TRYING, FAILING, HEALING

After a handful of failed IVF treatments, Sophie Sulehria and her husband Jonny set themselves a deadline of her 35th birthday. Here, she reveals what happened when that day finally came

One woman’s journey through IVF

Inever thought I would be lucky enough to meet someone I truly loved at 27. Yet when Jonny and I got together during my internship at LBC Radio, it was easy to imagine our future together: marriage, buying our first home, having a baby. I thought it would all be so wonderful, so easy.

But it wasn’t. In 2013, now married, we’d been trying for a baby for six months when I was diagnosed with stage four endometriosis, a condition that means some of the cells in my body were behaving like the lining of the womb and sticking to my organs, like an obstacle course for my eggs. “You’re going to need surgery,” the doctor said.

It was after this surgery that we were told it would be almost impossible to have children naturally. The doctor’s words didn’t hit me, but Jonny felt them – in fact, he collapsed into a chair and the doctor brought him water. I watched him thinking, “Why is he so upset?” I thought it would all be okay.

But it was about to get worse. A blood test revealed my egg count was devastatingly low. I was also suffering from undiagnosed premature ovarian failure, which meant I was in my early thirties and had the egg count of someone twice my age. We decided to move quickly and started our first round of IVF treatment that month.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to accurately convey what it’s like to go through a cycle of IVF.

The truth is, I don’t think it’s entirely possible to put it into words, except to say it’s like constantly standing on the edge of a mountain – life feels very fragile – and some days you want to jump off.

After a fortnight of drugs, scans and anxiety, they collected one egg, which fertilised perfectly. “That’s your baby,” the doctor said as she put the tiny embryo back into my body. As we waited the compulsory two weeks until test day, I looked endlessly at a photo we’d taken of the little embryo and was sure it had worked. I could feel it.

I was wrong. The test was negative. As we started saving every penny we had and guiltily accepting money from family for the next round, suddenly I knew what the term “biological clock” meant. I felt like I was running out of time. What followed was three more years of hell, and with each new cycle, the news was more devastating than the last.

The process destroyed me. I had formed my own little bubble of pain, and I was blocking everyone else out of it. I noticed myself becoming someone I didn’t recognise any more, either shouting at my family or pushing them away. And Jonny and I had stopped living. We used to be spontaneous, now I barely wanted to get out of bed, let alone do anything else. I was utterly consumed with being a mum and it seemed that everywhere I turned people were pregnant. By this point our family and friends all knew what we were going through which, in turn, almost made things harder. We would take them on our IVF journey by excitedly sharing the great news (“We have five follicles growing!” or “Two eggs collected!”) and the worst news, too, which was far more common. Watching our loved ones experience the pain we were going though broke our hearts. If Jonny had his way he wouldn’t have told anyone, but I couldn’t live like that. I am too close to my family – I couldn’t keep it from them.

During all this Jonny revealed the toll it was having on him. My phenomenal husband, who had the ability to fix everything, couldn’t fix this. Most days he’d look at me terrified, fearful of the future, of what to suggest.

After round three, as we parked outside our house one night, Jonny told me, “I think we should stop treatment.” I was beyond devastated. I felt like he was giving up on my eggs, on our biological child. We sat there in the cold into the early hours of the morning. I didn’t realise I could cry so much or so hard. Eventually, we decided that while I wasn’t ready to give up on my eggs yet, we had to put a deadline on them; we couldn’t spend our whole lives living like this. And so we chose my 35th birthday. It was a decision I made reluctantly, and with a heavy heart. To be honest, I would never have been ready to give up on my eggs, on my baby, but I had to choose a date, for the sake of my marriage.

With only a year left, we began to tackle IVF like a military operation: Round four – no eggs. Try again. Round five – no eggs. Try again.

Round six began two months before my 35th birthday. I went into our final shot clear and optimistic, even when we found out only one of my eggs had fertilised. “It only takes one,” I thought, as they put it back inside. We went home, slowly, so the little embryo wouldn’t fall out.

When the wait was over, I hovered over the white stick, shaking. I could barely put the lid back on. Yet again, it was negative.

I was numb, Jonny was devastated. It was in that moment I realised the promise I had made; we had a deadline. In two weeks I would be 35... it was over. I felt sick. I had to try and convince Jonny to change his mind and give it one more shot. We flew to a wedding in Spain that day, consumed by grief as we boarded the plane. Privately, I formed a plan – during the holiday I would broach the subject: “One last round,” I planned to say.

The next day we watched our friends marry, full of hope on their big day, and I reflected on our own wedding, when the world seemed so full of opportunity.

The thought didn’t fill me with sadness; it actually made me realise that we’d spent more of our relationship fighting the fertility war than we hadn’t. And while we hadn’t yet won, the battle had made us stronger. Many couples split up while going through fertility issues – I wasn’t going to let us become a negative statistic. And I decided not to suggest another round after all. It was time to put it to bed.

On the morning of my 35th birthday, Jonny and I spent the day together in the sunshine. We were going to have a nice day. No tears. Yes, we admitted it would be hard to move on – you can’t go through four years of IVF and just brush it all aside – but we promised to try. After all, we had married each other to be happy. And while we didn’t have the happy ending we envisaged, I knew that I owed it to him, my best friend, the man that I married, to be content with the deadline we had set for now. We needed some time to rediscover life together, without needles, appointments, circular thinking and anxiety. We decided to take the time to work out what to do next, and also to focus on enjoying being together.

Along the way on this journey, we’ve met wonderful people who, despite the adversity they’ve faced, have moved forward and found alternatives: donor eggs, adoption, fostering, involuntary childlessness. They’ve all chosen their paths and are happy now. It’s no longer their Plan B, but the Plan A they hadn’t realised was waiting for them.

I have absolutely no idea where this journey of exploring our options will lead us, or what stage we will be at by the time you read these words. But what I do hope is that it will lead us to an unknown chapter that we feel comfortable with. And when I think back to where we were four years ago, I am truly amazed at how far we’ve come. We are stronger than I’d ever imagined. I am stronger than I ever thought I could be. Because the truth is that life can be shit, and we don’t always get what we want. This world can throw hideous curveballs, whether that’s not being able to get pregnant, losing someone close to you, or even not finding someone to love. But when you feel like you can’t go on, somehow you do. Every day, you move forward.