, friendly, and more often than not funny guide on how to try, and try again.

To Matthew. I still cant believe we are parents.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.

Dorothy Parker

The same can be said for fertility.

Let me start with a confession. Until I was in my mid (okay, lateish) thirties, I never wanted to have children. Sure I always enjoyed coaching other peoples children at netball clinics, and I loved my nieces and nephews, but the thought of having my own left me lukewarm at best. It was as if my biological clock had fallen out of my pocket during some wild post-game celebration and I was less interested in recovering it than I was in figuring out how Id managed to spend so much on expensive champagne the night before.

I knew that other people people I thought were otherwise reasonable, rational human beings loved having children, so there must be something good about them. Even so, I enjoyed my carefree existence with my husband, which included travel, great restaurants and nice wine, and for a long time I wasnt interested in swapping that for what Id heard about the downside of parenthood: sleepless nights, vomit, sleepless nights, tantrums and more sleepless nights (and thats just the teenage years).

So when we decided to give the whole children thing a bit of a go after too many sangrias on a holiday to Spain (yes, Barcelona, Im looking at you), I wasnt convinced that my life would be better with rug rats.

Yet despite my misgivings (or perhaps because of them) I fell pregnant with my first child in 2010 at the tender age of thirty-seven. The moment I gave birth I understood how addictive babies can be. For me it was like a love affair, and I couldnt wait to have another... and maybe another and another! Which is weird given that babies tend to trash the joint on the way out, regardless of which exit they use.

I assumed that I was still hideously fertile and it was just a matter of saddling up again in order to give my daughter a sibling. Initially that seemed to be the case, and I fell pregnant again when Evelyn was eight months old. Even after I miscarried I was certain that after a couple of months to recover I would soon be up the duff and on my way to baby number two. After six months of trying I started to think that something was amiss, and maybe we needed to investigate.

So began my long engagement with infertility and all of its causes, complications and alleged cures, from the comically anecdotal to the highly scientific. There is a multimillion dollar fertility industry out there, as evidenced by the 67 million results when you Google fertility industry and 36 million results when you Google infertility. Good luck navigating it when you have the irresistible urge to HAVE. A. BABY. NOW!

I found myself hurtling down the infertility highway without a GPS. The road signs were confusing if they were there at all, most of the distance markers were missing and the exits were not clearly marked. Worst of all, it felt like I was taking the whole trip in a clapped-out Datsun 120Y that up until then had purred along like a Maserati.

If At First You Dont Conceive was borne out of a desire to share some of the insights and knowledge I gained from a five-year struggle with secondary infertility which included alternative therapies, fertility drugs, IVF, donor eggs and more miscarriages. Not to mention the frustration, disappointment and heartbreak that such a journey brings.

Eventually I did get my much-longed-for second child. We had given up IVF after five rounds, and were in the process of going through the donor egg process with my sister when she pointed out that my period was late and perhaps I should do a pregnancy test. When I saw the two pink lines I was at once ecstatic, overcome by anxiety, convinced that this pregnancy would go the same way as the previous three and not last the distance, and annoyed that suddenly, out of the blue, my body had decided to DO WHAT IT BLOODY WELL SHOULD HAVE DONE ALL ALONG.

When I look back at that time, what stands out for me is that it was lonely and confusing and there was very little in the way of information about what would come next. Which is weird, because the number of people struggling with infertility is huge.

Should you be regarded as infertile, you are joined by many thousands of others in the same predicament. In fact one in six couples in Australia and New Zealand is affected by infertility. So the good news is that you are not alone. The bad news is that because each journey is different its easy to feel like you are the mayor of Alonetown, population 1. It can also seem that everywhere you look you are being taunted with the bulging, fecund bellies of happy beaming women. Either that or the soft faces of angelic, adorable newborns whose very existence, while miraculous and beautiful, are a painful reminder that you cant seem to make a baby of your own.

Throughout my infertility journey I was fortunate to have lots of beautiful people who were willing to lend a shoulder, an ear or a big bear hug, yet I still felt isolated. If nothing else I hope that this book helps you understand that while your journey through infertility is yours alone, there are any number of people who have had similar experiences and one way or another have come out the other side.

I should say upfront that I am not a healthcare professional, so you absolutely must seek your own medical advice that is specific to your circumstances before making any decisions. Ive done some reading of medical literature in my research, but generally Ive sought knowledge from experts who work in the field, and wisdom from people who have experienced infertility first-hand. I should also point out that this book is not meant to be a critical investigation of the fertility industry, or an endorsement of any particular way of trying to fall pregnant. It is simply a guide to help you understand the processes you may go through so that you can make the most of the options available.

Terminology-wise, I have avoided using the term IVF clinics and instead chosen to use fertility clinics. This might seem odd, because many such clinics include IVF in their title, or refer to themselves as IVF clinics, but I have done it deliberately to get you to think about them as somewhere you go to get fertility treatment in all of its forms, and not just IVF, which is only a small and expensive part of fertility treatment.