30 Women Share Unspoken Realities of IVF

I missed my deadline for this story. When I started reporting it in February, I was in the middle of my fifth round of embryo freezing, the first of two main parts of the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process. Everything was on track until, just as my first draft was due, an unexpected IVF-related surgery upended my calendar. (It came 10 days before another surgery, this one long-scheduled.) I don’t miss deadlines. But IVF doesn’t care about your plans.

You probably know someone who’s going through IVF right now or has in the past. Maybe you’ve gone through it yourself. Infertility is incredibly common, impacting one in six adults worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. In my experience, however, while most people know of IVF, they don’t understand the details—unless they're in the one out of six. As a result, there are all sorts of misconceptions about how IVF actually works. Misconception #1: That it always does work.

Before I go any further, a quick science lesson: The in vitro part of IVF means that fertilization is being done in a lab instead of in a fallopian tube. “We take the eggs outside the body and fertilize each one individually with sperm,” explains Banafsheh (Bana) Kashani, MD, a double board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist in Laguna Hills, California. “If the egg is fertilized by sperm, it becomes an embryo that we culture in the lab till it becomes a blastocyst and then we transfer it into the uterus, where it will hopefully attach and the woman will become pregnant.”

More than 10 million babies have been born around the world via IVF since 1978, the birth year of “test tube baby” Louise Brown. IVF accounted for almost 90,000 live births in the United States in 2021.

What those statistics don’t measure as clearly, however, is the number of IVF cycles those parents had to go through before those babies were born; success rates are far from 100%. A 2018 study of 4,515 infertility patients ages 31 to 39 conducted by Reproductive Medicine Associates (RMA) and presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found that those who implanted a euploid embryo had a 69.4% chance of becoming pregnant on the first try, a 59.3% chance on the second try, and a 59.2% chance on the third try. This means that, according to this study, women in their 30s have a 94.9% chance of becoming pregnant after three transfers with chromosomally normal embryos.

Some reproductive endocrinologists don't think this study offers a fully comprehensive view of IVF—including my own doctor. When I brought it up with him at the beginning of my IVF journey, he told me that while the study is technically accurate, it may also offer a limited perspective that could be misleading. The women in the study were all under 40 and, from his understanding, they didn’t have many additional, more complex fertility issues (like endometriosis or autoimmune issues or fibroids) beyond unexplained infertility. Plus—and this is a big plus—they all had high-quality genetically-tested embryos to use in the first place. “Not all patients want to genetically test their embryos, and even if they do, the hardest part is often getting to a point where they have a genetically-normal embryo to use,” explains Charalampos Chatzicharalampous, MD, PhD, a triple board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist in New York City (who goes by Dr. Harry or Dr. C). “Many patients don’t make it to a transfer at all because they don’t get an embryo to use—that 94.9% is from the patients who actually had embryos.”

Success rates are lower when you take genetic testing out of the equation and measure for live births—not just pregnancies. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) found in a national summary report that in the US in 2021, 54% of all embryo transfers in people under 35 resulted in live births from an egg retrieval using a patient’s own eggs. Those 35 to 37 had a lower chance, at 40.5%, while the number fell to 26% for people ages 38 to 40. Once patients hit their 40s, the numbers dropped even more dramatically, to 13.3 % for those 41 and 42, and 4% for ages 42 and higher. (To get a rough estimate of your own potential success rate, try this IVF success estimator calculator from the CDC.)

There are so many factors to consider when trying to predict IVF outcomes, but age is the biggest of all: The older you are, the more likely each embryo is to have chromosomal abnormalities that can lead to a miscarriage. “I always tell my patients, ‘IVF provides the highest success rates of all infertility treatments, but it’s not a guarantee that it will result in a live birth,’” Dr. Kashani says. “For some people, IVF can be a straight path where they do one egg retrieval and one embryo transfer and it works on the first try. For others, things don’t go as planned and it can take years with multiple egg retrievals, transfers, and other diagnostic tests along the way.”

That’s certainly been the case for my husband, Rahul, and me. I was 36 when we first visited a fertility clinic after many months of trying to conceive naturally. Once we learned I had a slew of issues contributing to my fertility struggles, including a low ovarian reserve and a thin uterine lining, we did one IUI (intrauterine insemination) before moving on to IVF. By then I was 37; we assumed I’d be pregnant shortly thereafter. I’m 39 now, and we have no clear end in sight. I’ve gone through seven egg retrievals, three failed embryo transfers, two canceled embryo transfers, one laparoscopic surgery to diagnose and then remove endometriosis, a couple of surgeries to remove ovarian cysts, and more emotional breakdowns than anyone should have to experience in a lifetime.

And I’m not alone.

Over the past several months, I’ve spoken with 30 other IVF patients, past and present, who’ve had similar experiences. They bravely shared their stories to create clearer pictures of the realities of this process—because there isn’t just one. And there are certainly versions that are much easier than the ones you’re about to read about. As all of those statistics show: Many, many women deliver healthy babies after one or two rounds of IVF.

But those aren’t the stories I’m reporting here. As an IVF patient and a journalist, I want to share the stories that I haven’t been able to find—the ones from women who have not been able to conceive, or maintain a pregnancy, after one or two cycles. Everyone I interviewed has gone through multiple failed rounds of IVF; one finally had success on her 11th embryo transfer. Most have spent several years going through treatments, and some—like me—are still doing them today.

I interviewed women from the coasts, the Midwest, and southern states, where women’s reproductive rights are most immediately in danger right now. When I first started reporting this story in February, the Alabama Supreme Court issued the unprecedented ruling that embryos frozen through IVF are considered to be children. This came less than two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, another monumental and dangerous ruling for women that left reproductive health care in the hands of state, not federal, lawmakers.

The Alabama decision prompted many IVF clinics in the state to shut down for fear of being sued for wrongful death if IVF wasn’t successful. Fertility patients in the area scrambled to find new storage options for their frozen embryos or see their hopes of a future pregnancy shattered. After long weeks of fear and chaos, a new law was instituted to provide civil and criminal immunity to providers and patients for the destruction of embryos. While Alabama fertility clinics did reopen as a result, experts I spoke to say this law is only a Band-Aid.

“There needs to be a long-term solution that addresses the status of the embryos—a frozen embryo is not the same thing as a living child,” says Betsy Campbell, chief engagement officer at RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association. “We need to be sure there aren’t laws or precedent for treating embryos as living children. We have concerns that other states could make rulings similar to Alabama now that reproductive health care is in the hands of state lawmakers without the federal protection of Roe v. Wade.”

Most recently, in June, at the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US (with 13 million members) condemned IVF more broadly. A resolution was passed “to reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage, and to only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation, especially in the number of embryos generated in the IVF process.”

Ultimately, the traumatic Alabama Supreme Court ruling coupled with the fallout from the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the Southern Baptist stance shows how dangerous it can be for patients to do IVF in states that don’t have their best health interests in mind. “Infertility patients are at higher risk for miscarriage, where the care rendered may include a D&C or medication to remove the pregnancy tissue and those treatments may be impacted by some states’ abortion bans,” Campbell says. “Delaying treatment for a miscarriage can put a patient’s life or health at risk, including their ability to have children in the future.” Between them, the 30 women in this story have had 65 miscarriages or chemical pregnancies (a miscarriage that happens within the first five weeks). One was hospitalized for 10 days after she says Georgia's “heartbeat bill” prevented her from getting the treatment she needed during a miscarriage.

Voting for politicians in the upcoming election who will prioritize women’s reproductive health is crucial right now, says Campbell. But education is important, too. “If we have people making decisions about medical treatments that relate to reproduction and they don’t understand the science, that’s going to hurt patients because the decisions don’t make sense medically or scientifically,” Campbell adds. So, if you feel comfortable, share your infertility story. “Although infertility impacts one in six people, there’s still a stigma and people don’t always talk about it. But more than ever, we need the infertility community to educate their state lawmakers about the challenges they face,” Campbell continues. “The Alabama decision showed a lack of knowledge about reproduction, which is really concerning.”

Even when your reproductive rights aren’t being directly threatened, IVF can be an incredibly difficult journey no matter how many resources you might have at your disposal. “It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Jennifer Aniston told Allure in a December 2022 cover interview. “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it.” And nothing worked. “That ship has sailed,” said Aniston. In the days and weeks following that story, there was an outpouring of gratitude to Aniston from women whose IVF journeys also didn’t end in a baby. They spoke of shame and secrecy—and their sense of relief, and frankly shock, at seeing their experience validated by a cultural icon sharing her own experience of IVF “failure.”

I felt a similar sense of relief during my dozens of conversations with women who had felt shattered by IVF, while I was in the midst of my own fifth and sixth and seventh rounds. Jennifer Aniston aside, the pain and uncertainty that can come with IVF are not part of the cultural conversation. Yes, it was sometimes triggering to transcribe all of these stories. But it was also cathartic to hear other women share their crushing disappointments, their relationship struggles, their fits of jealous rage, and, perhaps most confusing, their existential doubt. It’s hard not to question if you’re even meant to be a mother when it seems all signs in the universe are telling you otherwise.

While each woman’s story is unique, a few common themes emerged: IVF is a scientific process—and an incredible one at that—but it’s an emotional one at its core. For patients who do not have success on their first or second embryo transfer, utter devastation is a regular feeling. There’s no way to soften the blow of a failed round. It’s soul-crushing—especially because there isn’t always a clear reason why it didn’t work.

“Simply put, IVF is a life-changing process,” says Dr. Chatzicharalampous. “It impacts and alters every area of your life when you’re going through it. I always say that I’m not just a doctor for my patients, I’m also a psychologist and a financial advisor and a travel planner. I have to know what’s going on in their lives because IVF impacts all of it. It is completely all-consuming.”

As the women below can attest, the intensity of IVF can take a huge toll on your overall well-being—not least of all because it often brings up all sorts of Big Emotions like envy and grief. “I tell my patients, ‘You’re not a bad person for feeling jealous of your friends with babies or angry at people who don’t get it or anxious about your future or sad that the family you envisioned for yourself isn’t unfolding as you thought it would. All of these feelings are a normal response to an incredibly difficult situation,’” says Ayana Ali, LCSW, a psychotherapist in Brooklyn, who specializes in the emotional impact of infertility. Also normal? The fact that these feelings can make people feel very, very alone. “It takes a lot for some people to feel comfortable opening up. And then when they do, many [people] still respond with platitudes like, ‘Oh, you just need to keep trying’ or ‘Well, at least you have IVF.’ [These platitudes] show patients how much those who haven’t gone through it truly don’t get it, which can, in turn, actually make them feel even more unseen and isolated.”

And then there’s the financial toll. There is no sugarcoating this: IVF is outrageously expensive, to the point where it’s not uncommon for a family to drain their savings. Fewer than half of states have legislated infertility insurance coverage, and even when IVF coverage is available, many policies only cover up to three rounds. NBC News recently reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), one of the nation’s largest health-care providers, will only provide IVF for service members and veterans who can prove that their infertility was caused by their military service—a tall order. (In one 2018 survey, 37% of women on active duty said they struggled with infertility, a number that’s three times the national average.)

While costs vary across clinics and state lines, the average out-of-pocket price tag of one full cycle is around $15,000, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. And that’s not including extra fees like genetic testing of embryos, which many doctors highly recommend for patients over 35 to improve the chances of implantation. That cost was around $5,000 for a batch of eight embryos at my New York City-based clinic. When you have to do multiple rounds to achieve success, shelling out thousands upon thousands of dollars that you may not even have, it can all start to feel like Monopoly money. Six steps forward will be $20,000 for a full cycle, now advance to an endometriosis surgery and pay $5,000 (do not pass Go, do not collect $200). Take a ride on the railroad—to an acupuncture appointment that costs $150. Land at the pharmacy for a new monthly supply of nutritional supplements for $600.

Even more overwhelming is the fact that it’s hard to know if what you’re paying for will actually pay off. “The truth is that IVF is an imperfect science,” Dr. Kashani explains. “Sometimes we just don’t have the full answer, which is so frustrating for patients: ‘How can you not know?’” But, remember, the first IVF baby is only 45 years old. “We’re still learning about this process every day,” says Dr. Kashani.

Initial tests, for example, can help doctors pinpoint obvious fertility issues like severe endometriosis, damaged fallopian tubes, DNA fragmentation of the sperm, and low ovarian reserve (which you can read more about in the glossary above). But other issues such as silent endometriosis and high autoimmune response may only reveal themselves with time, as your doctors gather more “clues” with each additional cycle.

Many couples—including my husband and me—are left living in limbo for years, sometimes even a decade. And that leads me to yet another almost universal theme in this reporting: the trauma. Going through this process month after month means living with uncertainty and grief month after month. One widely cited study from the ’90s found that IVF patients have the same stress levels as those experiencing cancer and cardiac rehabilitation. A more recent study, conducted in Kazakhstan and published in 2020 in the journal PLoS One, found that the rates of stress, anxiety, and depression are higher among IVF patients than the general population (researchers tracked people who’d been going through it, on average, for five years).

And the trauma of IVF can last long after a patient ends treatment, even if it’s with a healthy baby. “PTSD after the fact is quite common because there are so many things that can be incredibly triggering for people in everyday life,” Dr. Kashani explains. Things like hearing that someone you know got pregnant naturally, or even going into a doctor’s office of any kind. “These events can instantly take someone right back to how they felt while they were going through it,” adds Dr. Kashani, who recommends therapy or support groups for those especially impacted.

Out of the 30 women Allure spoke with, 18 have had a baby that they carried, three used a surrogate, and two decided not to have children. Eight, like me, aren’t sure what the future will hold. The majority of the women I interviewed said that going through IVF has actually made them feel stronger and they have discovered a new ability to advocate for themselves. Many said they’ve learned how to better listen to their intuition and ask for exactly what they need—skills they’d never cultivated in the past.

For me, I’ve learned to set boundaries and to say no to things that won’t make me feel good during this challenging time. As a chronic “yes” person, this new ability to say no has changed the way I operate—and it’s something l plan on carrying with me in the future, long after this awful infertility chapter is over.

