Genea wins Masterchef with new soup

As if it wasn't enough that Genea has a 30% higher success rate than the average of all other IVF clinics in Australia, the good doctors and scientists there have had another amazing breakthrough, increasing your chance of getting pregnant by a further 26% per embryo transferred.

Talk about a bunch of show-offs! But seriously, if you're thinking of trying IVF, you want this bunch of clever show-offs in your corner. In fact, I would go so far to say in the manner of loud television infomercial host "why go anywhere else?!"

A few weeks ago, Genea received TGA approval to use their new and improved 'culture medium' (the solution that the egg, sperm and embryo grow in) for all IVF patients going forward.

If it were Masterchef, Matt Preston would be declaring that the cook's clever inclusion of lemongrass and chilli have made the soup literally POP with flavour to create an absolute winner!

I think my favourite IVF doctor Prof Mark Bowman summed it up beautifully (you can read the full article here):

"We are very happy with this. I am a big believer in minimising the randomness of IVF. We can give patients a better chance to have a successful pregnancy in a shorter time. It saves money and heartache."

Saving money and heartache. Isn't that what it's all about? Ask any couple embarking on IVF what their two biggest fears are and they will be (a) fear of failure and (b) how much it's all going to cost. This new development in the land of IVF minimises both of those things and in my opinion, that's not just a scientific coup but another warm blanket for IVF couples to wrap around themselves on a journey that can sometimes feel long and lonely.

National Fertility Week - There's Even A Quiz!

For those of us who struggle to fall pregnant, 'fertility' is another F word. And it's not an issue that goes on for just a week. Weeks become months and months become years and those years are filled with anticipation, anger, heartbreak, jealousy. Name an emotion and infertile couples OWN that emotion. Bitterness? Own it. Denial? Got three mortgages on it. Sadness? They've put houses and hotels on that one!

But the urge to have a baby is so strong, it can't be shut down or ignored or denied. You all know about my struggles with unexplained infertility. The feeling of failure and helplessness can be overwhelming.

Fortunately we live in an age when infertile couples have more options than ever before, more knowledge at their disposal, and terms like 'barren' are relegated to the waste bin along with 'bloodletting' and 'hysteria'.

This week is National Fertility Week and I urge any of you, my beautiful parents-in-waiting readers, to have a look at the official website. You'll find information on everything from egg freezing to male infertility to assisted reproduction. There's even a Fertility Quiz which is a must-do for anyone you know who might be putting off their baby-making agenda. It's quite an eye-opener actually. For example, what do you think is the answer to this one?

In 2009, the percentage of Australian and New Zealand women aged 35-39 who went home with a baby after beginning a cycle of IVF treatment was:

• 36 per cent
• 75 per cent
• 18 per cent

The answer might surprise you*.

So spread the word. National Fertility Week doesn't have to end on Sunday. It can go on every day of the year as we tell our stories and share our knowledge, making sure the next generation of young women have the best chance of success when they're ready to start their families.

*Answer is 18 percent. Woah!

Can Acupuncture Assist IVF Success?

After my first unsuccessful round of IVF, I decided to include acupuncture in my treatment plan. You can read about that here.

In doing so I also achieved a previously unrealised dream of becoming a human pincushion. Because it wasn't enough to stick a needle in myself every day with hormones and have a nurse stick another needle in every other day to extract blood. That's only about 10 needles a week! Patooie!! I needed at least 20 needles a week to fulfill the pincushion dream and that's where acupuncture came in.

Seriously though, I firmly believe that acupuncture helped me have a successful second round of IVF and now the medical world is on the way to backing that up with actual sciencey facts. This is a good thing.

I was interviewed by UWS journalism graduate Tina Ngo earlier this year as part of a video she was producing to examine the association between acupuncture and success in IVF. If you're undergoing IVF or thinking about it, or just want to see a particularly pronounced case of kinked ponytail hair and some awesome casting on of stitches for a knitted beanie, you'll find this video interesting.

Tina spoke to IVF doctors and scientists who confirmed there is certainly a benefit in including acupuncture as part of your overall IVF treatment plan. Her chat with me was the 'human story' angle of the piece. It's all very 60 Minutes. Except without any annoying journalists or mud raking or awkward celebrity walkouts. But I think you'll agree the light was more than flattering.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on acupuncture in the comments section below.

Infertility For Beginners

Watching Nicole Kidman talk about her struggles with fertility on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me that the subject of fertility is one that transcends race, religion, wealth and Oscar nominations. It's the great leveller, something that women everywhere are confronting, the only difference being how each woman attempts to solve her infertility. (This is where wealth and Oscar nominations come in handy because the ultimate fertility solutions generally involve dollars. Lots and lots of dollars, but that's a whole other story!)

