Family, Friends & Mo Farah – Keeping Our IVF Dreams Alive

[00:00:05] Becky: Welcome to Becky & Ben’s Fertility Spotlight. I’m Becky.

[00:00:08] Ben: I’m Ben.

[00:00:09] Becky: We’re shining a light on the things that really matter in the world of fertility. We’re proud parents of two wonderful IVF daughters and we’ve supported thousands of patients as fertility treatment coordinators.

[00:00:24] Ben: We’ll be simplifying the story, focusing on the relevant issues with honesty, sensitivity, and humor.

[00:00:30] Becky: In this episode, we’re exploring the role family and friends play in your fertility journey. It’s not always straightforward.

[00:00:38] Ben: Don’t forget, our podcast is general information only. For a personalized diagnosis, always speak to a healthcare professional.

[00:00:45] Becky: Let’s dive into today’s episode.

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[00:00:54] Becky: We’re talking today about the involvement of family and friends in fertility treatment. We’re going to talk a little bit about our story, about the early years and about what we’ve been through. Would you like to start us off, Ben?

[00:01:09] Ben: Basically, we are fertility patients, aren’t we? We started our journey about 12, 13 years ago and we had 4 IUI treatments, didn’t we, first of all?

[00:01:20] Becky: It was more than that. It was 15 years ago.

[00:01:22] Ben: 15 years ago. Wow. When I say IUI, I mean it used to be called artificial insemination. Do you remember? It’s basically just they got semen and they inserted it at a certain point in the cycle. Do you remember doing those?

[00:01:34] Becky: Yes, I do. There’s a joke, isn’t it? It’s like a turkey baster.

[00:01:37] Ben: Turkey baster. In some ways it sounds quite primitive. It’s like IVF light, isn’t it? Just go in there, turkey baster, see what happens.

[00:01:47] Becky: What actually happens though, you have the sperm injected into which area?

[00:01:55] Ben: Your cervix. Your cervical area.

[00:01:55] Becky: Into your cervix, yes. Into your cervix area.

[00:01:57] Ben: At a certain point in your cycle. I think you take medication beforehand as well so that it’s timed. It’s just not as precise as IVF, but people still do it because it’s cheaper than IVF. That’s why we did it initially, four goes of it, just because it was cheaper. It used to be called artificial insemination. We had the IUI treatments and then we had an IVF treatment.

[00:02:23] Becky: With my own eggs.

[00:02:24] Ben: Which we had a positive result, didn’t we?

[00:02:26] Becky: Yes, we had a positive pregnancy.

[00:02:28] Ben: That was an amazing experience. Unfortunately, it did end in a miscarriage.

[00:02:33] Becky: At five and a half weeks.

[00:02:34] Ben: Five and a half weeks. We then, after much thinking, thought maybe we need to try donated eggs. Do you remember this?

[00:02:42] Becky: We did have a couple more IVF cycles which failed. This led to us realizing by the age of what, 40, would you say?

[00:02:51] Ben: Yes.

[00:02:51] Becky: No, 40, 41, 42, that it was time to turn to donor egg treatment, which was a big deal.

[00:02:58] Ben: It’s a big deal. Obviously a big deal for you. I remember we talked about it all the time, didn’t we? We were worried about all the things that people worry about when they have donor treatment. Will you bond with your baby? Obviously, will it work? What do you tell your child if you’re successful? We basically worried about everything under the sun.

[00:03:19] Becky: We did. I remember initially we thought, oh my God, donor egg treatment, no way. No way could we go there. Then we came around to the idea that actually it meant the best chance of success of having a baby. We so badly wanted to have a baby. We decided to have counseling with a lovely counselor in Nottingham. Do you remember?

[00:03:42] Ben: I do. She was brilliant. She really helped us focus our minds on this because, one, we’d had the tragedy of things not working for so long and the IVF miscarriage and so on. Then we had to get our heads around the whole donor conception thing. She was really helpful.

[00:03:59] Becky: She was great. I think we had counseling for about six months, didn’t we?

[00:04:03] Ben: It was about six months.

[00:04:04] Becky: That leads us to our story, really, of how the involvement of family and friends affected us in many ways. I think we today just want to talk about examples of kindness, particularly, I think the first person I’m going to talk about is my father, who was just amazing. He was endlessly kind, bless him, and was also extremely supportive financially because I was a drama teacher, you were a copywriter. We didn’t have much money. IVF was extremely expensive.