Here, in their words, 30 women open up about what it's really like to navigate a baby-making road that is long and challenging.

These stories have been edited and condensed for clarity.

SAM D., 34

Egg retrievals: 2
Embryo transfers: 4
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 3
Surgeries: 3
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 3

I got married during peak COVID, July 2020. I was 30, went off birth control immediately, and we started trying. After a full year without success, I went to my gyno, who gave me Letrozole to regulate my ovulation, as my periods were very irregular. It didn’t work. I had my first fertility clinic appointment in January 2022. They had me do an IUI, and I got pregnant for the first time—but it was a chemical pregnancy. It gave me some hope, though, because at least it was something after a year and a half of zero success.

We did one more IUI that failed before moving on to IVF. At that point, I thought, Great. I’ll give myself some shots, and it’ll all be good. I’d always thought of IVF as the worst-case scenario. You know, Worst case, I’ll just do IVF. I never thought to ask the question, What if it doesn’t work? Can I even have children? That wasn’t a possibility in my mind. But then IVF didn’t work.

I ended up doing two egg retrievals and had three failed embryo transfers before it finally worked on my fourth. My son is now nine weeks old. Two of the three failed transfers ended in early miscarriages, where I had to have D&Cs. The other just straight-up failed. I also had all sorts of weird things happen along the way, including a canceled cycle because I had to have a uterine polyp removed, and another canceled cycle because I had a TIA, which is basically a mini stroke. My arm went numb and I couldn’t control it for about half an hour. It was so scary. They think it was because the meds made follicles which upped my estrogen, which I learned can cause blood clots.

For me, the worst part of infertility was wondering if being a biological parent was in the cards for me at all. After my second transfer failed, I started to picture my life without kids. I started to wonder what that would look like. It was a really confusing time. You grow up thinking you’re going to get married and have kids because that’s what we’re taught, and then suddenly you’re faced with the prospect of that not happening. I really struggled with that, with not knowing how it would end or when it would end or if it would end at all. It was also hard to put my whole life on hold while watching everyone else’s move forward.

Everyone knows that parenting can be hard. In that way, I haven’t really been surprised with anything I’ve needed to do as a parent so far. But my infertility trial? That surprised me. I feel like I was robbed of a lot of the things that other women get to do during this phase of life. Other people can just have sex a couple of times and then have a baby. I’m like, What is that? How? Infertility also made me really messed up mentally during my whole pregnancy. I was constantly thinking something was going to go wrong. Even now, even though I gave birth to my son, I’m still processing the trauma. It’s not something that just leaves you the moment the baby is born.

I hope that one day I’ll be better from all this. In the meantime, my advice to other women going through it is don’t let the outside world get to you. Just remember, you know what you went through and you know who you are. And no matter what, always be sure to make time for things you enjoy even though it can be very hard to plan anything. My husband and I went on a bunch of last-minute vacations over the years and I have a lot of great memories from those trips.

CHRISTINA S.*, 39

Egg retrievals: 3
Embryo transfers: 3
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 0
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 3 so far

My husband and I started trying to get pregnant three years ago when I was 36. By the time we started IVF, I thought it would be one retrieval, one transfer, and then we’d get a baby—because that’s what I saw from afar with people doing treatments. But three years later, we are not pregnant. I’ve done three egg retrievals and had three failed transfers. I remember when my doctor called after our first round and told me that we only got two healthy embryos, and she had been expecting a lot more. I was like, “Oh shit, I don't think this is going to go the way that I thought it would go.” From there, it was just one disappointing event after another, blow by blow.

I just had surgery for endometriosis. I was talking to a friend who is also going through IVF and she suggested I look into it based on her own experience. I asked my doctor, and we decided to do the surgery to see if I have it (that’s the only way you can diagnose endo). Lo and behold, they found endometriosis everywhere in my reproductive area. My doctor suspects that I’ve had it for a very long time and is pretty positive that’s the reason my transfers didn’t work.

No doctor ever brought endometriosis up to me, even though I’ve had painful periods for my whole life. Now I feel like my trust is a little broken. Why wouldn't they bring this up from the very beginning?

There have been so many unexpected twists and turns throughout this process. And now the biggest one that has come up for me after all this is, I don't know if I want to carry a baby after everything I’ve been through. We’re looking into surrogacy. I'm just like, “Oh my God, I need to get back to me for a second.” I need to heal my body, my mind, and my spirit. I’m calling it The Great Reset. Being a Type A personality, I’ve always been go-go-go, but this process has taught me to slow down, pause, and take the time to reflect and figure out what’s next. I’m grappling with the fact that I’ve had a chronic illness my whole life and didn’t even know.

There are so many diagnoses that you receive throughout this journey and they always take you to a place of, What if I had known that info before? Would I have done anything differently? I wish I would have at least taken the fertility tests earlier in my 30s because maybe I would have found all this out sooner. I also wish someone would have said in the beginning: “You need to mentally prepare for this. You will probably have to do more than one retrieval and more than one transfer.” I had built up this bubble of hope that it would be one and done. That we would go on to two kids, maybe three kids. The person who started three years ago is not the same person I am now. I was filled with hope back then and now it’s just a little glimmer. It's not as easy as some people may make it seem on social media. Even the doctors make it seem easy sometimes.

Going through IVF has taught me that two truths can be true at once. I’d always approached life with more of a black-and-white attitude: You’re either happy or you’re sad. That’s it. But this has taught me that so many emotions can live together. I’m grateful that I can do IVF at all, and there are lots of good things going on in my life right now, but there’s also the shitty thing: the failure. I’m turning 40 this year, and when I think about everything that has gone down since I was 36, it’s just so much. I am a fundamentally different person than I was when we started. But maybe it’s a blessing, too. Going through infertility forces you to know yourself and protect yourself. I’ve been a chronic people pleaser my whole life, but now I’ve learned how to advocate for myself and state my needs with other people. And I think that skill is a good one to carry into the next decade. I think you need that as a mom.

PAIGE K., 32

Egg retrievals: 3
Embryo transfers: 4
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 0
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 1.5

I am married to a woman, so we always knew we would have to do IVF or IUI. We decided to do co-IVF, which means we would use my wife’s eggs, and I would be the one to carry the baby.

We knew so little going into it. I mean, I even asked our doctor, “Do we need to be the same blood type?” “No,” he said. “A female body is a body. You look good. She looks good.” The only issue we thought we had was that my wife is a carrier for a certain dominant Ashkenazi Jewish gene mutation, which can put you at higher risk for certain diseases, namely Lynch syndrome—a genetic disorder that increases the risk of developing certain cancers before age 50. With that in mind, we knew it could take a few rounds of egg retrieval because we were getting rid of her dominant gene.

Picking the sperm was not easy. It was very emotional. At the time, it seemed like the hardest thing ever. But it turned out to be just a blip on the screen. Once we had the sperm, we were able to do things in tandem. My wife focused on the egg retrievals, while I started taking the drugs and the shots [to prepare my uterus for the transfer]. We transferred our first viable embryo—one without the dominant gene. I couldn’t believe it when it failed. The doctor had said everything was fine, and because we knew so little, we just assumed it would work. It put me in a very bad place.

We did another two transfers, and they failed. I remember that Thanksgiving, I was devastated. I felt like I had nothing to be thankful for. I was so upset. That’s when we started doing more research on our own. I ended up consulting with an immunologist and going to a natural doctor who also does acupuncture. She said I had to stop eating carbs and sugar and cut back on caffeine. I started taking fish oil and lots of vitamins and supplements to reduce inflammation.

When it came to our fourth transfer in January 2022, I felt like I had been around the block too many times with this doctor and this protocol. I said, “This is the last one. It has to work, or we are going back to the drawing board to find a new doctor.” It worked. We got pregnant. At 17 weeks, I bled in the middle of the night, which was terrible and triggered all the bad stuff we’d been through. Turns out it was just a UTI, but I was still scared and on edge. Fortunately, I went on to have an easy delivery and a beautiful, healthy baby girl.

The truth of the matter is building a family can be so hard and isolating. I give people a lot of credit who are doing it…and doing it again and again. It’s hard work. Trying your very best to stay hopeful can be really challenging, and there is so much self-advocacy and research involved, too. My daughter is so strong…she is truly our little embryo who could. And we see that same strength and will in everything she does today.

STEPH R., 36

Egg retrievals: 4
Embryo transfers: 6
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 2
Live births: 2
Years of treatment: 3

My journey began in my first year of marriage, when I was 27. I got pregnant right away, but it was an ectopic pregnancy. It was super scary and I lost a fallopian tube. A certain part of me died during that ectopic pregnancy, and for three years I felt like I was just walking through this vast space of nothingness. It severely impacted our romantic relationship. My husband and I were so traumatized during our first wedding anniversary that it tarnished the whole experience. I didn’t tell anyone about the ectopic except my mom and one friend. I felt shame. I felt like my body had failed me and I couldn’t trust it anymore.

The doctors told us that since I had just one fallopian tube and my partner faced male-factor infertility, the only way to have a family was through IVF. We skipped IUI and got right into the process. But it didn’t work right away. We did two failed rounds, then switched clinics. That’s when I finally started to open up about it in anonymous online support groups because it was just so hard. I was willingly pumping myself with all kinds of hormones day after day, a willing participant in trauma. I felt like a science experiment—all this poking and prodding in the most intimate of places.

I was also incredibly jealous of other women who got pregnant. I’ll never forget this one time when I saw my coworker, who had been doing IVF at the same clinic as I had, in the waiting room during morning monitoring. I thought she was taking a break between rounds, but when she saw me, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m actually pregnant.” She just hadn’t known how to tell me. And my heart broke into so many pieces right there in the clinic. We had the same doctor and I remember going up for my appointment after learning the news and asking him: “Why do you keep getting everyone else pregnant except for me? When will it be my turn?” I just lost it.

After four egg retrievals, five failed transfers, and a sperm extraction surgery for my husband, I finally got pregnant. That whole period is a blur, but I do remember doing everything I could to help the process along—acupuncture, yoni steams, massages—yet still feeling so much shame. Society tells women that we’re meant to be mothers, and I just couldn’t see outside of that for the entire time I was going through treatments. I lost friends from my childhood who didn’t understand. And I still struggled once I became pregnant. Some women have these beautiful pregnancies, but I was terrified something was going to go wrong and was filled with so much doubt. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop right up until my daughter was born. Even now, nearly six years later, I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten over that sorrow for how our pregnancy had to happen.

But then, ironically enough, I got pregnant with our second daughter on our own, by ourselves. It was miraculous—but I was furious. For three years plus, my identity had been “the girl with fertility issues.” In some ways, I wore those struggles like a badge of honor. Then suddenly, it happened just like that? I felt like a fraud. And on an even bigger note: Why did my body have to be put through so much trauma for years?

I’m still healing. I find myself constantly in awe of these children I fought so hard for and am full of gratitude—but those three years in the trenches also changed me. I’m still trying to find who I am today after that and trying to find a little bit of grace for that part of me that was in the dark for so long. It’s a work in progress. I know I’ve become a much better health advocate for myself. Every time something didn’t work during treatments, I would ask my doctor, “Can we try this instead? What about this?” Now I know that doing your own research is the best way forward. I’ve also noticed that my time in the trenches, in the pits of hell, gave me this empathy, this capacity to sit in the dark with people and relate to their struggles. It’s a weird, twisted blessing.

TANIKA V., 46

Egg retrievals: 3
Embryo transfers: 4
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 1
Surgeries: 8+
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 6 so far

My desire to be a mother has always been really great. I’m an only child and my dad died when I was 13, so I’ve always had a really close relationship with my mom—and I grew up wanting to be able to have that type of relationship with my own child. Through her, I’ve learned what unconditional love is like. That’s what I want for my child, too—which is why this journey has been so challenging for me.

I’m 46 now, and in retrospect, my infertility story began when I developed symptoms of uterine fibroids around age 15. They’re supposed to develop in your reproductive years, so that was pretty early. But despite suffering from severe bleeding and bloating around my period throughout high school and college, I didn’t get officially diagnosed with fibroids until age 25. I’ve had three myomectomy surgeries to remove the fibroids since then, the most recent one in 2023.

I got married when I was 34, and went to a fertility doctor after that, since I knew I had the fibroids to contend with. He said, “Forget about it, your uterus is way too compromised to have a child. You need to have a hysterectomy.” And I was like, “What? Absolutely no.” So my husband and I tried naturally for about five years, but nothing happened. At 39, we decided to start IVF. I had my 40th-birthday party in Jamaica, right at the beginning of my first egg retrieval, and I remember having to take a shot and thinking, The juxtaposition of this is not lost on me.

When I got back to Atlanta, my fertility doctor told me my body hadn’t produced enough follicles to even go through with the retrieval. And I thought, Wait, what? I never even thought that was a possibility. That was my first introduction to the roller coaster of IVF. The media makes it seem like having the money to do it is all you need…that if you’re able to swing it financially, it will work. But that has not been my experience.

After my first canceled round, I decided to take some time off. I was really thrown by that failure, and confused about why it hadn’t worked. After a year or so, I was ready to try another retrieval with a different protocol. This time, I got enough eggs to do a retrieval, and considered it a true miracle. We got four embryos, but then the transfer didn’t work. We took some more time off to process the failure, and started back up again when I was 44. This time, we switched doctors and got on a whole new protocol—and the transfer worked. But then I had a really traumatic miscarriage at nine weeks, while my husband was away on a work trip.

Things had started to feel off at six weeks, when I was getting ready to go to church, and there was blood when I wiped. The on-call nurse told me not to worry, that I was probably having a subchorionic hemorrhage, which I had never heard of before (it’s when you bleed when you’re pregnant, but it allegedly doesn’t impact the baby). In any case, I went into the doctor’s office right away, and they told me everything was fine. But I continued to spot after that, which caused a lot of anxiety.

