But we completed the programme?

Everyone in IVF is hunting for a success story. We got to the end without a baby - does that make it a failure?

One of the hardest things to deal with when you walk away from IVF without a baby is the feeling of failure.

It looms over you, overshadowing everything. And it doesn’t feel isolated to the specific failure to have a baby. It’s the failure to have a healthy body. One that could create and carry a baby. It creeps into your failure to be good at your job, to keep getting promotions whilst you navigate the battle to try and become a parent.

Then it masquerades, tauntingly, as a failure to deal with not having the baby, a failure to be positive in the wake of abject heartbreak. A failure to hold it together. A failure to flick a switch and carry on with life, ‘what’s next, then?’

At the time it feels like that sense of failure is something that comes from deep within you. Something rotting, scalding, poisoning.

But perhaps, its source is elsewhere? Or stoked by something outside of you at least.

Everywhere you turn on social media, those still in the throes of IVF seek out ‘success stories’ to cheer them on, to keep their hope alive. They crave stories that mirror their current circumstances but do end with a baby. To show that it is still possible for them.

I sought those stories out too. Scoured Reddit forums after every disappointing retrieval. And again every time we were left with just one transferable embryo. Still visiting every time a transfer failed. Seeking out that reassurance that others had been where we were then, and they still made it. Got their success story.

I thought of them in that way too, as success stories.

But of course, if the stories we all look to as models of success in this instance ultimately involve getting a baby. Becoming a mother. Then me and my empty arms can’t be anything but a failure, right?

The dictionary definition of failure is simply ‘the fact of someone or something not succeeding.’ Well, that’s me. In our three rounds of IVF we had two failed transfers. A failure too early to even warrant its own specific language.

We had an embryo implant too, our only positive pregnancy test (and thus not a negative, failed one, of course). This stage did have a specific word to describe it, when it went wrong. Multiple, actually. Miscarriage. Chemical pregnancy. A Doctor even told us this round couldn’t really be deemed a failure. Not really. ‘The embryo implanted, didn’t it?’

But even when the word failure is absent, banned, the outcome equates to the same thing. Not quite a failure but not success either. Loss. Toxicity. It all leaves you with a sense of underperformance. Inability. And grief, actually, often unacknowledged.

You’re told in counselling afterwards to avoid blame, that there should be no blame between you and your partner, or within you. No self blame either.

But that blame is caked into everything that is said to and about you throughout the whole process when it doesn’t work. The language sinks into you, infiltrates your own thoughts. Brings unexpected moments of despair.

Words of failure rang in my ears as I walked home crying from an appointment needed simply to confirm the completion of our last IVF failure, weeks after blood tests had already identified the miscarriage. ‘Yes, we were right. Your body failed you. It’s done now. Off you go, on your way.’

They were reiterated again in an email from our fertility finance company confirming we’d ‘completed the programme’. No baby. But completed all the same. An echo of that Doctor’s assertion that this final round couldn’t quite be considered a failure. Not entirely. Complete is a success, right? Except we still had months of payments to go with nothing to show for it.

The failure was even marked on my body. Still is. Months of hormonal interjections bloating and distorting my body beyond recognition. A body I don’t recognise for no reward; looking pregnant but with no baby.

Whether it was me or my body that had failed to become pregnant, it is certainly my body that has failed to leave me unmarked by the experience. One thing at least that wasn’t entirely my fault.

Except my body is me, I guess. Myself and my body inseparable from each other. So it seems that one’s on me too.

But what really is the failure here? Well, nobody knows the specifics. Otherwise we would all - us, medical professionals, and various fertility experts alike - have found a way for this to be a success, presumably. At least not a failure.

The failure, it seems, is the time, money, dignity, mental and physical health spent in the pursuit of something that, in the end, was unobtainable for me.

It is the fact of someone (that someone being me) not succeeding. Not having the baby. Not being able to have the baby.

