Myth-busting Secondary Infertility

Busting four common myths for #NIAW

As many of you who have been reading my blog for any length of time will be aware, I have secondary infertility characterised by recurrent miscarriages.

So I though that during National Infertility Awareness Week 2020 (19 - 25 April) it might be helpful to bust a few of the common myths that I often hear about the condition…

1. You can’t be infertile because you already have a child.

This is the tricky thing about secondary infertility; on paper your body can do it, but in practice it’s a different story. The fact is that fertility isn’t static, the body changes all the time. And what my body did at age 34 (ie. carried a full term pregnancy) it has failed to do again at the ages of 37, 38 or 39.

2. At least you can get pregnant.

That’s true, but since having a healthy baby (and not just getting pregnant) is the end game for any couple trying to conceive, that doesn’t help us much. The fact is recurrent miscarriage is far less understood medically than other forms of infertility, and far less treatable too, than many other forms of infertility that can be supported through IVF.

People often ask me why we haven’t tried IVF after two and a half years, but IVF is simply not a fix for all forms of infertility. It can hugely improves conception chances in couples that are unable to do so naturally, but it can’t reduce the risk of miscarriage unless egg or sperm quality is known to be the cause. Our issue is around the internal embedding process.

3. Secondary infertility isn’t as serious or prolonged as other forms of infertility.

As someone who has been trying to conceive a second child since September 2017, I beg to differ. In fact, unlike other forms of infertility where it’s recommended to begin to access tests and treatment after 12 months of trying to conceive (or 6 months if you’re over 35 like me), there’s no real end point at all to recurrent miscarriage, since there is no known fix or cure.

Either you just keep rolling the dice each time you get pregnant (sometimes after enough failed pregnancies you can lucky), or you eventually decide that you've had enough of loss and it’s time to quit.

4. At least you have one child.

That’s also true, and whilst I am very grateful for that fact because some women never get that opportunity at all, I have also lost three more pregnancies since then whilst watching other friends go onto have the families that they planned.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what form your infertility takes, the experience of endless waiting, disappointment, and the sense of unfairness is just the same. I can’t have the family that I had planned either, and unlike many couples who are going through IVF treatment which routinely allows a number of healthy eggs to be frozen and stored for use in later cycles, there are no treatment options that will enable me to eventually grow the family that I want over time.

You can find out more about National Infertility Awareness Week 2020 here.