Fast forward three more weeks. I was almost finished with my first trimester, and at the point where you can “graduate” from the fertility clinic to a regular OB. But after I took my progesterone shot one morning—I was still taking it every day to help support the pregnancy—I felt immense pain like I had never experienced in my life. I called the nurse, who said I was probably fine but I should call 911 if I started to see bright red blood. I got into the shower right after that and, oh my God, it was like a flood gate opened. Blood gushing everywhere. I had never seen that much blood in my life. It was the scariest thing.

I really credit myself for what happened next, and I credit God. In that moment, I thought to myself, I’m going to survive this. I’m not about to bleed out and die in this house. And I was determined to save my baby. I called 911, and they brought me to the emergency room. I was gushing blood. The ER doctor came in and said, “I'm sorry. Your cervix is opening, and you're losing the baby.” And then he told me that I had to go home to miscarry…yes, really. Georgia, where I live, had just passed a “heartbeat bill” that would not allow them to do a D&C on me when there was still a heartbeat. Even though they told me I was losing the baby.

So there I was, in the middle of all my chaos and my trauma. I was losing my baby. It was the middle of the night. I was by myself. My husband was on his way, but he was not there yet. And I was like, “Now you're throwing politics into this? Like, what are you talking about?” Oh my God. And then they gave me morphine.

When I woke up in the morning, I stood up and my head started spinning. And that’s when I thought to myself, No, I’m not leaving. I’m going to advocate for myself. What happens if I start bleeding again? So they let me stay, but only because my blood pressure was low, not because I was miscarrying.

By the time my husband got there, they did another ultrasound. By that point there was no heartbeat—so they were finally able to do the D&C. But my blood pressure still would not come up, and I ended up staying in the hospital for 10 days.

Now we have two embryos left. I’m currently prepping for another embryo transfer, which is next week. I feel like I’m always holding my breath. But that’s been my whole experience with infertility. It’s that constant ringing thought in the back of my head, you know? And now, after going through all of this, I’ve concluded that it’s a true miracle that any of us are here. Really. The way everything has to line up, with the universe or God or whatever it is that you believe in…it’s a true wonder. And that’s how I feel about this transfer I’m going through right now: It could be a miracle. You just never know.

OLIVIA G., 35

Egg retrievals: 3
Embryo transfers: 11
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 4
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 5 so far

My husband and I started trying to have a baby when I was 29. I’m an OB, so I know you’re supposed to wait a year before getting checked out [for fertility issues] when you’re under 35, but after six months of trying, I said, “Okay, it’s time to look into this.”

The doctors discovered I had a really thin uterine lining. After three failed IUIs with Letrozole, we decided we’ll just do IVF. We figured it would be easy…bank some embryos, do IVF, and it’s gonna work.

We started with a hysteroscopy to see if we could find a reason for my thin lining. Everything looked fine, so we went straight to our first retrieval. I got eight genetically-normal embryos from that retrieval, which was great. But then our first two transfers failed, and my doctor suggested we use a surrogate. I was like, “What? That’s it? Game over?” It didn’t feel right, so I made an appointment for a second opinion. In the meantime, we started gathering information on surrogacy and interviewed with a lot of different agencies.

We decided to switch doctors. I wanted to try a fresh transfer instead of frozen, just to try something different since we’d done a frozen transfer for our other two. [Editor’s note: A fresh transfer is when the doctors put the embryo in the uterus days after your egg retrieval; it is never frozen, which is typically required when waiting for the results of genetic testing.]

So we did another retrieval, followed it up with a fresh transfer, and it worked–that’s my son. Then, when he was one, I discovered I was pregnant just as we were ready to do another transfer. I was happy but anxious about the pregnancy, so I was doing ultrasounds every week at work. At nine weeks, there was no more heartbeat.

Once I confirmed with my doctor that there was no heartbeat, he had me take the abortion medication and collect what came out in a bucket so we could take it for genetic testing. It was a lot. Disgusting, really. My friend who’s also an OB-GYN helped me package everything in the bucket, and I was like, “Thanks, doctor, for making me do this.” Turns out it was genetically abnormal, which made us feel so much better because it gave us a reason for the miscarriage.

We’re on a waiting list for a surrogacy agency, but we’ve continued to do transfers in the meantime. Fortunately, we have enough embryos to keep doing transfers—making embryos is not our issue. But they’ve all failed. We thought our 10th transfer was successful, but by 11 weeks, it was very obvious there was an anomaly, and I had to terminate. I thought I was at a low point before, but having an anomaly not compatible with life that I had worked so hard for put me in a very, very dark place.

We just completed our 11th transfer. And again, it was unsuccessful. For the first time, I think I might be done with transfers. I’ve never felt that way before, so now I think we’re just going to wait for the surrogate. When I’m in the clinic waiting room, with all these other women trying to have children, I appreciate my son so much and realize what a miracle he is. I don’t want to be greedy, I just really want him to have a sibling.

AISHA B.

Egg retrievals: Too many to count
Embryo transfers: More than 11
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 4
Additional surgeries: 3
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 10

My health issues began when I started experiencing severe menstrual pain as a teenager. My mum took me to the doctor immediately, but my pain and bleeding were dismissed and then dismissed again. And again. I continued to suffer for years. It was only when I was married and started trying for a child at age 29 that my pain was believed. After a year of not being able to conceive naturally, I went to a hospital that specializes in fertility and they performed a diagnostic laparoscopy right away. I had stage four endometriosis. My bowel was attached to my uterus, and my ovaries were kissing, [meaning they were stuck together]. I was devastated that the condition was left undiagnosed for so long that my organs had fused, and I worried what that would mean for my fertility. The doctor recommended trying IVF immediately to give me the best chances of conceiving.

That was the beginning of my 10-year IVF journey. My husband and I made the difficult decision to stop treatments five years ago, after more than 11 unsuccessful embryo transfers and four miscarriages, including twins in my second trimester. After going through constant IVF fails and multiple surgeries for 10 years straight, I could no longer continue trying to conceive. I was exhausted, and the constant no’s had taken a big toll on my mental, emotional, and physical health. I can hardly even recall what my protocols were back then, because my journey was so long and the science changed so much while I was going through it. I witnessed and experienced the evolution of IVF.

When Jennifer Aniston came out as childless after IVF a few years ago, it was one of society’s first introductions to the idea that IVF doesn’t always end with a “miracle baby.” We need to hear more of these stories in the media and online—especially coming from someone who looks like me, South Asian and Muslim. The infertility and endometriosis spaces are dominated by stories of white women, which is why I have made it a point to share mine. Many women in my community don’t talk about their fertility journey openly due to taboos, tradition, and stigma.

Growing up in the UK, I felt “othered.” Being mixed race wasn’t common all those years ago, and I felt as though I didn’t belong in either group, South Asian or English. Eventually, I overcame this struggle and fully embraced who I was, only to feel “othered” again when diagnosed with endometriosis. It seemed I was the only person my age who was living with a debilitating chronic illness. Once I began IVF, I felt even more “othered,” because I was not able to conceive naturally when so many women around me were. I was surrounded by mums, and when my long fertility journey ended, I was surrounded by “IVF mums.” When I finally stopped fertility treatments, I didn’t feel I belonged to any of the various online reproductive communities. I didn’t fit into the “successful IVF” community, or the rainbow-baby community, or the trying-to-conceive community, or the motherhood community. I had many moments of, Where do I belong?

Now that I’m five years on from my last fertility treatment, I’m in a very different place than I was when I left the process childless. Back then, I was heartbroken, and I didn’t know if the grief that consumed me would ever leave. But it has. Multiple sessions of therapy and coaching, along with writing and speaking about my experiences, have all been a huge part of my healing. People often ask me if I’m happy with the life I’m living now, and the answer is yes. I’m no longer in limbo, and I feel so free after stopping. I came to realize a life without children doesn’t have to be an empty one, and I’ve found a variety of ways to fill it with beautiful things, including spending time with loved ones, traveling, writing, coaching, and creating community via Instagram.

Of course, leaving the process without a baby is also very nuanced. Even though I’m no longer in the depths of grief and I’m living a life I love, there are parts of my fertility journey that I’ll always be sad about, especially losing my twins. Moving forward—as opposed to moving on—hasn’t been easy. I’ve had to put as much effort into living a happy life without children as I did when trying to conceive. I quit my job in social media and began working with clients on a one-on-one basis, so that others struggling with involuntary childlessness, infertility, chronic illness, and miscarriage don’t feel so alone.

One of the biggest takeaways from my journey is that leaving the process without a baby is also an option. You are not obliged to explore alternate paths to parenthood if you don’t want to. Years ago, the narrative was: “Do not give up until you get your baby. Keep going, because it will happen eventually.” But it didn’t happen for me, no matter what I tried. To society, the idea that an infertile person can consider stopping means that they didn’t want a baby enough—even though infertility is a medical condition. Even though it’s completely out of anyone’s control.

Undertaking privately funded IVF is a huge privilege, even though it shouldn’t be, and I’m grateful that I had the finances to do as many rounds as I did without getting into debt. Still, throughout my journey, I received all sorts of hurtful comments, like “Think positive” and “Relax,” as if that was the reason all my IVF treatments had failed. When what I really longed to hear in those moments was, “You’re enough, whether you have a baby or not.” Now I’ve come to realize that the “Do whatever it takes to get your baby” statement often comes from people who have children themselves, because they simply cannot imagine a world without their kids. And I see now, in retrospect, that I carried on “trying” for far longer than I should have because this messaging was so pervasive and toxic. I was grateful that both my husband and mother-in-law told me years before I stopped treatment, “You don’t have to do this anymore. You can stop.” They were trailblazers, as that was not a common sentiment back then. Unfortunately, the toxic don’t-give- up narrative was deeply ingrained in me at the time, and I persisted with more years of IVF.

Looking back, I see how layered my long fertility journey was. In addition to being diagnosed with infertility and endometriosis, I also learned that I had another condition, adenomyosis, causing me pain during menstruation. While undergoing IVF, I was riddled with anxiety, and I ended up losing a large amount of weight because my adrenaline was so high during those 10 years of treatments. My relationships suffered a lot, too. I avoided people and events because they were so triggering. I look back at photos of myself during that 10-year stretch, and I don’t even recognize myself. I don’t see the Aisha that I am today.

This entire period of time—a time filled with miscarriages and misery and constant failed IVF cycles—wasn’t only hard for me, it was difficult for my family, too. I was and still am incredibly lucky to have a very close and supportive network: my husband, my parents, my in-laws, my cousins, and my friends. They all suffered as well, taking on my sadness as if it was their own.

When my sister and I unexpectedly became pregnant at the same time, it was an extremely happy moment for everyone—but unfortunately, my joy was short-lived. I miscarried, while my sister carried her child through to full term. Her entire pregnancy was impacted and overshadowed by my loss. And my grief was in full flow seeing my sister with a pregnant belly, something I had only a few weeks earlier. I felt so sad for my parents, too, as they had one daughter growing a child and the other grieving the loss of hers. It was a really hard and sad time for all of us. My other miscarriages were incredibly painful as well. Although going through IVF is hard, people rarely talk about how gut-wrenching it is when you go through a miscarriage. The pain, bleeding, and emptiness you feel is rarely spoken about, especially when you don’t get a “rainbow baby.” I experienced a great deal of trauma after each pregnancy loss.

When Jennifer Aniston’s story first came out, I already knew the comment section would be flooded with, “Why didn’t she just adopt?” Those commenters didn’t understand how triggering that question can be—and how adoption is complex. It isn’t a quick fix for childlessness. Stopping trying to conceive was the best thing I did—I put myself first. Prioritizing your health—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—is a good enough reason to stop. If I had to give anyone advice, it would be, “Stop when you’re ready.” IVF isn’t a golden ticket for everyone, and I hope my story can inspire others to envisage a life that’s full of joy when you’re on the other side of infertility—and your story ends without a baby.

ALYSON S.*, 41

Egg retrievals: 1
Embryo transfers: 4
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 3

I was 26 when I got married, relatively young in New York City where I lived at the time. I pulled the old IUD at 32, but nothing happened for a year. I went to a fertility clinic, where I was told everything looked fine for both me and my husband, so we kept trying on our own. After two more years of that, I went back to the clinic. The doctor, an older man, told me, “I can get you pregnant in a second.” I didn’t like his cockiness, but we went ahead with three rounds of IUI. They didn’t work. My diagnosis was unexplained infertility and the doctor said it was time to do IVF.

The feeling of complete failure was so shitty at the time. The doctor prescribed such high doses of medication I ended up having 38 eggs retrieved at once. From the 20 that fertilized, we got six embryos. But I ended up with horrible OHSS, the worst pain in my life. I remember lying on the bathroom floor, writhing in pain as my abdomen swelled up over the course of a few hours. My husband was traveling for work and I managed to get to the clinic on my own. The doctor drained five liters of fluid from my abdomen, filling one big glass bottle after another. It looked like something out of Frankenstein.

When our first transfer didn’t take, I said, “That’s it. I need to give my body a break, and I’m done with this doctor.” Our marriage was suffering under the stress of IVF. So, in a big move, we picked up our remaining frozen embryos from the clinic in Connecticut, strapped the cooler to the back seat of our Prius, and drove them to a new clinic in New York. We had a new apartment, and I had a new job. We took a year to work on ourselves and our marriage.

Then I found a new, young female doctor with a wonderful bedside manner who was up on the latest studies. But I started losing faith in her after two more failed transfers. When I finally got pregnant, she misinterpreted a scan and thought I was having conjoined twins. I was distraught. I went straight to a high-risk doctor, who confirmed that it was actually just one embryo—and also confirmed my suspicions that my new doctor was not as capable as I had initially thought.

Now we have a healthy boy, and we’ve decided to have only one kid. We have no embryos left, and the OHSS was the worst pain of my life. I never want to go through that again. Also, my husband’s job requires so much travel, which made the early years really hard and exhausting. We had our son during COVID, so we didn’t have proper childcare. Now, unless my husband were to switch careers entirely, that would likely happen again to some degree, which makes me happy with our decision to stick with one.

