IVF destroyed my health to the point that a doctor begged me to stop. There is a side effect of these ‘miracle’ fertility treatments that they do not tell women

When I first started to try for a baby, I thought it would be an adventure. I was in the early thirty, fit, healthy and a bit naive.

I went out of the pill and waited until my period returned – but it didn’t. Not for months. Then a year. Then two. At the two -year point the cent fell: this may not happen for me.

Trying to get pregnant became a second job. I followed ovulation obsessively. At 35 I was officially ‘geriatric’, in fertility speak. I did everything that was told me to do. I counted every calorie, every step, every supplement.

I was determined to do everything ‘good’. But I missed a crucial part of the comparison: my mental health.

I checked everything I could on the outside while I completely ignored what was happening inside. For years I did not realize that my body whispered me. Then it started to scream.

By the time I was in the trial for five and a half years – after IUI, IVFSpecialists, diets and supplements – my body was broken down. I was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, celiac disease, depression And fear.

My hair fell out. I couldn’t get out of bed. At Christmas I could not bring myself to leaving the house to be with my family. I felt that I was disappearing.

The scariest part was that I hadn’t seen it happen. I thought my constant fear was just life. I thought that brain fog, exhaustion and I felt overwhelmed, were only a part of a woman who tried to have it all. But my nervous system was fried and my body screamed for peace.

Then my fertility specialist looked at me and said: ‘Lou, I can’t see you for six months. You have to stop. You have nothing left. ‘

I walked out that appointment and shot. I thought she was giving me up that it was over. I felt that the dream had died. But deep down I also knew she was right. I was sick. Not just tired, not just sad – sick.

I took the dogs to the park and looked up to the stars. I asked the universe: ‘Please, there must be something that I miss. Help me.’

I was never spiritual before, but at that moment something shifted. I felt lighter. Not better, but supported, somehow.

The next morning I walked into my head office. Someone gave me an envelope without a return address. Inside was a bag of FEM21 – an obscure hormone -balancing product that an energy insurer had recommended weeks earlier.

I had wiped it. But now this bag had landed on my desk. The healer did not know where I was working. I was Goobsmacked. It felt like a sign: something took care of me.

That was the moment I started listening.

I went home and said to my husband: I want to be again again.

I collected a team to take care of my mental well -being. For the first time I looked at what I didn’t want to face: trauma that had been built up for years.

I had spent my life as the strong – organized. But I did not realize that my mind poisoned my body. The stress in which I had marinated had become my basic line. I survived and did not live.

Healing was learned to say no. To sleep. To cry. Sitting with truths that I had avoided for ten years. Slowly I could clearly see again. I could leave the house. I could laugh. The fog increased and for the first time in years I felt like Louise.

The funny part? I suddenly wanted to get married. Brendan and I had been together for 12 years and the marriage was never anything I needed. But something in me needed a line in the sand – a moment to say, “This is who I am now.” So we did it.

I found a location, he booked a bachelor party and we got married on December 17.

On January 4, exactly six months after my specialist told me to stop fertility treatments, I went back to see her. She walked in Bloods as usual and the next day I was on the train when my phone rang.

“You are pregnant,” she said.

After six years of infertility, thousands of dollars and every treatment under the sun – I had conceived naturally. For the first time ever.

Brendan worked FIFO in the gas fields of West -Australia. I couldn’t call him, so I went to the dog park again (the dogs were then my emotional support team) and whispered, “I am pregnant.”

They just stood back at me, confused. Eventually I have Brendan SMSs, unable to wait until his service ended.

He did not immediately answer – he was a mid -transfer and was in the work bus. When he finally saw the message, a partner over the aisle noted his reaction and took a picture of him at the exact moment he found out.

We have that photo now. I look at when life becomes difficult. That one second pure, bewildered joy reminds me: everything will be fine.

Nine months to the day after our wedding we met our son. He was the first of three. All of course came up with, all healthy, all after I stopped trying to force it.

But this is what nobody talks about: the trauma does not only evaporate because you get your baby. Pregnancy after infertility is difficult. You not only switch off the fear.

Every scan, every symptom, brings a new wave of fear every day. I had to continue to draw on all the tools I learned from healing in those six months – deep breathing, nervous system regulation, mind -network – not to let the panic win.

Because I was sick for six years – really sick – and I didn’t even know. I ignored a cold that would not disappear, constant back pain, brain fog so intensely that I could not function if my schedule changed unexpectedly. I was forgetful, spread, another version of myself. But I kept pushing through, terrified to stop, because what if stopping meant I failed?

The truth is that nobody told me that the toll could take my body. On my soul. Ten years ago, mental health was not part of the conversation. Nobody asked how I dealt. Nobody suggested counseling. The language was all urgency and the fault: “You are 35, time is rising.” And when the shame was set up – because infertility drips in shame – I just recorded it.

Infertility is also brutal about relationships. They say that travelests a few – try for six years of failure, trauma, injections and sorrow. I stopped.

Brendan tried to be supportive, but I can’t imagine how difficult it was to see me suffer and not to be able to repair it. We touch the bottom more than once. Only when I left it all alone, could we finally come together again as a team.

Healing was not linear. It was messy, overwhelming and frightening. I had to unpack years of generation trauma, mental disorders in my family, the pressure to be the ‘capable’ and even grow my experience with a brother with Down’s syndrome.

That experience made me who I am – it taught me love and empathy – but it also wore weight that I had never recognized.

But because of tears and therapy and deep internal work I found something that I had lost: believe – not in a baby, but in myself.

Today my children are six, four and three. I call them my miracles – but not in the way people think. They didn’t save me; I saved myself. And when I stopped living in fear, I stopped pushing my body past his limits, stopped trying to control everything, I finally made room for them to arrive.

So, for the woman in the fat, the one who feels that she is disappearing, who has not seen herself in the mirror for years – I see you. You are not a failure. You are not broken. You are enough. Whether that baby comes or not, it will be fine.

But please – be nice to yourself.

I wish women were told before they started IVF that it is not just about science and schedules. It is an emotional roller coaster. It is messy and unpredictable. And those big, ugly feelings? They are normal.

The shame, the envy, the grief, the bone -deep sadness when a pregnant woman walks past you on the street – it’s all valid. You can love your pregnant sister -in -law and still feel crushed that it was not your turn. Those feelings can co -exist. You do not have to explain them or apologize for them.

More than whatever, I want women to know that your intuition matters. Your body is not a machine. If something feels off, it’s probably. You can say, “This is too much.” You can ask, rest, heal for help.

You don’t have to wait until you break to listen to your body.

I tried to force something to be for six years. And when I finally softened, when I finally gave myself permission to rest, the space I was so afraid was exactly the thing that my babies brought home.

So take care of you. Trust yourself. You know more than you think. And you do so much better than you realize.