preconception

In this chapter:

• What to do if you're trying to conceive. How to de-stress, improve your chances, and organize all your medical stuff.

• Some simple advice from GPs, gynaecologists and obstetricians to help you along the way.

• Embarking on the IVF journey. The costs, the risks and the emotional roller-coaster.

As working mums with lots of friends who have done the hard yards of years of conception attempts — some via IVF — we know this preconception time of your life can be really hard. There's a lot to be said about being as chilled out as you can, being informed, getting the best advice you can find, and treating your body well. But ultimately go with whatever works for you. Your body is amazing, so trust it and, hopefully, it will inevitably work it all out.

'Pregnancy is completely different for every single woman. For me, it was rather predictable, I was the pregnant woman they use in the text books. When the book told me things would happen, they did. Pregnant the regular way — off the pill, lots of sex (remember those days?), then bingo — excited and blossoming. We bought a bigger car, renovated the bathroom and bought everything in white to cover both contingencies. I was blessed with two happy, healthy, smooth pregnancies, calm natural deliveries and two healthy babies.

I tell you this not because I was special, because there were days when I felt like crap, times I was so tired I could fall over (in fact during pregnancy number two I did, and broke my arm), times I stressed, times when weight piled on. I tell you this because pregnancy doesn't always have to be scary for everyone. Some people struggle to get pregnant, others don't. Some get sick, others don't. Some hate pregnancy, others like me love it. I embraced every single moment, and every little hurdle — which is probably easy to say. But trust me, I give thanks every day as I genuinely know how lucky I am. – Mel

This time I was forty, but more relaxed about my body's ability to deal with pregnancy. She was an experiment in sex-selection — the idea being that you attempt to have a girl by conceiving four days before you ovulate. (To have a boy you try to conceive on the day you ovulate — the logic being that boy sperm swims fast but dies quickly and girl sperm swims slowly and lives longer!). We were successful and I now proudly tell anyone who cares to listen about this old wives' tale method. – Jo

'Abbi Stove, nurse, 34

When I turned thirty my husband and I started to try for a baby, went off the pill for twelve months, carefully documented my daily temperature and period cycle.

Due to a history of irregularity I went and saw a gynaecologist. The first thing he said was 'forget the temperature, you're just stressing yourselves out'. We walked out of his office, with me booked in for surgery and Andrew booked in for some sperm tests.

I had the clean out, holes drilled in the ovaries, endometriosis removed, and my tubes cleared. Andrew did his duty and produced the tests. So we went back to the doctor and discovered Andrew had a low sperm count and due to my polycystic ovaries our best chance of conception would be to try some fertility drugs and a process called Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), commonly know as artificial insemination. I started taking the required tablets and began to experience hot flushes.

It was then time for the trigger injection that would cause the follicles to release their eggs within twenty-four hours and then back in the doctor's office having Andrew's sperm introduced into my uterus. We attempted this twice with no success, our next step was In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) — Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). This is the process that you often see on television where they show a sperm being injected into an egg. This was rather scary so we started to Google like crazy and read up on everything we could. We talked to friends and found out they were doing the same thing, but were keeping it close to their chest (fear of failure is a huge issue). It was amazing how many people around us were doing IVF (we have since been informed that approximately forty-five per cent of couples will have trouble conceiving).

We took four weeks off the program over Christmas and started again in January. First I started on the tablets to bring on a period then a nasal spray to shut down my irregular cycle, then the morning needle in the belly to stimulate egg production, (an injection in the bum to prepare the eggs for release, an injection in the arm to put me to sleep, and finally a huge needle to harvest the eggs). Anyway, we ended up being pregnant first go. This was amazing. We had done it. Nine weeks later our world came crashing down when the pregnancy came to an abrupt end. We now understood the emotional roller-coaster that people warned us about — from total happiness to...