At this point, I’ve pushed my IVF years into the deep, dark basement of my brain and I try not to think about it much anymore. But to everyone still going through it, my advice is to listen to your intuition. If you don’t trust your doctor, switch. You may not have a medical degree, but you know your own body better than anyone, so advocate for yourself. And when things get really dark, try listening to the podcast Matt and Doree’s Eggscellent Adventure. As shitty as your situation is, it reminds you that others have it worse.

ERIN M., 37

Egg retrievals: 3
Embryo transfers: 4
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 0
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 3 so far

For the first six years of our marriage, when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, my stubborn hippie self thought I could make a baby happen naturally. You know...sage, candles, Mediterranean diet, no weed or drinking, standing on my head after sex. But by the time I reached 34 and nothing had happened, I knew we had to get outside help.

My husband is 11 1/2 years older than I am. We’re in it together, but he already has a daughter, so I have a stepdaughter. He’s done the full family bit, which is something I’m still longing for. When we finally decided to go to a fertility clinic, the doctor was surprisingly kind. He wanted to put me on Letrozole for three months, but he also thought I might have endometriosis. I let three months go by before I called the clinic and said I wanted to do the endo surgery first. They said that’s not how it’s done; you have to do the drugs first. But the doctor relented, and surgery revealed I had endometriosis in three areas.

Yet even after the surgery, I didn’t get pregnant. Setbacks can make you crazy. And my husband wasn’t sure he wanted to do IVF. But he wanted to have another child. We went back and forth, and finally, we both just surrendered. I remember how I felt in that moment when we decided to do IVF, how my love for him just went from here to the moon.

In the first round, we got 22 eggs. Fourteen fertilized, but we only got one viable embryo. It had Down syndrome, so we did another retrieval. We got a few embryos from that round and did a fresh transfer, but it didn’t work. We did a frozen transfer after that; it didn’t work, either. I was trying to be so positive, but when that second transfer didn’t work, I said, “Okay, that’s it! I’m sick of doctors and I need something to love. We’re getting a fucking cat.”

I also went to a naturopath, who suggested I chat with a reproductive immunologist at a clinic in California. Right away, this felt more up my alley because of the holistic perspective. I’m really healthy—I grow my own garden, I eat hemp hearts—so I wanted to know what could possibly be going on with my body. What is the root cause of all this? I did bloodwork and gave them a stool sample, and when I got the results, they revealed that my body basically rejects my husband’s sperm. The reproductive immunologist told me I had only a 1% chance of getting pregnant…unless I got an autoimmune therapy procedure done in Mexico.

In Mexico, I received a transfer of my husband’s blood to try to help keep my body from rejecting an embryo created from his sperm and my egg. Then I did it again three weeks later because they said it’s more likely to work that way. But about a month ago, that clinic called. They said I fell into the minority category where the procedure didn’t work, and recommended that I come down to do it again. I’m like, “Great, let me just load another line of credit.”

We’ve now spent $250,000 trying to get pregnant. This whole thing can be so exhausting, alternating between grief and hope. I always say, “When you grieve a death, you know someone died. You know they’re not coming back. But with infertility, you're walking with grief.” Every month you ovulate, you also have a possibility of life again. And that small possibility of hope, that tiny chance, messes with your head in a much different way. I’m not done wanting to be a mother, but sometimes I feel like I’m done fighting to be one.

ALEX C.*, 37

Egg retrievals: 2
Embryo transfers: 5
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 0
Surgeries: 1 (laparoscopy for endometriosis)
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 2.5 so far

My husband and I got married in 2019 and waited about a year until we started trying. I was 33. That seemed about average for my friend group. I didn’t feel like I was waiting too long.

After about half a year, my primary care doctor didn’t think there was anything wrong, but he offered to refer me to a fertility doctor. A referral is a requirement in Ontario, where we live. The fertility doctor also didn’t seem overly concerned. We did two pretty heavily medicated IUIs, meaning I was on a protocol similar to IVF to stimulate my egg production. I was planning to do a third IUI when the doctor saw I had a lot of follicles and suggested doing an egg retrieval instead.

Canadian clinics get a certain number of government-funded IVF cycles and ours just happened to have one available. We jumped at the opportunity. But then, a few days before the retrieval, our clinic told us the funding was no longer available. We were devastated, as we’d already done everything to prepare for the retrieval. So my husband and I made the snap decision to pay for it out of pocket. It was $10,000…money we were saving for a home renovation. We ended up getting five embryos. When the first three single-embryo transfers failed, we did two embryos at once, but that failed, too.

Throughout the process, we tried a bunch of different things: intralipid infusions, the pre-transfer hCG injection, acupuncture, karyotype testing, a few appointments with a naturopath. I find it hard to figure out who to trust, because my acupuncturist will say, “Come three times a week,” and then you go on Reddit and everyone’s like, “Go just once a week.” And then my doctor says, “If you want to go to acupuncture, go. But if you don’t want to, don’t.” Figuring out who to listen to has been really confusing.

When we did a second retrieval, we got 16 eggs and four embryos. After two more failed transfers, we had just two embryos left. At that point, it felt like my life had been on hold for two years, physically, emotionally, and career-wise. I’d passed on a career advancement at the nonprofit where I work because I needed time for appointments and thought I might get pregnant. I was the natural candidate, but I didn’t even try for it. Now here I am, three years later, still in the same boat. I haven’t applied for anything new because I don’t want to be in a precarious position during all of this. I feel really stuck.

We switched to a new fertility doctor who's a bit more forward-thinking in his approach. Some of the things we’re doing—like testing my menstrual blood with an at-home kit to see if I have any bacteria or infections that are contributing to our issues—seem a little strange to me. So, yeah…I don’t know. But all of the procedures are on hold right now anyway, until I have laparoscopic surgery this summer for possible endometriosis. Until the surgery, my husband and I are in what we’re calling our “selfish era.” We’re taking a trip to Portugal. If we want something for the house, we’re buying it. We have nothing else to plan for or look forward to right now. We’re just trying to live in the present moment.

DANIELLE D., 41

Egg retrievals: 7 (including 2 canceled attempts)
Embryo transfers: 6 (4 using an egg donor)
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 0
Live births: 1
Years of treatments: 7.5

My story began when I was 33, and wasn’t even thinking about fertility. I’m a doctor, and the place where I worked offered egg freezing. It was the cool thing to do. All the young female doctors would go to these egg freezing happy hours. I went to one of them, but when the doctor started doing the workup, she said, “Huh, you already have hormone levels that would indicate that you are perimenopausal.” So I started on this year and a half-long journey to bank as many eggs as I could. It was free because it was covered by my insurance, so it was easy to think, Let’s just keep going and get so many eggs.

I had been with this guy, who is now my husband, for about a year at that time. We are both very numbers oriented, so we decided to freeze embryos instead of keeping the eggs on ice, because that may increase your odds of success down the line. I still remember having this talk: “Hey, I'm not saying I want to have kids with you, but apparently it's going to be hard for me to have kids, so…do we see each other as lifetime partners?” It actually wasn’t a hard conversation to have. We weren’t engaged yet, but we just knew. When you know, you know.

We did not have great numbers. I did five egg retrievals, for a grand total of 17 eggs, and got five embryos total. We couldn’t afford to genetically test them [for chromosomal abnormalities that could lead to miscarriage], but even so, my reproductive endocrinologist was comfortable enough to tell us that with five embryos, we would likely get at least one baby. So we were like, cool, and then didn’t think about it for two years. We thought of those embryos as a security deposit in the bank. We took a pause on everything and got engaged and then married. About a year after the wedding, even though we had the frozen embryos, we took out the goalie (we were using the NuvaRing) and started trying naturally. After a few months, we went back to the fertility clinic.

Our doctor advised us to do another retrieval instead of using the frozen embryos we had; she said fresh is always better. We started the protocol to do another egg retrieval, but my body didn’t respond to the drugs that time, so we canceled the round. I was 36. It was awful, but I thought, Good thing I have those five embryos. We finally had them genetically tested, and three of the five turned out normal. We put one in and it didn’t work. Then we put another one in and it also didn’t work. Then we tried to put the third one in, but it didn't survive to thaw. At that point we were back to square one. It was so hard. We started talking about a child-free life. I started to wonder, Do I only want kids because I was told I can’t have one? It got so existential.

Then COVID happened. I was already dealing with the depression of losing all my frozen embryos, but then we couldn’t do anything even if we wanted to because all the clinics closed. We were stuck. We were ruminating. And it forced reflection. We decided to start down the adoption path. And in the meantime, we were still trying naturally. But our intimate relationship went off the rails. Everything was focused on my cycle. I did end up getting a positive pregnancy test in early 2021, but it didn’t last. I miscarried at nine weeks.

When the world opened back up, we went back to the clinic and started again. The vibes were bad from the start. Our doctor did not even acknowledge the awfulness that had gone down, so we switched doctors. We tried a retrieval at the new clinic, but my body didn’t respond again, and the doctor finally said, “It’s not worth putting you through all of this. I don't think this is going to happen for you. You should think about other ways to become a parent.”

It was a come-to-Jesus moment. But it was so meaningful. Being a physician myself, I know how difficult those conversations can be, but it was completely life-changing and cathartic for me. That’s when we decided to use an egg donor. For some people, that’s a big decision point. But the way I came to view it was: If I'm carrying it, I still feel like I'm building it. I'm still a part of it. That connection is there. And I spoke to a lot of families who used egg or sperm donors, and they all said, “It doesn’t matter. It all comes out in the wash. A baby is born and that's your baby.”

Choosing the egg donor was a Tinder-esque process. I’m Vietnamese and I wanted someone who looks like me. I think being Asian limits the pool greatly. There just aren’t a lot of Asian egg donors out there, which was hard. My husband and I kept joking that we were dating the egg donors: Who would be good to join our family? But really, you laugh so you don’t cry.

We eventually found an Asian donor and got four embryos, two of which passed the genetic test. But both of those embryo transfers failed, which was even harder. The problem was supposed to be my eggs, and we’d made the difficult choice to move on to egg donation, so why didn’t it work? I became so disenchanted with the entire fertility system, the way that it gives you this false sense of security. But even though I spent some time being sad about it, at a certain point it also became a battle that I wanted to win. I was like, “Okay, what’s next?” I dissociated so much from what I was actually feeling.

We chose a second egg donor. But in the middle of preparing for the transfer, we found out that other eggs she had donated carried an undetected genetic anomaly that was not compatible with life. This is when we actually started putting in a concerted effort for adoption. We found a third donor at the same time. At this point the pool of Asian egg donors had gotten smaller and smaller. I remember thinking that the third one looked the least like me, but we were getting desperate.

We got two genetically normal embryos from her. The first transfer ended up being a chemical pregnancy. That was hell. We were running this process parallel to adoption and I was getting so tired. I finally got to a point where I had to ask myself, Do I really want to keep going? It was a lot. We had been at it for seven years. I was 40. I’d had one year of regular periods during COVID and everything else had been modulated with hormones.

We decided to do one more transfer—and it worked. I didn't even tell people I was pregnant. I didn’t believe it myself. I called the baby “the situation.” We had a “situation-moon” instead of a “baby-moon.” I was so afraid it would go away since everything else had up until that point.

People don't really talk about what happens when you get pregnant after infertility. It was pervasive anxiety for me. And now that I have my son (who looks just like me, by the way, genetics be damned), I still don't believe he’s real sometimes. Of course I love him, but there’s still trauma there. When I found out my sister-in-law was accidentally pregnant with their third child, I broke into tears. The repercussions are long. We want to grow our family, but I don’t think we can go through this again.

DEBRA M., 45

Egg retrievals: 2
Embryo transfers: 4
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 3
Surgeries: 2 (D&Cs)
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 4.5

For three-and-a-half decades, I took amazing care of my body. I ate healthily and exercised regularly. I got enough sleep, I drank responsibly, I didn't do drugs, I had protected sex. I went to graduate school young, began my career, saved money, bought a home, married a wonderful man. By all accounts, I was primed for pregnancy. It should have come easily—as easily as it had seemed to for everyone else.

But a few years into our marriage, it wasn't happening. My OBGYN recommended my husband and I go to a fertility clinic, where—given my ripe old age of 37—we were tossed right into IVF. No Clomid, no IUI, no fooling around. Straight to IVF.

It was not fun. It was actually excruciating. I couldn't exercise, which was a huge part of my life. I had to go into the clinic for vaginal ultrasounds daily, and I had to give myself injections multiple times a day. I did all the peripheral things: teas, tinctures, supplements, acupuncture, cupping, tapping. If I heard of a remedy to increase the chance of pregnancy, I did it. It took over my life. And my marriage. But it was going to be worth it.

After multiple failed embryo transfers and miscarriages, it wasn’t worth it. By the time my husband asked me to consider what this process was doing to me, to us, I had already lost myself. It was time to stop, to find ourselves again. But after four years of focusing on doing all that I could to make this one thing happen, all I was left with was anger, confusion, self-hatred, and a broken heart. The worst part was, I felt completely isolated.

After our decision to stop IVF, I went full force into getting my life back. I began working out again, every day, hard. I turned my sole-proprietor psychotherapy practice into a thriving group practice. I took vacations with my husband. I visited friends. But, inevitably, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, the comments would come: “Why don't you want kids? You just want the selfish lifestyle? Lucky you! You don't have to deal with [fill in the blank with any blissful-sounding, to me at least, parenting issue].”

What I had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting was that I would love the dirty diapers, the back-talking, the limit-pushing, the tantrums before bed. I would love the childbirth scars, the saggy breasts. These people certainly don’t want to hurt me, it’s just the way people talk about parenting, and it's coupled with an expectation from many that every woman will be a parent.

It’s been five years now since I stopped trying to have a baby. As more and more friends and family bring children into their lives, I fight to remember that my husband and I have a great life.

I knew I had to turn our experience into something purposeful, something positive, so I now make myself available to treat people struggling with infertility and failed IVF treatments. After my final IVF cycle, I had tried to find support groups. I scoured the internet, reached out to fertility clinics, called therapists who specialize in infertility. There are groups to join while you’re going through IVF, or grief and loss groups to join after a miscarriage. But I couldn’t find groups for women who have tried IVF, been unsuccessful, and are figuring out how to move forward.

