Hayley’s Infertility Story
“Until that morning, I’d never heard of missed miscarriage, and I still feel it’s something that’s rarely talked about”
Like so many others, Hayley was prescribed the pill in her mid-teens. When she was 25, Hayley went to the hospital with suspected appendicitis. This was ruled out, but, because there was still some inflammation, she had a CT scan. The doctor told her that what was causing the pain wasn’t serious and would pass, but also, almost like a throw-away comment, mentioned she had noticed some cysts on her ovaries during the scan. ’What does that mean?’ Hayley asked the doctor. ‘Well, it might be a problem if you’re trying to have children in the future, you’ll just have to wait and see.’ She was surprised at how casual the doctor had been when delivering this frightening news, but as she wasn’t ready to have children at the time, she pushed this to the back of her mind.
Two years later, Hayley was in a serious car accident and her doctors told her to stop taking the pill because she was now at a higher risk of blood clots. When her period didn’t return at all for six months, Hayley, who knew she wanted to become a mum one day, started to worry. She went to the GP and they told her that it could be the trauma of the accident, or that it may just take a while for her period to return after taking the pill for 12 years.
Getting a diagnosis
A year after coming off the pill Hayley and her partner decided they were ready to start a family. But as there’d been no sign of her periods returning, she went back to her GP and asked for tests. ‘Thin hair had also always been an issue for me, and I had acne that flared up as soon as I stopped taking the pill, like, really bad, all focused around my chin, back, shoulders, and groin which made it uncomfortable to sit down.’ She knew her twin sister had suffered heavy periods and that her Mum had taken Clomid to help conceive, so she suspected something was wrong. ‘After blood tests to check various hormone levels, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).’
Hayley was told that her symptoms may improve and her period may return if she lost weight, and that if she got her BMI down to 35, she could be prescribed Clomid. She researched PCOS and tried to change her diet according to the information she found online. She attended weight loss fertility classes, tried mindful eating, got a personal trainer, and tried to exercise more, but constant sugar cravings made it incredibly difficult to shift her weight. After managing to lose a small amount of weight, her period did return, but it was still irregular. As a last resort, and to become potentially eligible for fertility treatment, she was prescribed Saxenda injections. This didn’t feel like the healthiest choice to Hayley – but after a while, she started to notice her period became more regular.
Asking for fertility tests
For the next three years, Hayley and her husband tried to conceive naturally, but with a “chemical pregnancy” result being the closest they’d come to a successful pregnancy, they began to look into fertility treatment. They both went to the GP and asked for fertility tests.
’One of the tests - the HyCoSy was incredibly painful for me, more painful than when I broke my femur. I took some paracetamol and that was it. I was really angry for a long time after that, to be honest, I was like, that’s barbaric. It’s so ridiculous that women undergo that and then they say oh well, some women don’t have any pain at all. It makes you think – is this just me? Am I weak?’
The results came back as : No obvious cause for fertility issues.
The doctor told Hayley and her husband they could start fertility treatment on the NHS if she could get her BMI down to 30, but given how she’d struggled in the past to reduce her BMI, she felt this was almost impossible. They decided to save up in order to go private, where she’d be able to start treatment without having to lose as much weight. The care facility they chose recommended they’d go straight for IVF, instead of trying some of the less invasive treatments first, such as IUI, as they didn’t think those would be successful, given how long they had been trying for.
Getting IVF
As a scientist, Hayley had always focused on statistics and science, to help her process her entire journey. She knew that IVF was a good option for PCOS, so she felt hopeful.
Once they had saved up enough, they paid for three full cycles upfront as a package, which they were eligible for due to Hayley’s age. Although expensive, this would save them money in the long run. After the first egg retrieval, fertilisation, and transfer – the anxious wait began.
During this time, Hayley only took a couple of days off work to recover, as she wanted to keep busy, as a distraction. After the two-week wait, they set up a camera and recorded the reading of the pregnancy test… Pregnant! ‘We were relieved and pleased, but we weren’t like over the moon and jumping for joy. I think over the past six years we’d just taken so many pregnancy tests and they’d always been negative so we almost couldn’t believe it.’ Looking back, this wasn’t the reaction she’d expected, and she feels as if they should have been happier, but their thoughts quickly turned to: anything can happen – let’s just reach the next milestone and get to the six-week scan now.
After telling friends and family: ‘good news so far’, they reached the six-week scan and were relieved to find everything was as expected. They gave their family and friends the same update again and looked forward to the next milestone – the 12-week scan.
A missed miscarriage
After feeling almost relieved to experience the common pregnancy symptoms of feeling poorly and nausea, at ten weeks Hayley started to experience some bleeding. Immediately expecting the worst, she started researching possible causes on the Miscarriage Association’s website, and learned that some bleeding is quite common in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. But when she started to bleed more, she contacted the early pregnancy unit who asked her to come in for a scan. The scan showed a tiny embryo – not the size of a ten-week embryo. They were told the devastating news – she had experienced a ‘missed miscarriage’ and the embryo likely stopped developing shortly after the six-week scan.
‘They left us to have some time alone after receiving the news. We then had to go to see other staff members and that was hard. There was a lot of information and decisions to be made on how to remove our embryo and pregnancy tissues – for which we had four options, and although they were so nice about it and we knew it had to happen, it just seemed wrong that this all happened so quickly, when emotions were so high. We went home and tried to process what had happened, but also decide what to do next.’
Hayley wanted her family to know straight away, as they were also anxious to hear, but she didn’t want to have to tell them one by one and have to face their emotions when she was grappling with her own. She and her husband contacted her sister, and sister-in-law with the news and asked that they tell their respective families. Her mum and sister came round that evening. Later that night when she began to pass very large clots, which scared her, she was grateful for the support. She continued to scour the Miscarriage Association website for advice to try and make sense of what had happened. ‘Until that morning, I’d never heard of missed miscarriage, and I still feel it’s something that’s rarely talked about.’
The next day she called the early pregnancy unit and asked to come in to have a manual vacuum aspiration under local anaesthetic. She remembers the process as both physically and emotionally painful and looking back, she wishes she had asked for gas and air sooner, or possibly general anaesthetic due to the physical pain.
After the procedure was over she was given forms to complete – one form in particular, about cremation of the pregnancy tissues, startled her: ‘I completely get that they have to get your consent for this, but it just took me completely by surprise. I think I just found it confusing because I had just had this procedure and was in a lot of pain, so I was expecting the form to be about aftercare, or similar, but instead, I had to think about cremation and give consent for this. They also told us about a joint service held locally for parents who have lost babies during pregnancy, and although it is really respectful, we decided against this, as we didn’t feel it was the best option for us with us being so early on in pregnancy.’
It is now months later, and Hayley is keen to begin her next cycle of IVF. Although her experience so far has been incredibly painful – both emotionally and physically at times, she remains positive. The fact that the first cycle resulted in a pregnancy, makes her hopeful that her next cycle may work. Choosing IVF also feels like a positive for her relationship overall. Now control over their fertility is out of both of their hands and even though the procedures can be intense, at least they no longer have to schedule their lives around the results of an ovulation stick every month.
Hayley feels incredibly fortunate that both she and her husband have a great support network in the form of family, friends and colleagues, and her advice to others going through their fertility journey is to not go at it ‘alone’. ‘I’m glad to be able to share my story because I hope that it helps others – there’s got to be some good to come out of this.’
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