[00:04:47] Ben: I think the point about this episode is we’re trying to say, what is your relationship with your family and friends while you’re having treatment? Quite a lot of people just want you to get on with it, that they are concerned for you but not engaging with us at all. That can be good and that can be bad. Most people mean well. Tim, your dad, meant well. He was there for us and he was brilliant, and without us even asking, kindly contributed to some of our fees. Can you think of other examples of family, not so much friendship? Just family.

[00:05:24] Becky: Sure. Just talking about family. I remember a family member, just after a very difficult time where before we had– actually, with our first donor egg treatment, we were very unlucky. I went to a 12-week scan, and I was told quite coldly, I’m afraid, by a sonographer that there was a problem with the baby. We had to have a termination at 14 weeks. I remember the day, obviously, I’m going to talk about that in a bit more detail in a minute. I remember a family member just came and picked us up and took us to his house two hours away, and didn’t say anything. Just was there in his comfortable car, looking after us, and just took us home. I went straight to bed. I just feel so grateful for that.

[00:06:14] Ben: That’s an example of just a nice gesture. He drove a long way to pick us up, but we just had a hell of a day. It was Christmas, wasn’t it?

[00:06:23] Becky: Yes, it was Christmas. It was Christmas Eve.

[00:06:25] Ben: We had all the Christmas presents in our bags. This all happened after we bought our Christmas presents. Then suddenly we had to have this termination of the pregnancy, 14 weeks.

[00:06:37] Becky: This was our first donor egg cycle. I think also, sadly, we do have to mention an example of where possibly people don’t mean to, they never mean to be tactless. I can say that with absolute truth, they never mean to be tactless. One family member did say, just on the phone, “Oh, surely it’s only an embryo.”

[00:07:00] Ben: When you have fertility treatment, I remember we were so supercharged with anxiety-

[00:07:06] Becky: Super sensitive.

[00:07:06] Ben: -and super sensitive, I’m afraid it did come across as very callous and uncaring. With the benefit of hindsight, I honestly don’t think he was trying to be a bad person.

[00:07:17] Becky: No, not at all.

[00:07:18] Ben: I think he was clueless as to what to say.

[00:07:20] Becky: Didn’t have a thing. I suppose what we’re saying is if you are a family member, be careful about what you say, about the words that you use, because they are key. Even if it’s silence, which, again, is something we’re going to talk about, try to let it be a warm silence, if that makes sense. Does that make sense?

[00:07:39] Ben: I think so. It’s just the idea that families are complex. We’ll come on to friends in a minute. Family are very complex, the relationships you have and the expectations you have of each other. We’re not saying that your parents, if you have parents still alive, or your siblings or cousins, or whatever, should be calling all the time. We’re not saying that.

[00:08:00] Becky: No.

[00:08:00] Ben: We’re just saying that small moments of support can be very, very helpful rather than complete silence.

[00:08:08] Becky: Maybe just like a phone call once a week, just to say, how are you getting on? Would you agree?

[00:08:13] Ben: Something like that. Again, families should be doing that. There are going to be people who have very supportive families. It really depends on your family, doesn’t it?

[00:08:23] Becky: Of course it does.

[00:08:24] Ben: They’re the people that are very, very supportive. There was someone that we were helping coordinating their treatment with recently. She was telling me that her mom and dad were paying for their treatment and they’re really behind them all the way. They were very, very involved in it. That was lovely to hear.

[00:08:42] Becky: They were actually popping around every day. Of course, it depends on your geography, doesn’t it? It depends where your extended family live, et cetera.

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[00:08:56] Becky: Let’s move on to friends. Interestingly, there’s that phrase, isn’t there, that you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. Boy, oh boy, I am extremely grateful for wonderful friends. Just going back to that Christmas Eve termination, I have a very close school friend who literally stayed on the phone the whole day with me because she herself had had a termination. She’d gone through the horror of that. She was literally on the phone to me on Christmas Eve for hours, just chatting to me, chatting to me through the whole process, through that day. It was invaluable.