Today, as a therapist, I sit in a room with these women and couples and share their heartache and pain. I help them normalize their situation and their response to it. I help them reframe their negative self-talk. We talk openly about the overwhelming sadness and anger that they have no other outlet for. We talk about the expectations they may have for themselves, and the expectations society may have for them, then we strip it all down and rebuild with hope. For an hour a week, they don't feel alone or worthless, and providing that to them is a great success in my life.

It hasn't been all great, though. I have lost friends who “can't relate” to my lack of children. And the comments about my husband and me not having kids still come and go. "Do you have kids?" is still among the first questions people ask me. When I answer, I feel their judgment. A woman in her 40s without children is an anomaly to them. It's uncomfortable and it brings me back to that place of isolation. The jealousy is still there, too, and the anger at people for not realizing their good fortune. Honestly, I'm not sure that stuff will ever not be there, but I continue to make strides to accept and embrace my life. And I feel grateful that I have the ability to empower others to do the same.

ERICA G., 42

Egg retrievals: 7
Embryo transfers: 11
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 7

When I was 35 and single, I did two rounds of egg freezing. I got 22 eggs in total, and my doctor told me, with certainty, that those eggs would lead to at least two children. Fast-forward to October 2021, age 39. I was still single and decided to try to have a kid on my own with my frozen eggs, then maybe find the love of my life after. I found a sperm donor and did everything my clinic told me to. Things looked perfect. My clinic wouldn’t let me go straight to IVF, so I did an IUI first. It didn’t work. The next month, I went to IVF. I thawed 6 of the 12 eggs from my first egg freezing batch, and only got one healthy embryo. We transferred it and it worked, but then the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. After the D&C, I flew to Grand Cayman and cried in the ocean by myself.

I thawed more of my eggs to get more embryos and did another transfer. It didn’t work. Neither did the next one, or the next one. No one knew why. Pretty soon, I was 40 and had only one genetically normal embryo left from my 22 eggs: a boy with a bad grading. [Editor’s note: Fertility doctors grade embryos to evaluate their quality and determine which ones to use, how many to use, and exactly when to transfer them. A poor-quality grading is often the last choice, but is still considered okay to transfer.] Like the others, the transfer didn’t work. I was devastated. Miserable. Crying. Hormonal. I came to the realization, Now I have to start over at fucking 40. At fucking 40, when the doctors told me that my 22 eggs were going to give me two children, minimum. It was insane. I started a new, fresh IVF cycle, but it didn’t work either. I did a couple more cycles after that and they all didn’t work. It was nuts. A circus. As a Type A personality, I was doing everything I could to do everything right. But everything was still wrong.

By the time I reached attempt number eight, I told my clinic, “I can’t do this with you guys anymore.” I wanted my doctor to switch up my protocol. I’d been taking the same amount of hormones each time, yet the result was still the same—so why was I continuing on this hamster wheel? I wanted him to give me either more or fewer drugs just to try something new, but he wouldn’t do it. So I switched clinics and my new doctor tried a new protocol with a much lower dose than I was on before. It finally worked, but then it was a chemical pregnancy. And this is why I struggle to believe in anything, whether it's karma or “good things happen to good people” or even a higher power. Because I'm like, Why did that have to happen?

On my 11th transfer, we put in three terrible-quality embryos—that’s all I had left to work with. I was at the “Fuck it, try anything” stage. I was crying hysterically on the transfer table, so convinced it wouldn’t work I even said to my doctor, “So, where do we go from here?” She told me, “It’s not medically sound to continue on this path. If this doesn’t work, you will need to look to an alternative option.” And I was thinking, How did I get here? I'm now forty-fucking-two years old, and there's been nothing wrong with me that we know of. And now you're telling me, at this very moment, that this is my last transfer.

Nine days after that transfer, which was Mother’s Day, I woke up in a pool of blood, what I thought was my period. Can we talk about that cruel reality? I was a raging lunatic. I started screaming by myself, crying inconsolably, and leaving vile, horrendous voicemails on my clinic’s answering machine. I downed an entire bottle of Casamigos. I was trashed in my apartment, by myself, bleeding. The next day, my nurse called to tell me to take a pregnancy test because “things have always been a little weird with my cycles” and the blood could be a sign of pregnancy. Turns out, it was positive. I said, “Shut the F up!” And my nurse said, “Maybe this kid just needed the tequila to jump-start him.”

But it wasn't all rainbows and flowers after that. I felt guilty about the tequila, and my doctor gave my pregnancy a 5% chance given my history and my numbers and measurements, which weren’t great (the embryo was measuring small). But at nine weeks, the doctor was shocked and thrilled to “graduate me” from IVF on to a regular OB. I should've been ecstatic, but my memory and brain told me otherwise. I was walking around on eggshells, holding my breath, waiting for something terrible to happen the whole time.

Now my son is 10 weeks old. I love him. I’m grateful he’s here and healthy. My advice for other women is: Don't ever stop. If you want a baby, don't freaking stop. IVF is an out-of-body experience and it really messes with your psyche. It robbed me of our journey of joy. Even so, I'm grateful my son is here and healthy. So don’t take yourself out of the ring. Let someone else do that if need be, but don’t give up on yourself.

MONICA C., 42

Egg retrievals: 2
Embryo transfers: 5
Miscarriages: 2
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 2
Years of treatment: 8

It started out like a typical story. I was moving through life, and didn’t think I had any fertility issues. But at 30, after three years of trying naturally, my husband and I figured IVF was the answer. We lived in the United Kingdom at the time, and thought we’d have the National Health Service (NHS) for financial support. But we were unexpectedly affected by their Postcode Lottery, and had to pay out of pocket (around £7,000 per round). That was a big blow. We had to get our finances in order before we could begin the process.

The first transfer didn’t work. The doctors just looked at me and said, “You’re 30, your husband’s sperm is fine, so it must be your egg quality, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just try IVF again.” That didn’t make sense to us. I remember in the back of my head, thinking, That’s bullshit. They weren’t going to change our drugs, they weren’t going to change anything, so why would we just jump into doing it all over again?

We took a pause. For a year I concentrated on my health and wellness by slowing down and working on my mindset (I began to say things like, “When I become pregnant, not if"). My diet became a big focus, too. Even though I didn’t think it was bad, I had “normal” gut-health issues like IBS and consistent bloating. We also switched clinics because I wanted to do autoimmune testing, but the specialist talked us out of it because I wasn’t having recurrent miscarriages. I wasn’t fully empowered yet and didn’t follow my intuition, so we went with it and did another transfer. It didn’t work, either.

That’s when we demanded autoimmune testing, and it turned out, even after a year of being amazingly healthy, I still had high natural killer cells (NK cells). These are naturally occurring immune cells that are there to protect us, but for various reasons can become on constant overdrive, and can negatively impact different areas of the body. In my case, I was told my high NK cells were contributing to low egg quality and attacking the embryo when it was trying to implant.

I took immune-suppressing drugs to quiet those cells, and finally got pregnant after my third transfer. But I miscarried, which was devastating. At that point in my journey, though, I was just happy to know I could get pregnant at all. My fourth transfer also worked, and stuck, and I can tell you that the four years spent working on my diet, slowing down, and working on my mindset were a tremendous help through my first pregnancy.

When we were ready to try for a second kid, we did transfer number five with two healthy embryos. It was another miscarriage. Then—just two months later—I got pregnant naturally, with no immune-suppressing drugs. As much as I was excited, it was a huge punch in the face. There were months of grief, sadness, and anger that I had had to go through eight years of “infertility” BS.

Now I want people to know you get a choice on how you are going to define your journey. I was never infertile, ever. I was just dealing with fertility issues. And those fertility issues were the wake-up call I needed to realize I was heading towards major health issues in my 40s—and increasing the chances of my children dealing with the same, or worse. I can’t say I’m grateful for IVF, per se, but I’m grateful it put me on the path to a healthier lifestyle, which I have already passed on to my boys.

HOLLY S., 42

Egg retrievals: 6
Embryo transfers: 15
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 4
Surgeries: 2 (endometrial biopsies)
Live births: 3
Years of treatment: 3

I feel like everyone’s IVF story has a narrative piece. Mine started six weeks after we got married, when I was hit by a drunk driver. I was 28. I had to have two spinal surgeries. We started trying to conceive a year after that; I was 31. When nothing happened, I went to the doctor and was given a very workable diagnosis: male factor. The doctors told me to skip IUI and go straight to IVF. “This is a slam dunk,” they said. “You’re going to have a soccer team of kids.”

We were just supposed to be dealing with the male factor, but the transfers still kept failing. I had to leave my job as a high school teacher because I was missing so much class time. We eventually decided to pursue a dual track: Look into using a gestational carrier while still doing transfers. We went to the surrogacy agency, filled out all the paperwork, and wrote them the most gigantic check I've ever had to write in my life.

In the midst of our 11th and what we thought would be our final transfer, my husband had to fly to Florida to be with his dying mother. He had never missed a transfer, but this time my mother had to take me. The doctors were trying a different protocol. We froze fertilized eggs that weren’t even at the embryo stage yet, and transferred them on day two [instead of waiting until day five]. My doctor said, “I’m just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.” And that’s what finally worked. My daughter is now seven years old. And two years after she was born, I had my son using the same protocol, with a failed transfer in between.

At that point, which was more than five years into the process, my husband was done with IVF. He felt damaged from all the years of trauma. But I liked the imbalance of three children, so we had to have one of those frank, terrible marital discussions. Was he going to resent me for trying to have a third baby and hate the child if we were successful? Or was I going to resent him more for not letting me try?

He decided to let me move forward with it, probably thinking it wasn't going to work. The first try failed. So we transferred again, two embryos this time, because that’s the only way it had ever worked, and I got pregnant with twins at 41, against everyone's advice. Because of my spinal surgery, it would have been a particularly high-risk pregnancy for me to carry twins, so that added to the tension. Around seven weeks, one of the twins stopped growing. The other is my 10-month-old boy. A friend of mine once told me that when your child is finally born, no matter how they are born, they will feel inevitable. It will feel like this is the child you were meant to have and the rest will make sense. And I really do believe that.

IVF became my life for so long that it changed me and sent me in a new direction. I realized I wanted to marry my professional background as an educator with my personal experience as an IVF patient. Now I oversee all educational platforms at Conceive, a startup that offers 24/7 support and education for women from pre-conception through postpartum. I’m honest with our members. I admit that I was a complete psychopath at times during IVF, throwing wine bottles across my kitchen, that kind of thing. One night I had a full Britney Spears moment and chopped off all my hair. I tell everyone that IVF is not just a clinical issue, it's a relationship issue. It’s a psychological issue. It's an emotional issue—all part of each person's narrative.

CHARLOTTE G.*, 46

Egg retrievals: 9
Embryo transfers: 2
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 0
Surgeries: 0
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 4 so far

I met my husband when I was 39. We got engaged a year and a half in, but we thought, We’ve got time. I felt really young at heart and just didn’t think I would have fertility issues.

Even so, when I was around 40, I went for some fertility testing. I felt like it couldn’t hurt. They told me, “Everything’s fine, no action needed.” But I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. I noticed that one hormone was right on the edge of normal, and I thought, Oh, I wonder what that hormone is. So I went private, which in the UK, where I live, means you have to pay. And that’s when I discovered my AMH level was extremely low. I was shocked, because I felt so young on the inside…I didn’t think something like this would happen to me. And that caused me to sort of lose faith in myself and my body.

I went to a naturopath and tried all sorts of natural things, including diet changes and acupuncture. But my AMH levels weren’t improving and nothing was happening. At that point we’d been trying to get pregnant the old-fashioned way for about 14 months. Everyone advised me to just give in and try IVF. I really didn’t want to—I’m needle-phobic and hated the idea—but I ultimately went for it.

I had a horrible experience at the first clinic we went to. They were cold and unsympathetic and basically rejected me, telling me my AMH levels were too low for IVF to work. I left in tears. Then we went to a second clinic and they recommended a natural modified form of IVF. [Editor’s note: Natural modified IVF focuses on the quality of the eggs, not the quantity, by using fewer stimulation drugs and lower doses of injections.] We struggled through nine retrievals and only got two usable embryos. The first transfer failed. The second time, I felt so positive and hopeful. I thought I could feel a spark of life during the transfer, even in the sterile, cold environment of the clinic. But on my 45th birthday, they called with the news: The second transfer had also failed. I was like, Oh, happy birthday. It was devastating.

We did more research, and I was trying everything on my end to improve my egg quality: acupuncture, fertility yoga, meditation, you name it. We even flew to a clinic in Crete, Greece, for a blood treatment called ovarian PRP, where doctors inject platelet-rich plasma (PRP) into your ovaries, which may help improve your results. Doctors in the UK are still waiting for more clinical research to prove that it’s worthwhile, but I found enough research on my own to want to give it a go. The whole treatment was pioneered in Greece, so I figured that would be the best place to do it. You can imagine the expense: the hotels, the flights, and the procedure itself, which cost £3,000 [approximately $3,215]. Sadly, that wasn’t the magic wand and nothing else I tried was, either.

My efforts haven’t made a huge difference in the end, and now I’ve come to the conclusion that less is more. I think that filling your mind with too many things, too many “I shoulds” is not healthy. I didn’t allow myself to have a drink or enjoy myself for so long, and for what? All it did was create an undercurrent of stress. I wish I would’ve just taken a couple of supplements, eaten good food, had the occasional treat, and stopped obsessing. I was trying to control what was happening in my body, but now I know that you can’t control it. It feels like the more you do, the more your body doesn’t do what you want it to do anyway. I’ve sort of been forced to let it go, but I feel better. There’s a sense of freedom in that.

