IVF - miscarriages, blood disorder & DOR

Hi, I'm Celise,

Myself and my wonderful partner Cam are asking for help to undergo IVF treatment and hopefully start a family, after recurrent miscarriages, few eggs left and blood clotting disorder.

What we need your help with

We need help to cover between £7,000 - £20,000 to enable us to have one or more IVF cycles before the end of 2023, or I may never be able to have my own biological children.

Frankly, we are desperate, and wouldn't have set this page up if we had the time to be able to save up on our own. The next paragraph explains why.

Diminished Ovarian Reserve

The reason we don't have any time to save up ourselves is because, simply, I am running out of eggs. Last August, after 4 years of trying, and getting nowhere with my GP or the NHS fertility clinic, I paid to have a fertility 'MOT' conducted, just to see where we were at.

I was distraught to learn that I had an AMH level of 4 - this is the hormone that indicates your ovarian reserve. For my age at the time (31), my AMH level should have been 20, instead, mine was the same level as a woman in her early 40s. In the consultation, our doctor said "If you don't have IVF in the next 6 months, you may need to use donor eggs". Can you imagine hearing that you're running out of eggs at the age of 31? The time when lots of people are only just starting to try for a baby, 10 - 15 years before I thought my time would run out.

Not only does this mean that I have an extremely short window to conceive my own biological child, but it also means that I will likely go through the menopause extremely early, which of course comes with its own health issues (low bone density, increased breast/ovarian cancer risk, to name just a couple). At this consultation, it was as though I had aged 10 years in a matter of moments, I was devastated.

Our recent IVF

After being told we had perhaps 6 months to conceive, we found a clinic that would treat me - many won't because of my BMI - and in February 2023 started our first round of IVF. We don't qualify for NHS funding, so, with help from our parents, we paid just under £8,000 for one round of IVF - the only one we could afford, this was our one shot. At my scans the doctors could see lots of follicles, which was great, so we thought we had good chances of getting lots of eggs and therefore lots of embryos to transfer back.

Unfortunately, as has been the way with this whole journey, my ovaries didn't respond as expected to the daily injections, and we only managed to get a few eggs and one embryo. This was transferred back to me on 6th March 2023, and I continued to take progesterone and daily Clexane (blood thinner) injections to hopefully make it implant. One week later we got a faint positive on a urine test, and were quietly hopeful for our little miracle. Two days later I went to the clinic for a blood test to confirm the pregnancy and was told that I didn't have enough HCG in my blood, and was no longer pregnant.

Our miscarriages

What ensued (and still is as I write this) is the bloodiest miscarriage to date. One of the clots I passed was the size of the palm of my hand, and I was soaking through pads, clothes and bed sheets.

Prior to this early miscarriage, I have had two in 2022. One in April, which happened at work, again at around 5 weeks. And the other, last September at 6 weeks - this baby would've been due in May.

I won't go into too much detail about these, because of the mental and emotional effects they've had on me, but I really feel like miscarriages aren't spoken enough about and can be a taboo subject, even between women. They are physically hard, painful and draining, and they are emotionally traumatic - the first period I had after my September miscarriage, I vomited from the trauma of seeing that sort of blood again. I don't know how I will handle next month.

Antiphospholipid Syndrome

Because I'd already had a couple of miscarriages, Cam and I decided to pay for an 'Early Miscarriage Test' before our first round of IVF, to check if there was any clinical reason I couldn't stay pregnant.

From this test, which cost £700, we were told that I had a blood clotting autoimmune disorder called Antiphospholipid Syndrome. It essentially means that my blood is sticky, clots much quicker, and in the instance of pregnancy stops the placenta being able to get adequate blood flow. This is likely the reason for our two earlier miscarriages and potentially for the most recent one also.

What makes me so sad with being diagnosed with this syndrome, is that, had we known earlier, I could potentially be 7 months pregnant right now, or have a baby in my arms. I have been complaining of symptoms of this syndrome for years to my GP - bladder issues, weight gain, headaches, joint pain, fatigue, abdominal pain, varicose veins - and had been (potentially mis-) diagnosed with fibromyalgia. If this simple blood test had been run a few years ago, then I would have started taking aspirin and blood thinners sooner.

Adoption

Adoption has always been part of our plan as a couple: we have always said we would adopt one or more children, alongside having our own biological children. So, regardless of the outcome of the treatment, we will still become parents, just in a different way.

The reason I am bringing this up is because, when you tell someone you are infertile, they immediately ask you why you won't adopt.

Adoption is a long process, taking up to 2 years, and doesn't guarantee that you will be matched with a child. It's quite similar to IVF in that sense, as both are a gamble on your future hopes and dreams of raising a family. The other thing is, to begin the adoption process, you need to not be trying for a baby or going through fertility treatment. Thus, we have to do the fertility treatment first, if we're going to do it at all.

In summary

We really really need your help to be able to have a chance at starting a family, so please give whatever you can, even if it's a £1, every penny will help us! We're aiming to do our next round of IVF over the summer, which means we need to raise this money by hell or high water, in just a short few months.

In the meantime, both Cam and I will be working on our physical health, making sure that we are in the best shape possible when we do begin the treatment again. I need to lose 2 stone (28lbs or 13kg) to qualify for IVF in our local area, and so will be on a mission to shift the pounds.

If, by some miracle, I fall pregnant and have a live birth - APS makes my pregnancies high-risk too - then the money we receive from this GoFundMe page will help to pay for specialist medications (blood thinners) during pregnancy and additional scans, and the rest will be donated to an appropriate charity - most likely Tommys or a charity for children in the care system.

Thank you for your time,

Celise and Cam