[00:09:37] Ben: I think when you are on the ropes like that, it is amazing how you do need support. You do need support. Obviously you can go to counselors and things like that. At the end of the day, this was a weekend and she was there for you that whole weekend.

[00:09:51] Becky: I just want to say, I’m sorry, I’m going to be a bit sexist here, but female friends are just invaluable in terms of that closeness, that emotional openness. I remember another, my best university friend, just ringing up, every other day, just checking in, just seeing how I was. Even if I didn’t feel like a chat, she’d just ring or she’d text, or she’d just let me know that she was there for me. I just found that so helpful in just the darkest times. I was able to literally sob on the phone to her because I knew I trusted her. I still do. She’s still one of my best friends. As I say, I will always be grateful to her for that.

[00:10:36] Ben: I think there’s something about a friend that you relate to in just a different way, in some ways, a more honest way. That’s a big generalization. You just set a really nice example. When this happened, I remember talking to your dad, Tim. Obviously, Tim’s a wonderful person. I was absolutely gutted.

[00:10:57] Becky: Gutted.

[00:10:57] Ben: I remember weeping down the phone at him. He tried his best, poor chap, but it was quite a–

[00:11:05] Becky: He’s the best of the generation.

[00:11:06] Ben: I’m afraid he was a bit stiff upper lip about it. I remember him saying, oh dear. To be honest, that was enough. To have him there–

[00:11:16] Becky: I think with my dad, he was a good listener. He would have listened to you. Even if he wasn’t able to provide those words of comfort in his slightly stiff upper lip way, he was there listening, wasn’t he?

[00:11:28] Ben: Also, he’s like a friend in the sense that his character was everybody liked him, family, non-family. He was very, very there for people. He was almost like honorary friend, as well as to me, honorary father-in-law. Sorry, real father-in-law. That’s interesting. The other thing I wanted to remind you about was, is that expression, the kindness of strangers?

[00:11:52] Becky: There is. Just before we go on to that, my best school friend, I remember when I was thinking about having a second child, it was very blessed to have Ida and so on. I was thinking about having a sibling for Ida. Again, we didn’t have much money. We were strapped for cash. I remember her just ringing up one day and going, what do you need? How can I help? She had the means, but the fact that she bothered to do that, she rang up and said, how can I help?

[00:12:23] Ben: That’s often a great way of doing it. How can I help?

[00:12:26] Becky: How can I help?

[00:12:27] Ben: How can I help?

[00:12:27] Becky: What can I do?

[00:12:29] Ben: There was someone else who did that, I forget who it was, who phoned up me and said, “Look, I’m worried about you guys. Can I maybe call you every one or two weeks, something like that, and see how you are? Is that okay? You can tell me to go away.” That was just a very sensitive thing to do because it opened the door that they were being very sensitive from the start, but they didn’t want to be silent. They did make that effort, very sweet effort to say, I just don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do this, but please. That felt very genuine.

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[00:13:07] Ben: I want to come on to the kindness of strangers, so to speak, because we’ve talked about family dynamics of that, and we’ve talked about friends being there for you in a different way. I remember two examples. It meant a great deal to us, didn’t it? We went over to the local hospital, Grantham Hospital, I think it was 11-week scan. That’s when you were told, I’m sorry, there’s a problem.

[00:13:30] Becky: 12-week scan.

[00:13:30] Ben: 12-week scan. The stenographer said, there’s a problem with this pregnancy. Our lives basically fell apart at that point because we knew that was the end of that pregnancy. It was just a simple thing. Sheila.

[00:13:45] Becky: Sheila.

[00:13:46] Ben: Sheila was the local taxi driver for when we lived in Lincolnshire. We’d used her quite a lot before. Was a nice lady. We’d booked her to pick us up. She picked us up. She saw that we were completely gutted, she could see it in the face. Your face. I said something to her like, “I’m sorry, we’ve had some bad news today,” sort of thing. She just stoically drove us home.

[00:14:06] Becky: We’d just gotten back. We’d gotten back to the car and we were totally silent, and we’re just holding hands. She didn’t ask any questions. She just drove us home.

[00:14:13] Ben: Then she refused to let us pay.

[00:14:16] Becky: That was a £50 fare.