Now we’ve moved onto one last option for us: donor eggs. I was really against using them at first; I wasn’t ready to give up on my own eggs. It felt like I had failed. But after taking some time off to think about this next phase, I’ve let those feelings go. At one point, I had a fixed idea of how this was going to go, but now I’m trying to be open to however it's going to happen. Trusting the divine timing or whatever. It still isn’t easy, though. Starting everything up again after taking a break has caused a lot of traumatic feelings to resurface. It was nice to not think about IVF for a while, and it’s overwhelming to have to deal with it all over again. It’s like reality has suddenly hit: Okay, we’re doing this. This is actually happening. We’re using donor eggs.

There is still a small percentage of me that is disappointed in myself for having to go down this route. But I keep reminding myself, I had to go through all of the awful boyfriends before I met my husband. I wasn’t going to have a child just for the sake of it. I wanted to do it with someone I really wanted to have a family with. And I’m grateful that I found that person. So now I’m doing my best to get into a good mindset about this new reality moving forward. Ultimately, I’m really grateful that this option exists and I’m hopeful that it will work.

CAROLANNE C., 38

Egg retrievals: 1
Embryo transfers: 5
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 1
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 2 (twins)
Years of treatment: 4

I started trying to get pregnant when I was 30. I didn’t think it was going to be that hard. I’d been diagnosed with PCOS, but I was on medication for it and seeing a top endocrinologist in New York City.

I was 31 when I started IUI. At every appointment, they said, “Oh wow, you have so many eggs! You could have twins!” Thinking back, I was a little naive because I left every appointment thinking, This is going to be great. I did nine rounds of IUI. My body mass index soared from all the drugs; I was taking Letrozole so I would produce more than one egg for each IUI round. I’m five feet four, and was probably 180 pounds.

My doctor said I would never get pregnant with such a high BMI, so I basically had to take 2019 and 2020 off from trying to get pregnant. It was COVID, so I used the time of working from home to focus on my health. I lost 40 pounds. By January 2021, when I went back to the doctor, they decided to immediately do IVF. They knew I would probably overstimulate because of the PCOS, and I did. My first egg retrieval, I got 41 eggs. We ended up with 16 embryos, and they did the first transfer on Mother’s Day. I thought it was very symbolic, but sadly, it didn’t work.

The next two transfers also failed. It was emotionally draining. At that point my husband suggested surrogacy and I just lost it. There are many wonderful women out there who are surrogates, and I think the option is wonderful, but I really, really wanted to be pregnant myself. I wanted to have that experience if I could. So I started doing my own research and advocating for myself: Should I be on this? This? Should I change my prenatals? What should I be doing differently?

Finally, my doctors referred me to Dr. Sami David, who was the first doctor in New York to perform a successful IVF and calls himself a “reproductive detective.” He now focuses on what he calls “more conservative” approaches to infertility. He wasn’t cheap and didn’t take insurance. But it was worth it for the diagnosis he gave me: ureaplasma, which can cause bacterial infections that can then cause fertility problems. He put me on antibiotics, then did additional bloodwork that found I have high natural killer cells (NK cells) and an MTHFR mutation, which reduces my body’s ability to absorb vitamin B12 in the form of folic acid, which is essential for pregnancy. I also learned I have antiphospholipid syndrome, which means I would need to be put on baby aspirin and blood thinners to reduce the risk of blood clots.

I took all this info to my doctor, and we ended up doing intralipid infusions to curb the NK cells. They also had me change my diet to gluten-free and dairy-free. I still didn’t get pregnant. That’s when I decided to switch primary doctors and push for more tests. With my new doctor, I had a hysteroscopy and the ERPeak test, and took several other new medications. That’s when things finally turned around.

My new doctor predicted I would have twins if he transferred two embyros because everything ended up looking so good, but he left the choice up to me. I decided on two embryos—and he was right. I had a very rough twin pregnancy: I got gestational diabetes and ended up having to take blood thinners twice a day. I also got high blood pressure.

In the end, all the struggles made me appreciate my kids so much more. Of course, I don’t want to go back to those IVF years. They were so hard, for me and my husband. I blocked a lot of that time out, and when I stop to really think about it, I still get so mad at the entire process. But I have a boy and a girl now, and they’re beautiful and healthy, so I wouldn’t change anything for the world. There’s hope for everyone and so much light. Just remember to advocate for yourself.

JEN M., 39

Egg retrievals: 1
Embryo transfers: 4
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 6
Surgeries: 5
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 4 so far

My husband and I have been trying to have a baby since 2020. I had five miscarriages before beginning IVF in 2022. We were lucky to have one successful egg retrieval, with 22 eggs and six genetically-tested normal embryos. But then I went on to have three failed transfers and my sixth miscarriage.

My doctor put me on immune treatment right away. The thinking there is that miscarriages can be indicative of a high autoimmune response, meaning your body rejects the embryos thinking they’re invaders, and the meds help suppress that response.

I also had three hysteroscopies and a laparoscopy. I did everything my doctors told me to do. Even so, some of the doctors made me feel I was to blame. One told me running was the cause of my miscarriages. I'm not a runner. I've never run in my life. He also blamed one of my miscarriages on flying and told me to stop, but I have to fly all the time for work.

In February 2023, we finally had a successful transfer. We heard a heartbeat. Then I had a subchorionic hematoma, when blood collects under the chorion membrane during pregnancy. The amount of blood that came out was traumatic, but we still heard a heartbeat after that and the baby continued to grow. Then we lost the baby at seven weeks.

I cried and I struggled. I always say that there are studies that show dealing with infertility is the same as going through cancer treatments. But with cancer, people bring you food and show up; with infertility, because it’s so quiet and private, people can’t comprehend what you’re going through and don’t know what to say. They lack the empathy to understand your grief. I’ve struggled with support during this time, and have lost a lot of friends.

I was not well mentally after all the setbacks. I now realize I was on autopilot. It’s really painful stuff we’re all dealing with, but the craziest part is we keep putting ourselves back into the traumatic situation. Most people who experience trauma don’t go back to it, but we continue to go back again and again. I realized that doing so had led me to suppress my emotions because I couldn’t handle the pain.

I’m so grateful for my primary-care physician, who saw me struggling and let me cry in her office, and suggested I go on Zoloft. She’s an infertility patient herself and had had multiple failed transfers. Going on Zoloft has been a big shift in this whole journey for me. When I cleared it with my fertility doctor, he was so surprised I wasn’t already on it. He said many women like me, with repeated pregnancy losses, were on an antidepressant.

Right now we have two embryos left from our egg retrieval. I have a new fertility doctor. I’m at a point where I don’t even know if I want to be pregnant anymore. But I’m also starting to realize that may be the trauma talking. I think it’s taken over my mind. I’ve spent so much time being let down over and over again that my mind has sort of gone to another place, and I’ve started to accept that it may not ever happen for me—even though I still want to be a parent. It’s a confusing time.

I’m about to have another hysteroscopy to address anatomical issues, which will hopefully make it easier for an embryo to implant. You know, when you start this process, you have all these ideas of how you want your family to be. Then it all goes out the window. You’re left just hoping and praying for one kid, and that’s fine.

KATE D., 45

Egg retrievals: 5 (including canceled retrievals)
Embryo transfers: 5
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 1 (via surrogate)
Years of treatment: 10

I got into the fertility world because I was single, not because I was infertile. I was 35 and wanted to have a baby someday, so I froze my eggs. Infertility unfolded from there, much like a Pandora’s box.

When I first froze my eggs 10 years ago, it wasn’t a popular thing. I got eight, but no one told me that wasn’t enough. So I went about my life. Then, at 37, I still hadn’t found a partner, so I said, “I have my whole life to find a husband, I don't have that long to have a kid.”

I found a sperm donor and did a bunch of IUIs, but none of them worked. Eventually I thawed my eggs, and only four of the eight made it through the thawing process. Only two of those fertilized, and I got only one embryo, a mosaic embryo, which has a mix of normal and abnormal cells. My clinic at the time refused to transfer mosaics, so I was like, What? How is this possible? How do I have nothing to show for anything I’ve done so far?

I switched clinics, and we did two more retrievals, but nothing happened. I wasn’t getting any good quality eggs. I switched doctors within my clinic, and he diagnosed me with diminished ovarian reserve. We tried to do a couple more retrievals, but I never had enough follicles to go through with it, so we converted them all to IUIs. Again, nothing worked.

Finally, I decided to use a donor embryo. I met a nice couple from California who donated some of their leftover embryos to me, and I thought, This is great! I’ve got good-quality embryos, let’s go! But the first transfer failed, and the second was a chemical pregnancy.

Then my doctor decided to do a bunch more tests, including the ERA, Emma, Alice, and EFT—deeper endometrial testing that, frankly, should have been done before I transferred anything. The tests showed I had markers for endometriosis that were maybe causing inflammation, so I did the diagnostic laparoscopic surgery. They found stage three endo. Then COVID hit. It was the beginning of the pandemic, I had no good-quality embryos left from the donation, and I was recovering from the surgery. It was horrible.

I ended up going with a new egg and sperm donor after that. I bought eight eggs, got two embryos from that, and transferred one, while doing a full, intense immune protocol to reduce my inflammation. Much to my surprise, that transfer stuck, but nearly seven weeks later, I miscarried. I was gushing blood and walked myself to the emergency room. It was a new circle of hell.

My second transfer from that batch of donor eggs failed, too, so I changed clinics again. This time I went with a fresh egg donor, got heaps of embryos, and did two more transfers. The first failed, and the second ended in a chemical pregnancy. At that point, I was like, What more can happen? I started to think that all I was doing was ticking the boxes on all the worst things that can happen. Finally, a friend of mine said, “I think you need to call it. You’re destroying your physical self.” I'm thankful she said that because I probably would’ve kept going.

I went with a surrogate, in the end. She got pregnant on the first try. I’m so happy it was so easy for her, but there was always that feeling, Why was it so easy for some people when it was so hard for me?

Now that I have my daughter, another weird thing has popped up: I feel like I’m not allowed to say that parenting is hard since I worked so hard to get here. People who got pregnant easily can say that, but not me. The trauma of infertility doesn’t just disappear, but I’m working on it.

BRITTNEY W., 38

Egg retrievals: 6
Embryo transfers: 3
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 0
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 4 so far

My husband and I have been together since college. We did the career thing first; he’s an engineer and I’m an occupational therapist. We were heads-down working, saving for a house, all that stuff that you do. Then in 2020, when I was 35, we decided we were ready to start a family.

I went in for a regular checkup and mentioned that I was having heavy periods. A quick ultrasound revealed I might have endometriosis. My husband's biggest fear was that we’d get pregnant and miscarry; my biggest fear was that I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant at all.

We did some timed-intercourse cycles, and an IUI cycle that didn't work. Then we moved onto IVF, and our first egg retrieval was at the end of 2021. We ended up with three embryos. Our first two transfers failed, and by then we had used up my husband’s insurance coverage.

Once I knew we were going to have to start paying out of pocket, I found a new doctor who was willing to try a different protocol with different supplements. She even put me on red light therapy, which can lead to better egg quality by reducing inflammation and increasing blood flow to your ovaries. We did another retrieval, and I did everything possible to get my body ready for another transfer, including endometrial surgery and changing my diet. We got a couple good embryos. But then we did another retrieval after that, to bank more, and it was a complete, crushing failure—none of the eggs fertilized.

At that point we decided to try a third transfer with our last embryo from the first retrieval. I’d been pretty much eating autoimmune paleo for a year: no grains, legumes, or dairy, and lots of leafy green vegetables, fermented foods, and bone broth. I was taking thousands of supplements. I’d basically given up everything in the world to make this work, but that transfer failed, too. I was completely crushed.

That’s when we decided to open the doors to every avenue and move forward in different directions at the same time. I thought, We can’t keep playing small ball here, dabbling in just one thing. We started pursuing surrogacy, and also decided to do one more retrieval with an in-network doctor.

We chose an independent surrogacy option—when you find the surrogate yourself and don’t use an agency—and found our first match by posting our story on social media. But she backed out shortly after we matched. We reposted and received another response. We met with her and adored her, then rushed to purchase surrogate-friendly insurance for her before the open enrollment period ended. It took us two months to get through psych, legal, and medical clearance to get her to our transfer date. On my birthday, she texted me that she had just thrown up.

Finding out she’s pregnant has led to this weird mix of emotions. It’s been a roller coaster, honestly. I’m happy, of course, but also can’t help but wonder, Why isn’t it me? There’s a bit of unexpected grief there. I'd been so excited about the idea of going down this path that I hadn’t really stopped to grieve the fact that it wouldn’t be me.

I also feel guilty that my surrogate’s feeling crappy, experiencing pain on my behalf, while I’m just sitting here eating my sushi and taking a bath. And what do I even do now? If I were pregnant, I would be researching what to eat and how to prepare. But I’m not, so I’m still figuring out what to do with myself, not to mention what to tell everyone. Do I say, like, “We're pregnant,” “I'm pregnant,” “Our surrogate is pregnant”?

It’s all very new. Also, I haven’t completely given up the idea that I will someday carry a child myself. But for now I’m just grateful for our surrogate and trust that she's doing what needs to be done.

NICOLE C., 39

Egg retrievals: 11
Embryo transfers: 8
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 4
Surgeries: 4
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 3.5

When I was 34, my OB removed my IUD. I asked her to check my fertility numbers at the same time, just to see, and after the bloodwork, she found my AMH level was low and my FSH was high. She suspected I had low ovarian reserve and recommended my husband and I go straight to a fertility specialist.

We started with the whole testing workup, and were in the middle of our first IUI when COVID hit. The world shut down, and so did my clinic. This can’t be happening, I thought. I searched Chicago for any clinic that might still be open. In a stroke of luck, I found the clinic I still use today, and a doctor I love. She’s an IVF patient herself, who has also been through many transfers.

At my new doctor’s recommendation, we only did one IUI, which failed, before moving on to IVF. We didn’t get any normal embryos after the first retrieval. Not having anything to work with up front is a new kind of hell. But I remember thinking, I’m in this for the long haul, so let’s keep going.

We eventually banked up four genetically-tested embryos after four retrievals, and my doctor was comfortable going into our first transfer. It worked, and we shared the good news with our families on Christmas Eve at a party we were hosting. Then, literally 20 minutes after telling them, I started bleeding. The miscarriage was devastating.

