As World Infertility Month comes to an end, I thought I’d share a part of our story and how I needed to move inward to navigate the often-tumultuous nature of fertility treatment.
The conversation around growing our family was not one Dwayne and I took lightly or had over a quick phone call. We spent months, if not years, deliberating it: what it might look like for us, how our professional lives might need to change, and whether we thought we had a “good enough” support system, as we live quite far from most of our families. It was not a decision we took lightly. So once we decided that we wanted to “go for it,” we knew it might take a few months after stopping all contraception. When the ten-month mark hit and we’d had a few chemical pregnancies, we quickly realised we might need some additional support. What most people forget is that the trying to conceive journey didn’t start with fertility treatment; we had a full year prior of cycle monitoring, ovulation tests, and scheduled intimacy. So we contacted a fertility clinic and did the routine tests. We realised I had a T-shaped uterus, which made implantation very difficult, so I had surgery, and it got “fixed.” Fast forward another four months—still nothing. Back to the clinic we go, and we embark on the journey of IUI, or as most people would call it, insemination. Essentially, they inject the sperm into the uterus using a catheter to try and get it closer to the egg. All the while, I was on hormones, changing my diet, trying to “stress less.” We’d been on holidays, etc., etc.—the many suggestions people often make when you mention you are trying and struggling to conceive. I tried my best to keep my practice afloat while moving appointments, scaling down on work, and saying no to things I’d been waiting for professionally.
We tried a few rounds of IUI and ultimately decided to turn to IVF. We were tired. Trying our best to keep our spirits high, we had a glimmer of hope that IVF might bring us our baby. With great optimism, we took our selfies with each clinic visit and finally in the IVF theatre. Seven eggs. We got seven eggs. I had a bittersweet feeling because, truthfully, I didn’t know what an “ideal” situation would be. After all, the potential is always there if you can get one good embryo. We ended up with one embryo. We lit our candle every day for the two-week wait. Every day I counted down the days to our blood test, which was one day after Dwayne’s birthday, so I decided to take a home pregnancy test the day before his birthday. As I watched the dye move across the test, I crumbled. It was clearly positive. It was finally happening. We had the video of me showing him the test, us crying together. Finally, after nearly two years of trying to conceive, we’d got a clear positive test—not like the chemical pregnancies where the line was barely visible, it was there, clear as day, a positive pregnancy. Beta day arrived, and the blood tests confirmed it. We were pregnant. It felt like I could sense the spirit of this baby, and I felt like I could finally exhale. When we did our second Beta HCG test, unfortunately, the numbers didn’t go up the way they were supposed to. I knew then that we were going to lose this pregnancy. We both knew. And we did. The numbers plummeted quickly, and in the blink of an eye, our entire journey, all the anticipation and hope, came crashing down.
The part I didn’t initially realise is that I would physically miscarry or start bleeding close to a week after it was confirmed that we’d lost this pregnancy. This is because of all the additional hormones I was on to support a potential pregnancy. So I took a few days off after we got the news to try and come to terms with it, but I had to go back to work at some point. So I ended up physically miscarrying all our hopes on a Monday morning while sitting with and holding space for clients. The unforgiving relentlessness of loss and grief. To me, my world stood still, but in reality, at some point, I had to get up, put my makeup on, and show up.
We walked into the clinic a week later for the “where do we go next” appointment, and we were gutted. Why? What did we do wrong? We waited to be financially secure, we were intentional about growing our family, and we made sure we were both healthy and took care of our physical and mental health. Why us? We both needed a break. So we decided to take till the end of the year to mend our hearts. Not that it will ever be what it was before this whole journey, but we needed time. Time to slow down, time to grieve. Not only the baby we lost, but this entire journey. Because in essence, that is what this journey has been for me, for us—a deep journey of grief.
My body was screaming, I was in so much pain, physically, emotionally, spiritually. It was just too much. At this point, I knew I needed to comfort and nurture my body. I needed a massage, but not from just anyone. I knew I needed someone that understood the emotional pain that a body can feel. I needed a conscious and intuitive massage therapist. I turned to Google and typed in “massage after miscarriage in Johannesburg” and found the most incredible holistic massage therapist who specialised in womb massage and massage for fertility. I thought, “What the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose.” That massage saved me. I wept and wept, and had someone who just gently nurtured and released the emotional pain that was stuck in the cells of my body. It felt like I could breathe.