I've been following the fertility excursion of Emily-Jade O'Keeffe (EJ prefers 'excursions' to 'journeys' because they sound more like the fun rides up the back of the bus on school trips and less like something from Idol!). If you are struggling on your own fertility 'excursion', I strongly recommend you read this post by Emily. Apart from being written with her usual warm, witty and slightly irreverent style, Emily has written a form guide for how she intends to tackle this baby making business.

As a girl who lives her life by lists, I find this approach appealing and I'm REALLY REALLY glad she has decided to put a plan in place. I wish I had have done the same thing years ago instead of waiting until it was nearly too late.

You see, the thing about infertility is that it kind of creeps up on you. You start with the mindset that there is nothing wrong with you and that you'll fall pregnant easily. Because you're a woman with a uterus and a good grasp of how babies are conceived and people have been doing it for millennia and what could possibly go wrong? Right?

After trying for a few months, you start to wonder why it isn't happening and google 'conception' to find out if there are any little tips or tricks you could be trying. This is where it can get confusing. One website tells you to raise your hips up on a pillow for half an hour after having sex to let gravity help the little swimmers on their way, but another website warns against raising your hips too high because the sperm can 'pool' behind the cervix and not make their way in at all!

The mental image of a 'sperm pool' doesn't help either (I'm thinking of all the little blokes cruising up to the wet bar and staying put for a few mucus mojitos instead of getting their tadpole arses up to the uterus and getting down to work. It's a business trip fellas, not a holiday junket!)

The thing is, it's all very well to try the diets, herbs, acupuncture, timed sex and all the other natural conception methods going around but if you are over 30 and it hasn't happened within 6 to 12 months, then get yourself on the medical highway pronto*. And if you're closer to 40, run don't walk to your nearest baby doctor because in the great ovulation lottery, the last supplementary ball is about to drop.

And that doesn't have to be IVF immediately (although at 41 I decided to bypass Fleet Street and go straight to Little Feet Street without passing GO or collecting $200!); your excursion might start with something as simple as an ovulation predictor kit, or a drug like Clomid to stimulate ovulation. Or perhaps your plumbing needs unblocking or a bit of uterine spring cleaning is the only thing standing between you and a sudden craving for anchovy milkshakes.

In fact there are a few treatments you can put on your fertility to-do list before you hit the big guns of artificial insemination and IVF.

The thing is, you need to start. If you want a baby and it's not happening, don't wait too long to do something about it. Just the very act of taking control and booking an appointment is empowering and exciting.

Sitting on the sidelines watching the growing bellies of pregnant friends (and, it seems, every second woman on the street!), genuinely wishing them well and outwardly smiling, but inwardly drowning in self-doubt and guilt-ridden envy and wondering why it isn't happening easily for you, is NOT the way you want to live your life. Taking positive action - any action - towards your goal is the best remedy. At least it was for me.

I love this quote by Mark Twain . . .

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

How very true.

Except in the case of pregnant pole dancing - I'm fairly confident I won't be disappointed in 20 years that I didn't explore that particular harbour :) But I'm so glad Christina Applegate did cos boy does this make me laugh. Enjoy . . . (and then go write that list!)

Prenatal Pole Dancing DVD from Christina Applegate

* Just want to reiterate that the opinions in this blog are just that - opinions. Based on my experience only. I'll let you know if anything I say is based on actual, yknow, medical fact.

IVF Story Part 1: The Pity Party that set the wheels in motion . . .

Just over a year ago, I was going about my business one morning, having taken Jack to school, put on a load of washing, brushed my teeth and negotiated a peace settlement in the middle east for the prime minister - all the usual, mundane things you do of a morning - when it suddenly hit me.

I was 41 years old and I didn't have another child. Of course, I already knew that. But the fact of it hadn't really walked up, slapped me across the face and tipped a beer into my lap. Until now.

I felt myself being washed away by an unexpected tsunami of grief - a real Pity Party Ho-Down with my old acquaintances Regret and Self Reproach as the main guests.

I couldn't believe I'd been so arrogantly naive as to think I could get pregnant easily and so flippant in brushing off my failure to conceive after 5 years. I had told myself it didn't matter, that life was good, that I was lucky to have a child of my own and three great step-children. All the usual justifications we women are so good at. But all along, I had been ignoring the gnawing voice deep inside telling me that it really did matter. That I wasn't finished with this baby business.

Well that voice made itself heard, loud and clear, on that Tuesday morning last year. Now I'm not normally a weepy emotional person but that morning I sobbed for Australia - a self-indulgent, snot-filled, puffy-eyed Kleenex extravaganza.

