A journey through secondary infertility

OHbaby! sits down with Elysia and Thom as they share their experience with secondary infertility.

Secondary infertility can be a confusing place. It’s like a no man’s land or a place of limbo, where you’re thankful for the child you have, but desperately ache for another to complete your family. It’s a place that Elysia and Thom know all too well. The Auckland couple have two boys, five-year-old James and Joshua who’s one. Elysia says getting pregnant the first time was surprisingly quick, but second time round wasn’t so easy. 

How did you become aware of your fertility challenges?
Elysia: I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) before I even met my husband, so I had it in the back of my mind that it might be hard for us to get pregnant. However, shortly after getting married, we were nicely surprised to find out we were pregnant with our first son before we’d even started trying!

In January, when our baby boy James was seven months old, we started trying for our second. We fell pregnant after about four or five months. Sadly we lost this pregnancy pretty early on. For us, it was disappointing, but not devastating. Because we got pregnant naturally and fairly easily the first two times, it was a bit surprising to go on for so long without a baby. We kept trying, but when another January rolled around we decided to seek help. 

What fertility treatment did you try, and what worked for you in the end?
Elysia: After a year of trying, we started with ovulation induction (Letrozole) and became pregnant the first time! We were so happy, but unfortunately a scan at 10 weeks showed that the baby’s heart had stopped beating. This miscarriage was devastating. I continued on Letrozole for another 11 rounds (with a month’s break every now and then), which is much more than they recommend. Because it worked for us the first time, I just kept thinking ‘next month it will work’. I had the idea in my head that IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment was quite extreme for someone who had already had one child and three pregnancies, so we had it as a back-up plan for June (two and a half years after we started trying). I just kept thinking that we’d never get to that point, but we did, and so we did IVF. We were really fortunate to get two embryos, and the first embryo transfer was a success! Because of the previous miscarriages I found it hard to relax until I was 12 weeks pregnant, but it all went well and our darling boy is now one. 

What was the most challenging part of trying to conceive number two?
Elysia: I found that the grief of losing the pregnancies multiplied every month that we weren’t able to conceive. I’m a planner, and although you can intervene, you can’t control. We would’ve liked a smaller age gap between the boys – they’re four years apart. And I found it hard that so many of our friends were finishing having their families while we were still stuck in a kind of limbo. 

What advice would you give others who are experiencing secondary infertility?
Elysia: Don’t compare yourself with others! Your journey may look different, and that’s okay. It’s hard to give advice because the results are so varied. I probably wouldn’t do as many rounds of Letrozole again, but it could’ve worked for us the very next time we did it, you never know. And I’m glad we did the IVF, of course, because we have our beautiful son – but if it didn’t work, I’d probably say I wish we hadn’t done it!