Words by Natalie Ranger

This is Going to Hurt

Words by Natalie Ranger
This is Going to Hurt

Photography by Masha Demianova

I binge-read Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt on a flight from LDN to LAX. Cover-to-cover. I laughed, mostly to myself, but also out loud. And I cried, once, when a patient died. For those of you who don't know the book, it's a diary of the life of a junior doctor at the NHS. I've pestered my boyfriend with reciting yet another 'funny bit,’ and recommended it to most people I know.

Kay talks about life as an Obs & Gynae doctor, or Brats & Twats as they called it on the ward. He recalls a patient of his that attempted suicide because she wasn't eligible for another round of IVF on the NHS simply because of her postcode. He mentions another couple, who, after their last funded unsuccessful round of IVF, asked how much it would be for private treatment. "I told them about £4000 a cycle. The look of their faces said I may as well have told them four trillion pounds," Kay writes in the book.

The psychological pain from fertility treatment isn't something you think about when you first start. I thought about the needles hurting. And our bank balance, when we had to go private. But it's not the incessant injections, or the bloating from pumped-up ovaries, or the groggy nausea from the general anaesthesia, or the stomach cramps after an egg retrieval that hurt the most. It's the anxiety, the crushing disappointment, the stress it puts on your relationships. Yes, that’s plural. It’s not just the relationship with your sexual partner that may undergo stress, you may surprisingly find that family and friendships feel some twinges. And it's the feeling like you're constantly in a waiting room. Your clinic's, but also your life feels like a waiting room. Stuck in a state of paralysis. That’s the stuff that really hurts. So it’s important to keep in check with your emotional health. To go easy on yourself.

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You don’t know what to expect when you go into IVF. You don't leave a fertility clinic with a manual, they give you the drugs and show you how to inject yourself, but you’ve got to figure out the rest on your own. So here are some of the things I've learned along the way:

• The needles to stimulate your ovaries don't hurt that much. They're pretty small (bar the Progesterone into a muscle ones, which are utterly horrific). And you get surprisingly pro at mixing vials and injecting yourself. 

• Having a bit of fat on your stomach to pinch means the injections hurt less. An actual solid reason to skip the sit-ups and eat cheese.

• Some people feel the effects of the stimulation hormones. Some don't. You generally do the injections for two weeks and get progressively more tired and bloated. Until finally you feel like you're transporting two over-inflated ovaries the size of grapefruits around. Oh, that's because you are.

• Acupuncture, acupuncture, acupuncture.

• Don't over-do the cardio during the stimulation phase. Your ovaries are working overtime so be kind to yourself, do yoga, eat well, avoid stress and get to bed early.

• Dungarees will be your best friend. Forget anything with a tight waistband, or just forget anything with a waistband, period.

• Hot baths, saunas, tight boxers, tight trousers, cycling, eating tofu, laptop on lap, phone in front pocket of jeans. These are all banned for boys. I've never been so protective/bothered about my boyfriend's balls and the health of his sperm.

• The egg retrieval is on the same day your boyfriend/husband has to masturbate in a sample pot. Even though this will be the most odd wank of his life, you'll probably be quietly seething that while he watches porn, you'll be under, having a transvaginal procedure involving a needle piercing each egg-filled follicle. You definitely got the raw deal.

• You’ll either have sedation or general anaesthesia for the retrieval, or a ‘double G&T' as one anaesthesiologist said as he administered the medication into my veins. You wake up in the recovery room, not remembering a thing — a nurse and your partner hovering over you telling you how many eggs your ovaries produced.

• You'll be obsessed with numbers. How many eggs they retrieved, how many fertilised, how many made it to three-day blastocyst, how many made it to five-day blastocyst, how many days until you can do a goddam pregnancy test. They say IVF is a numbers game for a good reason.

• From the moment you find out how many eggs you've got, it's like watching an agonisingly drawn-out Grand National, embryos dropping off at each hurdle. But the thing with IVF is that it's so unpredictable, sometimes you're ahead, other times you're behind. Then you're back in the lead again. All it takes is one winning embryo to make it to the finish line.

• A study done by an infertility doctor revealed that women who laugh shortly after an embryo transfer had higher rates of successful implantation. So download some comedy: The best of Adam and Joe, Game Night, SNL sketches, anything with Seth Rogan, anything with Kirsten Wig. Videos of animals behaving like humans. Whatever makes you laugh.

• The two-week wait feels a bit like waiting for your A-level results, where you're either going to Oxford to become a neuroscientist, or you're going nowhere and your job prospects look dismal.

• You'll be tempted to Google every symptom you think you have to see if you're pregnant. You feel a twinge, you're overly thirsty, your boobs feel a teeny bit sore. Step. Away. From. Google. 

• You'll then go back to Google and find yourself on Trying To Conceive forums, reading posts about implantation tips that are a decade old, from people who sign off 'sending you lots of baby dust.’

• You'll eat large amounts of pineapple core and Brazil nuts during your two-week wait because that's what everyone online says worked for them, but not one fertility consultant I've encountered has ever backed-up this theory. I of course ate large amounts of pineapple core and Brazil nuts.

• Eat lots of protein, avoid booze (obviously) and caffeine, eat warm foods rather than cold foods. Chinese medicine says to create a warm womb.

• Keep your feet warm (it’s to do with the whole creating a warm womb thing that Chinese medicine says. Whether you believe it or not, I’m pretty certain you’ll do it).

• If you're going into motherhood solo, I think that’s bloody amazing. You’re bloody amazing. But if you're in a relationship, don't underestimate how hard IVF tries to pull you apart. A friend said, "it's like a game of mixed doubles, if you keep on losing, you start blaming your partner, and wonder whether you'd play better with someone else." So talk and be kind to each other, and stay a team.