[00:14:19] Ben: It was such a nice gesture. We could have afforded the fare. It wasn’t that. It was the fact that she did it and it was someone we hardly knew, and that was a very, very lovely gesture.

[00:14:27] Becky: We’d maybe used her once before, I think.

[00:14:29] Ben: Once before. She just sort of, whatever, something in her did, that very simple gesture to us. I really love her for that. The other one was-

[00:14:40] Becky: Yes. Was Paul and Anthea.

[00:14:41] Ben: -Paul and Anthea. Our neighbors when we lived up north. Again, the day before you had to have that medical termination in Notting Hill Hospital, they got wind of this. They’re 20, 30 years older than us and we didn’t know them very well. They just invited us around for supper.

[00:14:57] Becky: Supper.

[00:14:58] Ben: Didn’t they?

[00:14:58] Becky: Yes, they did.

[00:14:58] Ben: Made a little supper.

[00:15:00] Becky: I just remember sitting there. Anthea, bless her, cooked this delicious meal. Ben and I are real greedy foodies, and so we tucked in. They didn’t really say anything, but they just didn’t need to. They were just there giving us supper the night before something that we were both dreading. They were there for us. Just that gesture was so touching that I still think about it today. Don’t you, Ben.

[00:15:27] Ben: Such a simple thing, just giving someone a meal, giving us a meal. It just put a bit of petrol in our tanks, as it were, before the horrible day that followed.

[00:15:36] Becky: Exactly.

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[00:15:42] Becky: Now more, what would you say? The things not to say to fertility patients, note.

[00:15:49] Ben: Ah, yes.

[00:15:49] Becky: We’re just going to move on to that. Whether you’re a friend or a member of family, a family member, there are certain things that we suggest are not that tactful. Sorry to be negative, but I’m going to lighten the tone a bit here. I’ll give you one example. A very sweet, a very posh friend of mine said, “Darling, my friend’s daughter went for an IVF cycle and hey presto, she was pregnant just in time.”

[00:16:19] Ben: Ah, yes. The “just in time” comment. Yes. Now, again, she’s not a bad person.

[00:16:25] Becky: No.

[00:16:26] Ben: If she just thought about it a bit more, it’s not really the sort of thing-

[00:16:31] Becky: You want to hear.

[00:16:32] Ben: -you want to hear. You don’t want to hear success stories like that in that way.

[00:16:37] Becky: Just before your own IVF cycle. You had to say it with humor as well. There was another one, Ben, wasn’t there, that someone told us the other day.

[00:16:48] Ben: You mean the very strange comment?

[00:16:49] Becky: Yes.

[00:16:50] Ben: This was someone we helped who’s good mate, as of the male partner, of the relationship, said to him in the pub after he’d revealed all that he was going through with the IVF treatment with his wife, just said, “Don’t worry, mate. I’ll come over. I’ll help you fertilize your wife.”

[laughter]

[00:17:11] Ben: Now, I wasn’t there for the context of that. I wasn’t in the pub. I’m sure he was joking. I’m sure he didn’t really–

[00:17:17] Becky: If he was joking, yes.

[00:17:19] Ben: I think the point is he probably should have maybe not had that third pint.

[00:17:23] Becky: Just be tactful.

[00:17:25] Ben: What you are, you’re in a heightened state of sensitivity during fertility treatment. Even these kinds of comments, I’m not saying well meaning, but probably a joke, but it’s like you don’t want to hear that. You don’t want to hear it. There are loads more, if you go on the forum to see all sorts of things not to say. The one that people said to us a lot, do you remember this? It was, why don’t you adopt?

[00:17:48] Becky: By saying that, it’s as if we hadn’t thought about it. It’s assuming that we hadn’t thought about adopting, which of course we had and we value hugely.

[00:17:58] Ben: Also, it’s a very personal question. It’s a very personal question and it’s a very sensitive thing to say, because what you’re also saying is subtly, “Hey, this treatment’s not working for you. You have to adopt.” It’s almost a judgment about treatment they know nothing about. It’s an assumption that you wouldn’t have thought of that already. A lot of people said it, and I remember a vicar said it to us.

[00:18:20] Becky: Really?

[00:18:21] Ben: Yes. Vicar. He was well meaning. He’s a very nice man. In church, I mean a vicar. Again, it’s not what you want to hear. I know this is probably going to make people think, “Oh God, what can we say? We’re going to get this wrong.” I think it’s just the simple things. How are you? I’m here if you need me.

