Lisa's IVF story
"I found the whole journey and the staff absolutely incredible."
Around 11 years ago, I sadly had one of my fallopian tubes removed as a result of an ectopic pregnancy. Although that experience was very tragic, I thought that I might still be able to fall pregnant naturally at some point in the future as I still had my other tube working.
When the time was right, my husband and I started trying for a baby. After a while of trying unsuccessfully, we decided to visit our GP to get some advice. We were referred for some tests and after further investigations we found that that my remaining tube was actually blocked and that there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Conceiving naturally was not going to be possible for us.
As I have a daughter from a previous relationship, we were not eligible for IVF treatment on the NHS so we started exploring our private treatment options. It was actually my husband who came across abc ivf and to be completely honest the low cost was the main reason we decided to book an Initial Consultation and Scan straight away.
The initial appointment was absolutely brilliant. We live quite a while away from the Manchester clinic but it was absolutely worth the travel! We decided to go ahead with treatment and travelled to the clinic for all our appointments but the overall IVF process in itself went very smooth.
I was very scared and nervous to begin with but the staff at the clinic were all brilliant. They were so kind to me and understanding thoughout the whole process. They did such a good job of looking after me and putting me at ease at every step; I will forever be grateful. The whole process was so new and scary to me and before every procedure I got very stressed and upset. I was so scared but again they always took their time to detail everything that was about to happen, so that there were no surprises, and answered all my questions and concerns calmly. This helped me so much and made my treatment a lot easier.
The 2 week wait is a really difficult time for everyone, I think. We were so nervous about the result and we did end up testing a little bit earlier than we were supposed to. When I saw that the test was positive I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to get my hopes up so we called the clinic and they booked us in for a blood test. We went in for the pregnancy test and they confirmed it - treatment had worked the first time and I was pregnant!
We were overwhelmed but bursting with happiness.
My pregnancy went well and although I was nervous of anything going wrong, I felt quite confident in knowing that I had my GP and also abc ivf on the end of the phone if I ever had any concerns.
I made a conscious effort to relax during pregnancy and take it as easy as possible. I think being pregnant in the midst of a global pandemic did add some extra stress and worries to my journey, but I made sure to be as safe as possible and stayed indoors as much as I could. This ended up being quite a lovely experience, actually, as I got to spend lots of quality time with my 15 year old daughter.
On the 14th August 2021 I gave birth to a healthy little boy. He is absolutely wonderful and we are simply in love with him. We never thought we would be able to have a baby and now that he’s here, we wouldn’t change it for the world. IVF isn’t easy and it can be really stressful, but he makes every single minute of it worth it.
I just wanted to end by thanking abc for everything they do. I found the whole journey and the staff absolutely incredible. We would definitely recommend the clinic to any other couples who might be in need of IVF treatment.