Overcoming the pain of infertility
Words: Prevashni Naidu. Article from the Living and Loving Magazine May 2015.
Diagnosed with endometriosis at a young age, Prevashni Naidu discovered at age 28 that she was on a slippery slope to becoming infertile. Here’s the story of her journey to motherhood.
Pravashni had to endure a series of laparoscopic procedures to remove endometrial growths, and it was during one of these procedures, that she found out she only had one functioning ovary and her fallopian tubes were knotted.
“Every few months, I found myself in agonising pain in a hospital emergency room with new cysts that had to be removed. And with each removal, a little less of my body remained intact to conceive a child when I was ready to do so. According to my specialist, “it’s like eating a hamburger; there’s a little less left over after every bite.
Even more ‘comforting’ were the intrusive interrogations at my regular check-ups. asking if I’d met anyone to marry and conceive a child with! These questions were backed up by anecdotal evidence that suggests the best cure for endometriosis is pregnancy; but to an increasingly depressed woman without a potential life mate on the horizon, these interrogations often left me howling my way home.
In certain cultures, to be a single women in her late twenties without the prospect of marriage, is frowned upon. I was tired of fielding queries regarding a partner, and the importance of trying for children while you’re young. Every family wedding brought newer pangs of grief, and the arrival of every new family member felt like someone was holding a magnifying glass up to the gaping holes in my life.
To many people, I was just another overly ambitious female choosing career growth over marriage and motherhood. Inside I ached to belong to that society of married parents who’d come by those roles without even the slightest of effort on their part. Little did i know that the longing added to already stressed hormones, and my endometriosis grew worse with each new religious vow or prayer my mother or aunts undertook to save my remaining ‘hamburger’.
I was prescribed a birth-control pill to skip a few menstrual periods and slow my system from developing the endometrial growths. However, someday when my knight in shining armour did present himself, I would need to stop the pill to conceive. The dilemma was that going without treatment when attempting to conceive, could result in re-growth of the dreaded cysts that prevented pregnancy in the first place.
Finally, in 2011, I did marry my knight, and he was everything I’d longed for. I came off the pill immediately after the wedding, and at age 32, and six laparoscopeis later, I knew that this time was not in our favour. My wonderful husband, four years younger than me, had not even contemplated marriage and fatherhood at the time, but he understood, and together we began trying for a baby. I bought ovulation kits, we tried syncing times, and i prayed harder than over, while secretly amassing as much information as I could about infertility treatment.
Two years later, i was exhausted by the stirrings of hope that each month could be ‘the month’. I secretly had pregnancy tests, and each was a disappointment. I was the one with the problem and yet this perfect man had chosen me to waste his time on. There was no end to my self-loathing.
After another laparoscopy, we agreed it was time to seek medical assistance. My doctor referred me to a fertility clinic in Gauteng and we made our first visit to the specialist with great trepidation and excitement. He conducted tests and spelt out the problem. I had only a single functioning ovary and a condition in which the fallopian tubes are a knotted mess that prevent the sperm from accessing eggs to form an embryo. He suggested a treatment plan which I began the very next month. Living in Mpumalanga at the time, it meant travelling to the clinic regularly to have the treatments done, so I decided to spend most of that time with my sister in Gauteng, and thankfully was able to confide in my employer who allowed me to work from the Gauteng office for the period I was there.
Visiting the clinic on a daily basis at the crack of dawn, injecting myself with hormones, experiencing mood swings and weight gain, even more fervent prayer became the norm for the next three weeks. None of the discomfort or early risings even registered on my radar. It merely served to bolster my excitement that this was going to work. We kept our circle of confidants small; siblings, parents and two best friends. They each prayed and my elder sister even made a few crack-of-dawn visits to be with me, bless her soul. We harvested eggs, allowed them time to incubate, and managed to reinsert two viable embryos.
The day had arrived to find out if one or both embryos had implanted successfully. I did the test and we were sent to another office to wait. A little voice inside of me knew already, though. I had had a very slight bleed the day before and i tried to convince myself that it may have been implantation bleeding. But I knew better. The next few moments are etched in my mind forever. A nurse called us into the room to let us know the embryos hadn’t taken. The empathetic, distraught look on her face was palpable. I cried my heart out and my husband comforted me the entire time, not even letting himself mourn the loss. I passed up phone calls from those wanting to commiserate and spent the rest of the weekend in mourning for my tiny little babies (I’d actually kept a scan of them in my purse the whole time).
With Our savings drained for the moment, and our pain still fresh, we decided to make another attempt in a few months’ times, before I turned 35 when my chances of falling pregnant would have further decreased by 75%.
I was in the midst of my last examination towards an honours qualification, and this helped to distract me. A few weeks later, we received news that my husband had secured a job in KwaZulu Natal. We were thrilled! We agreed that I would stay behind only for a while before following him back to our home province. I spent the days studying and compiling my thesis.
A month and a half passed, and then, one morning, while i was on study leave, I relaised my period was late. I was expecting the treatment to have messed around with my cycle, but that forever present nugget of hope grew into a little mountain by lunchtime and I walked into the pharmacy later that day to purchase two pregnancy tests. I couldn’t even wait for the next morning to conduct them, I rushed into the bathroom, prayed and waited… and there it was: both tests were positive! I was speechless! How did this happen? Was it because we hadn’t been trying? Did the stress to conceive prevent us from conceiving?
To this day, I can’t explain the miracle, but exactly eight months later, our beautiful little boy arrived a month early. I look at him every single day and watch how he steals every bit of my heart. He has completed me in every way imaginable, and I can never fully express the love I have for him.
Through this journey, I have learnt the real value of positive thought. Releasing my hopes and dreams into the ether, and not hanging onto them with desperation released me from the clutches of self-induced pressure and pain. And in the moment of that release, came the realisation of my dreams. I live each day now with a lighter, more enlightened sense of being. I feel blessed beyond measure to have made these realisations sooner rather than later.
My infertility treatment plan:
There are five basic stages in the IVF procedure that I under-went. From commencement of ovarian stimulation to the embryo transfer stage, usually takes just under three weeks.
Stage one
Ovarian stimulation and monitoring. With IVF, medications are used to basically control ovulation and the menstrual cycle. At this stage, I had to take daily injections in my stomach of two hormones; luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) for about eight to 10 days. These hormones together stimulate the ovaries to produce more eggs than usual, increasing the number of eggs available for fertilisation. Once the doctor is satisfied with the number of eggs that have been produced, I had to have another injection that would bring on ovulation so that my body would release the eggs for fertilisation.
Stage two
My eggs were retrieved during a procedure done at the clinic. This procedure, called egg aspiration, took only a few minutes.
Stage three
My eggs were placed together with my husband’s sperm, in an incubator, allowing for natural fertilisation to take place, and for the embryos to form. Waiting for the embryos to develop is quite a nerve-wracking process as you are never sure how many will develop into healthy embryos that are viable for re-insemination. You could call the Clinic’s laboratories every morning to check on the progress of the embryos’ development.
Stage four
On approximately the fifth or sixth day after incubation, the viable embryos (usually two) are transferred back into the uterus. We were told to ensure that I had plenty of bed rest once the viable embryos were reinserted in my uterus.
Stage five
This is the luteal phase. This is the two- week period after the embryo transfer when you’ll be prescribed progesterone, via injection or pessaries, to support a developing pregnancy. The embryos have this period to either implant into the uterus or not. Fourteen days later, you return to have a pregnancy test.
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