[00:18:38] Becky: What can I do for you?

[00:18:39] Ben: That sort of thing. Not offer advice about the fertility future to [crosstalk]

[00:18:45] Becky: Also maybe, I did have a few times people saying, “Just relax, be positive. It’ll be fine.”

[00:18:52] Ben: As if you hadn’t thought about that as an option.

[00:18:55] Becky: I was just like, okay, thanks. Then also, a lot of, “How’s it going? How’s it going? How’s it going? How’s it going?” A bit too much.

[00:19:03] Ben: You don’t really want to ask a fertility patient how it’s going because we’ll let you know sort of thing. We will let you know. It’s like what you say when we’ve just done the two-week wait, or we’ve just done injection number six, what do you want to know?

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[00:19:20] Becky: On a more positive note, I suppose, is tips on how to communicate. First of all, I think don’t vanish. Whatever you do,-

[00:19:27] Ben: Don’t vanish.

[00:19:28] Becky: -don’t vanish. Don’t disappear into the ether. Don’t be British and not say anything and be stiff upper lip. Don’t do that. Don’t say nothing.

[00:19:36] Ben: Don’t say nothing. It’s easy to just walk on the other side of the road, so to speak. Again, well meaning, but actually, we do have family and friends and we were hoping for a little bit more interaction there, just because it does help things along a bit if there was some degree of contact during treatment, but it’s probably worth mentioning, isn’t it? There are some people who don’t want contact, and we understand that, don’t we?

[00:20:04] Becky: Yes.

[00:20:04] Ben: It’s just sometimes, you want to just be in your little bubble on your own, in your relationship, and not have people ask you, and that’s–

[00:20:12] Becky: Fertility patients, you mean?

[00:20:13] Ben: Or anybody. I’m talking about fertility patients or people going through fertility issues who do not want to communicate from their side with other people. That’s completely understandable too. Getting your approach or involvement, to a degree, it’s a bit of a risk, I suppose, approaching someone you know who’s going through fertility and saying, “Can I help? How are you? Can I get in touch?” We would still encourage people to do it, wouldn’t we?

[00:20:38] Becky: Definitely. I think sometimes in life, the smallest gestures, I remember a friend of mine just sending me a lovely wonderful soaps. I remember getting it in the post, thinking, “That’s so nice. I really want to have a lovely bath with these gorgeous soaps.” How thoughtful. How thoughtful of her to think of that. Just really simple. Just these beautiful soaps arrived in the post. I went through all these endless IVF cycles and then our two donor egg cycles, so she knew what I was going through.

[00:21:12] Ben: Presents are nice at the best of times, aren’t they? It is going back to the state that you’re in during fertility treatment, which for us is quite a long time ago now. We’re looking back on this [crosstalk] looking back quite a lot of it. You really are naked as a fertility patient. You really are alone, and it’s a big challenge.

[00:21:33] Becky: It’s a huge challenge because most people get pregnant incredibly easily. The majority of people do. The NHS define infertility as a disease. It’s something that happens to a small percentage of the population, but it is huge.

[00:21:53] Ben: It’s not fun.

[00:21:53] Becky: It’s huge for those people. It’s huge for those people.

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[00:22:01] Becky: This leads us on to how you cope privately and how you, I suppose, find your own resilience. I remember after we lost Elsie, I’ll say now what she was called, at 14 weeks, and we came home–

[00:22:17] Ben: What we did was we went to my brother’s house for Christmas.

[00:22:20] Becky: Oh, that’s right. It was after Sheila had dropped us off. That’s right. We knew that there was a problem with the pregnancy. We were completely devastated. We knew that we were in a very dark place. I remember thinking, “What am I going to do?” I went straight to bed, and I thought, “I can’t lie in bed. What am I going to do?” Then I turned to Ben and I said, “Look, let’s just watch a film.” I remembered that one of my favorite films of all time was Tootsie. We watched Tootsie three times in a row.

[00:22:50] Ben: And we laughed.

[00:22:51] Becky: And we laughed.

[00:22:52] Ben: We laughed a lot.

[00:22:53] Becky: Thank God for Dustin Hoffman.