Somehow we picked up the pieces. We did another transfer that failed, and then another transfer after that, which ended in another miscarriage at five and a half weeks—the exact same time as my first one. I turned into a bit of a crazy person along the way, where I would take about four pregnancy tests a day after every transfer. But that was the only place where my anxiety could live; I had to take a million little steps like that.

We just kept going and going. Retrieval after retrieval. Transfer after transfer. I kept saying, “We are not stopping. We are just not stopping.” It’s the one thing I wasn’t willing to give up on. I have no desire to run a marathon, but this was my own personal marathon.

I realize how privileged I am that I was able to say, “I’m not stopping until I have a baby in my arms.” Not every woman has that option. Luckily, I live in a state with fertility coverage, and I have a supportive partner and a job that has allowed me to do these treatments. But I won’t say that didn’t come without consequences. My husband and I struggled for a long time. He wanted to stop long before I did, and I told him, “I would choose this path and a baby over our marriage.” That’s how badly I wanted it. I was willing to give up everything it took. I was just so in it.

After 11 retrievals and eight transfers, I had a positive pregnancy test and got past the day where I had miscarried many other times. We got to where we heard a heartbeat…and then I totaled my car when I was at seven weeks. There I was on the side of the road, sobbing uncontrollably, thinking, My baby is gone. But she was fine. I now have a beautiful 10-month-old daughter. I can't explain what we really did differently on that last round. They say that happens sometimes—you just keep going and it works at some point.

Now that we have our daughter, my husband says all the time, “I’m so happy you pushed us to keep going because now we have Zoe.” We’re both just over the moon in love with her. But for all the joy, the trauma is still there. There are times when I think I'm going to go into her room and she’s not going to be breathing.

I’d love for her to have one sibling. I don’t think I have it in me to go through another 11 retrievals and eight transfers, but I have a little fight left in me. I’m going to do a couple more retrievals to see what we can get.

LAUREN M., 36

Egg retrievals: 4
Embryo transfers: 9 (3 via surrogate)
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 5 (2 of a surrogate)
Surgeries: 2
Live births: 3 (1 via surrogate)
Years of treatment: 4

I have a long story because a lot happened. I ended up with three beautiful sons, one by a surrogate and two I gave birth to. IVF is a wild ride. It’s not a perfect science. I have nothing negative to say about it, but do I still have pain in my heart from those dark years of trying? Yeah, I do.

I was 29 and newly married when we first started trying. For whatever reason, I had this idea in my mind that it wasn’t going to happen easily. But I got pregnant in the second month. Unfortunately, I miscarried at six weeks. We kind of just moved on, thinking, Hey, I got pregnant once, so I’ll get pregnant again in no time. No worries.

After about eight or nine months where nothing happened, though, we went to a fertility clinic. They found a couple issues with my husband’s sperm—low motility and morphology—so suggested we start with IUI. We did two rounds that failed before we moved onto IVF.

Fortunately, producing good-quality embryos did not prove to be an issue. But getting them to stick around did. Month after month, my transfers kept failing, and the conversations we had with doctors were unending. We did so many tests, from a saline sonogram to be sure my uterus didn’t have any structural abnormalities to a hysteroscopy to look inside my uterus. I even tried Viagra to increase the thickness of my uterus lining. Who even knew that was a thing?

Eight failed transfers later, our doctors suggested surrogacy. The unknown of surrogacy was obviously a little daunting. At the time, in New York, surrogacy was not legal, so we used an agency in Maryland. We met a few potential people, then made a match with a woman we really liked. It was a gut feeling with her—like, Okay, this could work.

Around the same time that we matched with her, I got pregnant on my own. But it turned into an ectopic pregnancy soon after my positive test. After three methotrexate shots did not resolve the pregnancy, I had to have it removed three months later, along with my fallopian tube.

As the ectopic pregnancy was playing out, our surrogate did her first embryo transfer, and it worked. Then she miscarried around six weeks, and that rocked our world. Of course we knew that miscarriage was possible—it’s always possible—but we really didn’t see it going that way. We’d put all our hopes into that basket, especially after the ectopic, and truly thought everything would be perfect.

My husband and I hadn’t told our surrogate about the ectopic, because it happened even before her first embryo transfer, and I hadn’t wanted to distract or burden her with what was going on with me. After she had the miscarriage, I decided to tell her, because she was struggling emotionally and I felt I could help support her in a way that maybe no one else could. After all, we had such a unique shared experience. I was technically miscarrying for three months, and she had her first miscarriage at that same time—which was pretty traumatizing. Ultimately, I hoped that telling her about my ectopic pregnancy would help us connect even more over our shared goal of bringing a baby into the world, which it did.

We tried again with the surrogate, and again she miscarried. At that point it became a question of how far were we willing to go with this. The surrogate is the end of the road, and we were there. Thankfully, we were very fortunate to have the means to keep pursuing that option, and the surrogate was willing to try one last time.

We did have the option of moving to a different surrogate, but we felt like we had put so much time and effort into our relationship with her that I couldn’t bear the thought of losing that. We put in two embyros this time, a boy and a girl. They both took, but then around six weeks, one stopped growing. The other was a healthy boy.

Around that same time, I began a three-month treatment with Lupron Depot, which basically suppresses hormones and tricks your body into thinking it’s in menopause. You flush out your system and then reintroduce the estrogen to get everything moving again. It’s hell—menopause is no joke. But I wanted to do it to be sure we were exhausting all of our options.

Our doctor had originally presented Lupron Depot to us at the beginning of our journey as more of a last resort. Because our surrogate didn’t have the greatest track record with our embryos, I thought, What’s the harm in trying this, too? I wanted to throw everything in and see what sticks. I knew it would be amazing if our surrogate’s pregnancy worked out, but I wasn’t ready to fully give up on myself yet, either. I wanted to give it one last shot.

When I finished the three-month treatment, our surrogate was still pregnant, and it looked like it was going to stick around. But at that point I’d put my body through hell for three months and didn’t want it all to be for nothing, so we decided to try a transfer. I didn’t think it would work, but it did. So, yes, I was pregnant at the same time as our surrogate. I had a lot of anxiety about telling her, because here’s this incredible woman who is sacrificing so much for us, and I didn’t want her to think it was all for nothing. But she was wonderful, and we were able to form this bond during our pregnancies that very few people get to experience. The babies were born three months apart.

Two years after the boys were born, I decided I was not done building a family. I did another transfer, but it failed. I decided to do another three-month round of Lupron since it had worked last time, and I got pregnant on my first transfer after it was over. Going back to the doctor’s office, sitting on the table again, all these overwhelming scary feelings came rushing back.

PTSD is something that I wasn’t expecting to hit me quite as hard as it did. Anyone going through IVF should know PTSD is real. You can’t just shed all the struggles. In my case, I’m very thankful it all worked out—the positives outweigh the negatives. I came out the other side, and I have three beautiful children. None of that would have been possible without IVF.

EMILY S., 38

Egg retrievals: 3
Embryo transfers: 5
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 3
Surgeries: 1
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 5

I was 33 when my husband and I decided we were ready to have a kid. I got pregnant right away, just as the pandemic was starting, but ended up having a miscarriage. My OB didn’t call me back because of lockdown. I found some other random doctor, but after 10 more months of trying, we decided to call in reinforcements. Luckily, we were in-network with one of the biggest, top-rated clinics where I live. So I thought, Great, let’s do it.

I got pregnant after taking Clomid [an oral pill that helps induce ovulation and stimulates the ovaries to produce multiple eggs], but immediately my doctor said something was wrong. It was an ectopic pregnancy, which can be super dangerous. I had to take methotrexate to end it. Because the risk of having another ectopic pregnancy was so high, the doctors suggested we go straight to IVF. We did our first retrieval, had good results, made embryos, genetically tested them—all those things.

Then things started going downhill with the clinic. At one point they forgot to tell me to take one of my medicines, and I had to cancel an embryo transfer at the last minute. I had this sinking suspicion that the lab may have already thawed the embryo, so I emailed my doctor and his nursing team. Crickets. Followed up the next day. Still nothing. After five days, I wrote another email and included the word “negligence.” I immediately got a call from my doctor.

He was like, “So, cool, we didn’t thaw the embryo we were going to use, but we did thaw an embryo.” I said, “Wait, so you’re telling me not only did you thaw an embryo when you weren't supposed to, but you also thawed the wrong embryo and would have transferred the wrong embryo?” I was livid.

At that point I should have trusted my gut and switched clinics, but we did two more embryo transfers. Both failed, and that was it. I said, “I don’t care how much it costs, we’re switching clinics.” The old lab gave us our remaining eight embryos in what looked like a Home Depot ice bucket, and we grabbed an Uber. Then we got stuck in traffic, got out, and ran three blocks with my husband carrying the bucket filled with our future children. It was laughable. Absolutely insane. I even have a video.

The new clinic was smaller, wonderful. What a difference. But my new doctor called and said, “I have some really bad news and I don’t know how to say this to you. The quality of your embryos is not what you think.” He had a suspicion the old lab was taking genetic material away too soon for genetic testing, getting inaccurate results on the viability of the embryos as a result. So we had to do yet another egg retrieval. We ended up with two great-quality embryos.

My doctor decided to repeat some of the tests our old clinic had done. He discovered my fallopian tubes were blocked and recommended removing them. It seemed like the opposite of what I should be doing to get pregnant. But we trusted our doctor, did the surgery, did our fifth embryo transfer, and it worked.

My baby is due in two weeks. I am out of the depths of sadness that I've been in for three and a half years. And I’m making IVF an open topic on my social media—we simply need more research and funding around women’s fertility issues.

JULIE J., 38

Egg retrievals: 5
Embryo transfers: 11
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 0
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 11 so far

We just had our 11^th wedding anniversary, and I’ve spent almost all those years trying to get pregnant. I was only 26 when we got married, and we wanted to start a family immediately. I wanted four or five kids—a whole troop following me around.

I did all the usual things at first: ovulation kits, charting my body temperature. But nothing was working, and I was getting repeat urinary tract infections, and then kidney infections. An internal ultrasound revealed I had a rare unicornuate uterus. Basically, when I was in utero, my uterus didn’t fully form. I’m missing my right fallopian tube and have low kidney function.

I live in Massachusetts, where fertility treatment is covered by insurance, and thankfully my work insurance was affordable and comprehensive. The only bad part is you have to follow insurance rules. Since I was only 29, the insurance company insisted I do six IUIs before IVF. The first three failed. My doctor tried to appeal because of my unicornuate uterus, but no luck.

This was a tough time in my life; my grandfather, grandmother, and father all died in a 15-month period. We decided to take a break from treatments. We went to a bunch of our friends’ weddings and capped it off with two weeks in Italy. But I didn’t even get pregnant then, which proved a point: “Just relax” is the worst advice anyone can give you. It’s like, if you can’t get pregnant in Italy, then it's not going to happen naturally, you know?

After our break, I went back to the clinic. We did our last three required IUIs, and all failed. We’ll do IVF, I thought. It will solve all our problems. But I was in for a rude awakening. After two years of failed embryo transfers, we switched clinics. Finally, after my fourth egg retrieval and eighth transfer, I got pregnant with our son.

Parenting is so much easier than IVF. I’m way less bitter, and even at the end of a hard day, you still have this cute little human hanging out with you. Now we’re trying for a second kid. I’ve had two failed transfers in the last six months and am currently gearing up for my fifth retrieval. This may sound strange, but going to the clinic is almost second nature to me at this point. I’m just so used to it.

ALISON H., 49

Egg retrievals: 8
Embryo transfers: 12
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 0
Surgeries: 0
Live births: 3
Years of treatment: 7

I am 49 now, and I feel like I’m a living miracle. I had my first child at 35, seven years after starting fertility treatments, including eight egg retrievals and 11 failed embryo transfers. At 37, I got pregnant naturally and had my second child. At 39, I again got pregnant naturally and had my third child.

A big part of my story is that I didn’t tell anyone at work what I was going through; it was one of my coping mechanisms. My extremely supportive husband, my immediate family, and a few close friends knew. But not talking about it at work, where I was spending the lion’s share of my time, allowed me to put all the hard stuff out of my head and not be so consumed by it. I needed that in order to function and have some balance. I also did a lot of acupuncture to cope with the stress.

I was lucky because I was an executive at a cosmetics company—a position that gave me a lot of autonomy. I didn’t have to tell anyone when I had a doctor’s appointment. When I ended up having to go to the doctor every day, I did it around lunchtime. For retrievals and transfers, I usually just called in and said I was sick.

It was expensive. We drained all our savings. One Christmas, my parents gave us part of an IVF round as a present. Other family members pitched in. You're making emotional decisions, but you also have to be pragmatic because the costs are exorbitant.

Another big part of my story is how I dealt with the guilt. It’s not necessarily shame, but when you know your body is supposed to get pregnant and it’s not happening, you start looking inward. For seven years I was asking myself, What did I do? What did I not do? I also felt like I was letting down my husband. I often thought, Is he going to leave me because I can’t have kids? I knew it was irrational, but that’s how I felt.

I eventually realized the only way through was to keep reminding myself that my end goal was to have children, however it happened. Maybe it wouldn’t happen like we thought it would, with my egg and my husband’s sperm, but it would happen. We would become parents. This outlook became extra clear to me one day while I was at the grocery store, of all places, and saw the cutest little baby. I remember looking at that baby and thinking, If someone came over to me right now and said, “Alison, this is your baby,” I would be over the moon. I would literally just be like, “Yes, this is my baby. I love this baby so much.” That’s when I realized I didn’t really care whether my baby came out of me or not, or whether it was my own egg or my husband’s sperm. I realized all of those concerns would just melt away and I would be laser-focused on my cute little baby, no matter how they arrived.

We pursued adoption at one point, and even did a round with donor eggs. That failed, too. But we remained hopeful. My husband was so supportive throughout everything, and we just kept telling ourselves, “We are going to be great parents.” Staying hopeful was our North Star. There was a lot of comfort and peace in that.