Eventually I pulled myself together (as you do; after all, these moments can't last forever because after a while you do start to feel faintly ridiculous, especially when you run out of tissues and catch sight of yourself in the mirror with a bit of toilet paper sticking out of your nose!), and got on with my day, having no idea how, at the age of 41, I was going to get myself in the family way.

The next morning, I met up with my friend Elizabeth who is a few years older than me but many years wiser. She gave me a piece of advice that changed my life. Without that piece of advice, I would not be sitting here 7 months pregnant. That's pretty darn life-changing don't you think? 

So what did my wise, clever friend Elizabeth say? She told me very gently, but bluntly that, at 41, I still had options for falling pregnant, but at 46 those options would have all but completely disappeared and did I really want to look back 5 years down the track and realise I didn't give it the very best shot I could and exhaust every single available option while I still had the chance? 

Did I? DID I???

I hugged her, drove home, sat down at the computer and typed 'IVF' into Google.

I'm not sure why we never considered IVF before then. I certainly had a lot of uninformed non-factual 'facts' roaming around in my brain about the subject. Perhaps you do too. Here's what I thought about IVF:

1. It is for infertile couples
And after 5 years of trying to conceive with no medical reason why we couldn't, we weren't officially infertile were we? Duh! 

2. It is horrendously expensive and would require us to get the equivalent of the loan on a waterfront cottage in Palm Beach Um, not quite. We could put the initial treatment on our credit card as the out-of-pockets were less than $5,000 - in our minds, a small price to pay for the chance to conceive. The second cycle was even cheaper because we were using the embryos from the first cycle - out-of-pockets approximately $1500.

But let me clarify, one woman's 'affordable' is another woman's 'are you out of your freaking mind, that's expensive' and I understand it's not within everyone's reach. But, and this might be lousy advice, if you can beg, borrow or save up for it, in my opinion it is worth every cent.

Let me also say that for those who don't conceive and continue to pay for cycles over many months and years, it can become a financial nightmare and yes, horrendously expensive. It doesn't help that the government has reduced the Medicare rebate for IVF treatment but that's a whole other story! Julia I love you, but for that particular piece of legislation your government needs a good spanking. 

3. It is an emotional and hormonal nightmare for not just the woman, but for the couple
For me? No, I enjoyed the experience. For John? You'll have to ask him, but I swear he only raised his eyebrows once or twice. A week. At the most.

For many couples, however, it is a horribly taxing emotional and hormonal journey, particularly if they are trying for their first baby and nothing is working. IVF can seem like the final solution (and for many couples it is) so when cycle after cycle doesn't work, with all the attendant physical side effects, 'nightmare' is probably not an adequate word to describe what they go through.

So I sat there and spent two hours eating up every word, every fact, every case study on the Sydney IVF website. The stories submitted by women who'd gone on to have IVF babies were particularly compelling and as I sat there imagining what I would write if that were me, I realised that I'd bought in to the whole IVF shebang. It had me - hook, line and sinker.

But how to raise it with John? We'd officially 'given up' on another baby. We'd had our kitchen cabinet meeting and were sticking to the party line.

I waited about a month, during which I began to doubt the whole idea. My 41st birthday was looming, Jack was a wonderfully self-sufficient 6 year old and surely, after 4 children, my husband deserved to retire from broken nights and shitty nappies.

But those women's stories stayed with me. And then there was Elizabeth's story. She had said "If I were still your age, I'd do everything I could to make it happen. You don't want to live with that regret when it's too late to do something about it."

She was 100% right. I was already the 'sliding doors' type - wondering if I should have pursued a high paying corporate career, wondering if I should have had children younger, wondering if I should have worn the nude heels instead of the strappy gold heels to my cousin's wedding in 2002. I didn't want to add to that list.

That night, I tentatively approached John "Call me crazy, but what if . . . "

To my amazement, delight and undying gratitude he didn't hesitate for even a second "Let's do it. Make an appointment and let's just do it."

We agreed to give it 3 attempts and approach the whole thing with as much levity and humour and pragmatism as possible. After all, we were 41 and 55 respectively. According to the success rates on the Sydney IVF website, our chance of success was less than 30%. But at least we would know that we had tried everything and if it still didn't work, then so be it. We would put the idea to rest forever.

I called Sydney IVF in Kent Street with my heartbeat pounding so loudly in my ears I could barely hear the receptionist. We made an appointment for 10 November 2009 at 12.45pm with Dr Mark Bowman - the man who would throw our ingredients into a cocktail shaker and hopefully mix us up a lovely little baby. I couldn't wait.

Click here for IVF Story: Part 2 - Hello Embryo

Click here for IVF Story: Part 3 - Nice Needles & A New Attitude