[00:22:55] Ben: We love you, Dustin. Before that, we thought, “Oh no, we’ve got to watch a really deep film.” We met–

[00:23:00] Becky: We tried Terrence Malick.

[00:23:02] Ben: Terrence Malick. Now, Terrence Malick, I love you. Terrence Malick is a wonderful director, but it wasn’t right.

[00:23:08] Becky: No, it wasn’t right.

[00:23:09] Ben: We put on Tootsie, and it’s just that thing, the power of laughter, the power of comedy.

[00:23:12] Becky: Power of humor.

[00:23:13] Ben: It just cut through.

[00:23:14] Becky: It did. It was just brilliant. Wasn’t it?

[00:23:17] Ben: Just that final moment where Dustin Hoffman reveals himself as a man. This was raw from what we’d just been through. You’d think the last thing we want to do is laugh, but actually, that’s the only thing we could do.

[00:23:30] Becky: We were sobbing with laughter.

[00:23:32] Ben: That’s the only thing we could do.

[00:23:33] Becky: We were sobbing with laughter, and it was just so helpful. I know that lots of fertility patients have been through extremely dark times, or maybe going through dark times at this point. If you can find something to focus on that brings you light in the darkness, like humor, then find your Tootsie.

[00:23:57] Ben: Or anything. It could be a poem, or it could be just cooking something or whatever. If there’s something that means a lot to you, then do it, because it somehow takes you out of that dark place at least temporarily.

[00:24:10] Becky: Temporarily.

[00:24:11] Ben: Temporarily, because grieving the loss of an embryo, as we know, takes time.

[00:24:16] Becky: Of course.

[00:24:17] Ben: Basically, it took us about 6, 7 months after we lost Elsie, a 14 weeks gestation, to really function at all. I remember, rather sadly, it was around the time that Elsie would’ve been born. It was 2012.

[00:24:32] Becky: The Olympics.

[00:24:32] Ben: The Olympics. We were watching Mo Farah running the, was it the 5,000 and then the 10,000? I think he won both, didn’t he, that year?

[00:24:41] Becky: Yes. He’s amazing.

[00:24:42] Ben: We were watching that, and we were screaming along everybody else and standing on our feet, cheering him on.

[00:24:48] Becky: We were watching the telly.

[00:24:49] Ben: Watching the telly. There he was, being absolutely amazing. Obviously he’s an inspirational guy. I’m not really interested in sport, but I was out there watching. It was something about his energy and his effort. The fact that he was winning it. I remember being very moved by that and also thinking, there we were cheering on, bit of blood coursing through our veins. Maybe we were ready to try again.

[00:25:15] Becky: Exactly.

[00:25:17] Ben: We had that conversation, didn’t we?

[00:25:18] Becky: Yes, we did. We came to the realization that we were strong enough to try again. Then we were incredibly lucky with our second donor egg treatment. I got pregnant and 9 months later, our beautiful daughter, Ida, was born, who is now 11 and a gorgeous, wonderful girl.

[00:25:42] Ben: I think we should just end by saying that those two things, Dustin Hoffman, Mo Farah, external people, we didn’t know them. They were just there when we turned on the telly both times, and they inspired us. That’s an example of the power of other people getting you through it, even though, of course, they don’t know us at all. Two inspirational people there got us going. Thank you, Mo, and thank you, Dustin.

[00:26:06] Becky: [chuckles] Thank you, Mo.

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[00:26:12] Becky: You’ve been listening to Becky & Ben’s Fertility Spotlight. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. You can read more about our story and our work as fertility advocates on the podcast website, www.fertility-spotlight.com. You can join the community at facebook.com/fertility spotlight and instagram.com/fertility spotlight.

[00:26:39] Ben: If you like what you heard, do write a comment, share this episode, and subscribe, and please consider making a donation. If you’d like us to cover a particular topic, feel free to message us via our social media or the website.

[00:26:51] Becky: In the next episode, we’ll be covering the key decisions at the very start of your fertility journey.

[00:26:56] Ben: Don’t forget, Becky and I aren’t doctors, so always speak to your healthcare professional for medical advice specific to you.

[00:27:03] Becky: Remember, don’t despair.

[00:27:05] Ben: We’ll get there.

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