For our own sanity, we went away to the most remote getaway in Schoemanskloof for a long weekend, not too long after this entire breakdown. We both needed to get out of the city. We needed nature and space, and no cell reception. For a whole weekend, we sat around the fire, gazed at the stars, went on hikes, and just rested in each other’s presence. One morning, I woke up early before sunrise, took my coffee and journal outside, and decided to just sit. It felt like the sunrise was a gift from our baby. A message to say, “You are not alone.” Once again, I wept. For some reason, I just felt pregnant. I felt like there was something different in my body. We got home, and a week later, there it was—the faintest line. I couldn’t believe it. Surely this can’t be. And as quickly as the line appeared, a few days later, it disappeared. Yet another loss.
I’ve known loss. I’ve lost many people to death, more than I’d like to admit. I’ve been stripped of safety and of what I thought home and family meant. So amid this pain, I greeted grief with the words of the song Sound of Silence: “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again, because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping, and the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains, within the sound of silence.” I had to turn to music because words failed. Talking about it felt futile; trying to explain how I am simultaneously so grateful for my life and yet feel so devastated was a lost cause. People and loved ones tried, and without their support, this would have been an even more isolating experience, but I knew I needed to go to the depths of my soul, alone. Ram Dass explains in Sit Around the Fire, “Right now, the real work you have to do is in the privacy of your own heart.” I needed to do what I often encourage my clients to do: give the heart-wrenching, unexplainable, most vulnerable part of myself a voice, and listen. So I did. I wrote music, which I’ll hopefully share in time. I wept sitting in front of my piano, despising the fact that I needed to do this in the first place. It felt so unfair, and some days it still does. I’ve always been the kind of person who could “make things happen.” I knew if I REALLY put my mind to something, I would will the power from somewhere to make it happen. But this I couldn’t shift. This pain I couldn’t avoid, and I couldn’t save my husband from it either. And that devastated me even more.
We stayed true to the promise we made to ourselves. We took four months and allowed ourselves to be put back together, still trying to, by some miracle, conceive on our own. I went for a massage twice a month, and I started going to acupuncture. I knew I needed to honour my body and this process. Initially, it was fuelled by “maybe if I do this, it might work,” but the more I honoured my body and experience, I realised I deserved to take care of myself, not as a means to an end, but just because right now I need it. Right now, I deserve to have a different experience.
2025 arrived, and we embarked on our second round of IVF. I tried my best not to have expectations. “Don’t get your hopes up,” we told ourselves. But in the end, we decided, “Screw it, we might as well go in with hope.” Not getting your hopes up doesn’t prevent or even prepare you for a worst-case scenario; it just steals today’s joy and hope. So we intentionally nurtured our hope and held our dreams close to our hearts. Due to the changed protocol, I was pumped full of hormones. It was a lot! My system struggled, and I was beyond grateful that I’d given myself permission over the past few months to honour my body, so I tried my best, and failed many times. Irrespective of the breathing exercises, the massages, the acupuncture, and all the support we got, this was hard. It wasn’t easier because we’d been through this; it just meant we knew what was at stake.
After a gruelling protocol, a big egg retrieval, and many updating phone calls later, we ended with nine embryos. A result we could never have dreamt of. And so the wait began again: waiting for PGTA results, and for my body to recover from the shock of all the hormones, etc., in my system. A waiting game, they say. It took my body a few months to recover, with an ovarian cyst popping up and follicles not responding to the modified cycle protocol. It was a lot. Once again, I was reminded that I had very little control over any of it. So I did the one thing I knew I could: I honoured. I honoured my body, my soul, and our journey.
Last year, the week before my birthday, we found out our first IUI was unsuccessful. I’d really hoped that by this birthday, I would be holding a baby, or at least be pregnant. It was not the case. Despite our wonderful results from the previous egg retrieval, we were still stuck in the waiting room. In therapy, we call this the liminal space, where the old has fallen apart, but the new doesn’t yet exist. I was reminded that the space in between is always filled with potential, so we waited and we honoured.
A friend of mine recently had the most beautiful photos taken of her family. The images spoke of vulnerability, beauty, pain, and everything in between. These photos told a story. I needed to tell our story, to somehow capture this fertility journey as it is, not wait for the maternity shoot or the newborn photos, the “happy ending,” but honour it right now. With all its rawness: all the pain, the hope, the resilience, the prayers, and the loss. So this is what I asked for, for my birthday.
The photographer was so gentle and kind. She somehow found a way to capture our journey in all its pain, resilience, faith, loss, and vulnerability. Being one out of four who have experienced a miscarriage herself, she knew without needing to say a word. Seeing myself and my beautiful husband in these photos made me realise that all of this belongs to us; this is our story. We can’t keep holding our breath for the good moments or for the storm to pass; if we do, it just leaves us constantly gasping for air.
Our story is still being written, and I still have many days where I am plagued by the “why us” question. And in those moments, I remind myself to exhale, to take a deep breath, and honour it all.