I never really got answers about what was wrong. In the end, I had a very thick medical file, stamped “unexplained infertility.” But the story didn’t end there. My 14-year-old daughter—the one who was the IVF baby—is now super passionate about access to IVF resources. Because of everything that’s been going on in Alabama, she started an advocacy group called IVF Babies for Babies that’s dedicated to raising awareness and providing support and equitable access for IVF. It’s her story to tell, and she’s comfortable telling the story of her creation. She says lots of her friends are IVF babies, and it’s no big deal.

As I said, I'm a living miracle, and so is my daughter. My husband and I are just so grateful, and I feel like, even with everything we went through, I’m the luckiest person alive.

SUSANA S., 36

Egg retrievals: 1
Embryo transfers: 3
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 1 (fallopian tube removed following ectopic pregnancy)
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 4 so far

I got pregnant the very first time we tried naturally, but it was an ectopic pregnancy. The second time, I made it to five weeks. I saw the little embryo, but by week six, it started dying. I bled heavily for four months. They ended up having to give me the abortion pill because my body was just not letting go.

We tried to avoid IVF at first. The money just seemed unattainable at the time. But I got a promotion at work, more money came in, we started saving for a house, and we ended up using some of that to do the IVF.

We used our best embryo for the first transfer. It failed. We had two more failed transfers after that. I went into IVF thinking the science was going to be behind me. I thought if I followed all the instructions and did all the shots, it had to happen. It’s a matter of statistics. I wasn’t prepared for the failing part. You like to think you have a piece of control over your own life, and then it’s like a swift-kick-in-the-butt reminder: Psych! You are not in control after all.

We have three embryos left. But no matter how much money we keep throwing at IVF, no matter what we do, it just feels like it might not happen. I understand we can do surrogacy, and adoption is an option, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.

My husband has been so supportive and understanding. All this has definitely brought us a lot closer together, which is another thing I didn’t know would happen. Just the other day we had this conversation—just thinking about it makes me cry. But I told him I'd rather be with him and not have a kid than be without him. My husband is worth more to me than having a child. And you know what? He said he felt the same way.

ANNE W., 42

Egg retrievals: 4
Embryo transfers: 7
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 2
Surgeries: 2
Live births: 1
Years of treatment: 5

My story began long ago, when I got my first period. I had extreme pain and heavy bleeding, and it never went away.

I was 25 when I got married, but we didn’t really start trying until I was 30. We had bought the forever house. We both had good jobs. We were like, “Okay, we're ready for this.” But nothing happened. My gynecologist said my pain wasn’t normal, but after all sorts of tests, no one could find anything wrong.

On my first visit to a fertility clinic, I had an older female doctor. She looked at me and said, “Okay, how can I help you?” I just stared at her: How can you help me? I want to have a baby and I can’t. But we actually ended up having a great rapport before she left the clinic.

We got six normal embryos from my first retrieval. I got pregnant twice, but each time I lost the baby. Luckily, I worked at a company that gave bereavement leave for losing a child. When I went back to the clinic, another doctor told me to lose 20 pounds, and when that didn’t work, he said our only option was surrogacy.

I took it pretty hard. I was so distraught and emotional I went to my original gynecologist and told him I wanted a hysterectomy. “If these parts don't work,” I told him, “I don't want any more pain, and I don't want to have to have this defective crap in my life.” Luckily, he talked me out of it.

I ended up switching clinics and donating our old remaining embryos to science. I did a new egg retrieval, at age 39, and got four normal embryos. I’ve always said, “I’m a really good chicken, I just have a busted oven.”

My new doctor diagnosed endometriosis and adenomyosis [when tissue from the lining of your uterus grows into the uterus wall] and switched protocols, but another transfer failed. At that point we were ready to throw in the towel. We decided to try one last transfer before surrogacy, and that worked. On my 40^th birthday, I was able to tell my family I was pregnant.

Unfortunately, I was so nervous something was going to go wrong that I couldn’t enjoy my pregnancy. Infertility is a thief. It caused me to pretty much be afraid to move for the first trimester. Every single time I went to the bathroom I’d examine the toilet paper for blood. I’m embarrassed to admit how much time I spent in bed, afraid.

Infertility also robs you of so much time. You can’t plan things or take vacations because your life just gets put on hold. We were lucky to be in a financial position to do as much as we did. And we have a wonderful little boy. But we’re older parents. My mother-in-law and father died recently, and that has robbed our son of knowing his grandparents. As I said, infertility is a thief. It’s the main narrative of my IVF journey.

SARAH B., 40

Egg retrievals: 2
Embryo transfers: 7
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 4
Surgeries: 4 (hysteroscopies to remove scar tissue)
Live births: 0
Years of treatment: 3.5 so far

I was 35 when my husband and I started trying to get pregnant, and almost 37 when we started IVF. Over the last three or so years, I’ve been through seven unsuccessful transfers, including several miscarriages and surgeries.

As I approached my 40th birthday, people started asking, “So how are you feeling about turning 40?” And if it weren’t for the fertility stuff, I would’ve been able to answer honestly, “I’m very happy with my life at 40." I’ve owned and run my own small business for 10 years, and I feel young in so many ways. But unexplained infertility is just so frustrating.

The darkest point in my IVF journey was when my doctor basically said she didn’t see a path forward for me and my husband other than surrogacy. It’s a beautiful thing that surrogacy is an option for people, but I just don’t know if it’s an option for us financially. For an entire week, I’d wake up in the morning and remember what the doctor told me and start sobbing. I just wanted to stay in bed and cry.

After that horrible time, I switched doctors. I’m really happy with my new doctor. She is an optimist. My old doctor never really expressed hope, but my new doctor does. I really miss my nurse at the old clinic—it’s funny how much you bond with your nurses during IVF—but I know my good relationship with my new doctor makes up for that. She specializes in recurrent miscarriages. She found I have the marker for endometriosis and has started me on Lupron Depot.

For the first time in a long time, I’m feeling hopeful again. Our two remaining embryos were transferred to the new clinic. Along with the Lupron, I’m doing a pretty strong supplement program, following a healthy diet, mostly gluten- and dairy-free—all things that make me feel a little more in control of the process.

I’m also trying not to beat myself up over everything I would have done differently if I’d known this was going to be so hard. You know, when I started IVF, time was a big thing. Every month was so important in the beginning. Now, I’m not rushing; I’d rather just get it right. Letting go of timelines has been really hard, but I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t be a parent in my 30s. And I’m okay with becoming a parent in my 40s. I just hope I get the opportunity to do so.

LINDSAY G., 38

Egg retrievals: 2
Embryo transfers: 3
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 4
Surgeries: 2
Live births: 2
Years of treatment: 10

I have two kids, but what I went through to get them is crazy. A total roller-coaster story for each of them.

I started trying to get pregnant in 2013, with my ex-husband. We tried for about two years and then ended up getting divorced, not because of infertility, but that did add a layer to it. Thank goodness we didn’t get pregnant, because he was not the right person for me.

I moved to Georgia and reconnected with my high school boyfriend. We started trying to have a baby in 2018, before we got married in 2019. But same thing: I wasn’t getting pregnant.

The doctors discovered I had low ovarian reserve and a blocked tube. So we started IVF. We got one viable embryo from our first egg retrieval, but the transfer didn’t work. Then things got really painful after my second egg retrieval. Everything looked fine after the procedure, but by the time night rolled around, I was in excruciating pain to the point where I passed out in the bathroom.

My husband rushed me to the hospital. This was during COVID, so he couldn’t come to the ER with me. A CT scan revealed internal bleeding from the egg retrieval. I had to have two blood transfusions because I had lost so much blood internally. I was in the hospital, alone, for several days. Fortunately, that retrieval was still successful. We got three embryos, but only two made it through the five-day growing process.

Two months later, the clinic thought I was ready for another transfer. In retrospect, I feel like I wasn't fully healed. The transfer failed. At that point we had only one embryo left and I was terrified to do another retrieval. So my husband and I said, “If this transfer doesn’t work, we’re just going to travel for the rest of our lives. It is what it is, and we’re just not going to be parents.”

I was so used to failures that I didn’t even tell my family we had done a third transfer. But this time, it actually worked, and our son was born in August 2021. After that, my doctor said we should go on birth control. I just laughed. It took me forever to get pregnant, and here she thought I could get pregnant naturally. “You never know,” she said, and she was right. Six months after our son was born, I got pregnant. It didn’t stick, but I got pregnant and miscarried again, twice.

Emotionally, I just didn’t think I could deal with another loss, so I made an appointment with my doctor to go on birth control. But just before the appointment, I got pregnant again, for a fourth time. I didn’t want to tell anyone, not even my doctor. I even ordered my own HCG test from the lab. My doctor cracked up when I told her. This time I took progesterone pills, which can help support early pregnancies, and this pregnancy stuck.

At six months, though, my water broke. Then things spiraled into an emergency situation. Our daughter was born by C-section and spent 67 days in the NICU before she could come home. She’s fine cognitively, just a little physically delayed, so she’s getting help with her gross motor skills. We often joke, “She just needed her own dramatic story to top her brother’s.”

Looking back, I think one of the biggest issues with IVF is the isolation. I felt like nobody understood what I was going through, and I was almost ashamed by the whole process. I also think doctors need to do a much better job of educating us so we don’t have to do so much research on our own. We just need to normalize the process, and support each other more.

GESSIE T., 52

Egg retrievals: 5
Embryo transfers: 5
Miscarriages/chemical pregnancies: 1
Additional surgeries: 12
Live birth: 1
Years of treatment: 10

My infertility journey started 23 years ago when I was diagnosed with fibroids. I was 30 and had gone to the doctor because my husband and I weren't getting pregnant. I started researching, and found out that Black women [like myself] suffer from fibroids more than anybody else. A hysterectomy [a surgical procedure that removes the uterus] was the leading treatment offered at the time, especially to Black women. But hey, I wanted to have kids. That’s why I’d gone to the doctor in the first place. So I opted for a myomectomy, which would remove the fibroids but preserve my uterus.

My doctor said I should be able to get pregnant easily after my myomectomy. But five years after the surgery, I still wasn’t pregnant. Then I started experiencing debilitating pelvic pain that impaired my ability to walk at times. A reproductive endocrinologist said it was one of the worst cases of fibroids he’d ever seen. So I had another myomectomy, which unfortunately led to a small bowel obstruction, where scar tissue was wrapped around my small intestines. This meant I needed to be opened back up just 10 days later for the surgeon to remove almost two feet of my small intestine. Recovery was brutal, and I ended up in the hospital for more than 20 days.

After that surgery, there was still so much scar tissue around my fallopian tubes that doctors were convinced IVF was the only way I would be able to conceive. The first embryo transfer was successful, but just after hearing the baby’s heartbeat for the first time, I miscarried. I kept going, but no luck, just more unsuccessful IVF cycles and more fibroids.

Finally, after the fourth failed cycle, my doctor said he may not be able to save my uterus. And you know, I’m a woman of faith. I was like, “Look, God, if you have a purpose for this uterus, if I need my uterus, it will be saved. I’m in your hands.”

The doctors had to cut more inches out of my small intestine, but they were able to save my uterus. At that point I really had to think long and hard about whether I wanted to do a fifth IVF cycle. My body had already been through so much. But my husband and I decided to do one more, and the fifth transfer worked.

I got up to 21 weeks when the doctors broke the news that I had a condition called fetal growth restriction, caused by an absence in the blood flow to the baby. The tiny fibroids left from my third myomectomy were now growing during the pregnancy and taking lifeblood away from the baby. The doctor suggested I consider terminating my pregnancy because it would become “a hostile environment for both me and the baby.”

I said to the doctor, “Look, it took us 10 years to get to this pregnancy. There’s no way I’m terminating it now. I believe in miracles.” The doctor said, “Okay, let’s buckle up our seatbelts and go along for the ride. We’ll be right here with you.” In my head, I just kept saying, Healthy baby, healthy mommy. I’m going to walk out of here with my baby.

At 26 weeks, the condition worsened to what the doctor called reversal of blood flow, and I was immediately admitted to the hospital in the hopes that I could hold onto the baby for another 72 hours. According to the documented cases of this condition, once reversal of blood flow was experienced, this would signal we had no more than 72 hours before we would need to do an emergency C-section. But my husband declared, “This is not the time yet. The baby’s not ready.”

So sunrise after sunrise, we kept going. At 30 weeks, one of the medical attendants said, “We didn’t mean to scare you, but you have to understand the textbook on cases like yours. We’ve never seen anything like this before.” I told him, “Listen, I don’t expect you to know my God. I get it.”

The doctors performed the C-section at 32 weeks. They had to cut through so much scar tissue to get to the baby that my heart stopped beating on the table. But we all made it. Our little girl weighed 2.5 pounds at birth, and was in the NICU for a month. But the doctors said from the very beginning, she’s a world changer. She’s feisty and she knows what she wants. Today, at age 12, she’s starring as Young Nala in the world’s number one musical—The Lion King on Broadway.

After a profile of my story was published and went viral, prompting an onslaught of messages and shared stories, I realized this was a large-scale global health issue and women all around the world were suffering from fibroids and infertility in silos and in silence. This inspired me to change careers and become a health activist and founder of The DeTox Now, a holistic health provider of education, supplements, and support for women on ways to heal their bodies naturally and holistically, as well as advocate for themselves in the traditional medicine world to get the best optimal care. My daughter, Nia, always says she’s my co-CEO.

Now, in my work, I tell people to be proactive about their reproductive health early on. I also remind them there are many paths to motherhood. Maybe it’s surrogacy. Or maybe adoption. But years down the road, when you’re holding your child, you’re not going to be thinking about the pregnancy. It’s not the pregnancy you’re going to be relishing, it’s the child. Your baby.

*Names have been changed for privacy

Illustrations by Ibrahim Rayintakath

More on fertility:

• My IVF Experience Didn’t End With a Baby
• “I Felt Misled”: Are Women Getting the Full Truth About Egg Freezing?
• 26 Women Get Real About Freezing Their Eggs