This failure left an emptiness. When you’ve stuck your head above the parapet, said you want something, please, and the answer that comes back is a resounding no. But only no to you. Specifically. Well, that leaves a gap.

A friend’s mum once reassured me when I was trying - and failing - to learn to drive, not to fret that I wouldn’t be able to do it but instead to look out the window and see all of those people driving around, and know that there was a time when they couldn’t do it either. But now they can.

Sometimes I thought about that analogy with pregnancy and becoming a mother. I looked out my window and saw all of these people that can do it. But it turns out, this time, that didn’t mean I could too.

And then, when I couldn’t, motherhood felt too visible. It was usually easy to spot those that were part of that club. As easy as it was to spot the drivers. My fate, my failure, was invisible, hidden from view. It wasn’t possible to look out the window and see it reflected back at me.

And my failure didn’t just affect me. In those difficult initial days, weeks, months, I marinated in the knowledge that I’d inflicted this particular failure on my husband too. Of course, he was insistent that this wasn’t a failure, and certainly not one on my part.

Like the language of failure, the counter point takes some time to sink in too. To infiltrate the mind. To tinker with the thoughts.

And then, suddenly, a pivot? A move away from thoughts of failure to something else. Because is something a failure when there’s nothing more you can do? When you’ve put in every effort available to you? Taken the medication. Punctured the skin. Switched the beauty products. Changed the diet. Given up the alcohol. Thought only (mainly) good thoughts. Manifested it. Tried everything. But still you’re here empty handed.

Maybe it’s not so much a failure, and more a case of not being picked?

You often see messages on Instagram where parents celebrate the birthday of their offspring by declaring ‘thanks for picking me’. I guess they’re referring to the spiritual idea that their child’s soul pre-existed and “chose” them before being born.

I remember when I first saw that, I thought it was a beautiful idea. Now it highlights that no-one chose me. I was going to liken it to not being picked for teams at school, except the stakes here are infinitely higher, and the wound stings much deeper.

And anyway, I have no real memory of that particular trauma from school, though I was very bad at sports so I suspect it did happen. What I remember more is running away from the ball, not towards it, in every sports lesson. Actively trying not to be picked. Saving face can feel more comfortable than outright rejection.

Perhaps something similar happened with my recent redundancy. I survived many rounds of cuts before my turn arrived. And even then I put my hand up and felt relief when I had the opportunity to decline to interview for a new role. To leave on ‘my terms’.

Not quite rejection, but not being picked either. And so it turns out that whether the rejection is direct, or you have to walk away before it happens, there’s still a grief to it either way.

The heavy weight of infertility is so couched in the language used to discuss it, even in my own words. Just typing that we ‘walked away’ from IVF at the beginning of this article unleashed a knot in my stomach. Perhaps it’s something I should have rephrased. Corrected myself. So that I’m not part of the problem.

Except now, in this moment where I’m starting to find hope and light in my new path, I want to think of walking away not as a negative thing, but as a success instead. Or at least something that just happened. With no value needing to be ascribed to it. It happened. It’s done.

We need to change the definition, or the perception, of failure - of not being chosen or of not choosing what you thought you wanted - to something more hopeful. A change of direction. A re-route. Not the direction you wanted to go in, but still a valuable one. A rewarding one.

Not in a dismissive ‘who wants to be picked anyway?’ kind of way. Because me, actually. Achingly, longingly, devoutly me. I wanted to be picked as a mother. I wanted to be picked by our little embryo. I did not want to fail at that.

But in the wake of it not happening, I choose to grow from the loss, rather than being drowned by it.

I choose to take positive steps forward, one by one, and shape my own destiny. At the moment it’s (mainly) a peaceful one. And it’s full of joy. Who knows what the future holds from here?

But I know that I’ll be looking at any failure that comes my way differently this time. I’ll be looking deep inside it for the success story, the opportunity to re-route, instead.

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I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

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