Late 2020 we started the process of seeking treatment for infertility. I thought this was going to be a simple process; go to the doctor, he’ll wave a wand, and magically, finally, I’ll be pregnant. We just needed to get to our first IVF appointment and we would be on our way!
We started by going to a private clinic that was highly reputable for IVF. This was the first lesson we learned along the way, the private highly reputable clinic doesn’t mean the best service. After a couple of meetings and a lot of blood tests I was told by the doctor we could ‘whip’ me in to have my endo removed and we could start IVF a month later. The problem was, that the type of surgery he was talking about was a short term solution and I wasn’t happy with his qualification to actually do this surgery without my endo coming back.
So, after some thinking, I went to Brad and said I wanted to try another clinic. One my doctor had recommended as it was funded by Medicare. One of the biggest stresses with IVF is the huge financial impact of it so I reasoned if we could take away some of the financial burdens then it would lessen the emotional load.
So we booked in and 6 weeks later I met with our new doctor for our first IVF appointment our first IVF appointment.
She wasn’t out doctor for long though.
Due to COVID our appointment was held via Telehealth, Brad and I sat down at my computer and were a bunch of nerves, this was it! We were going to start our family. We knew that it would take some time to go through all the paperwork and get things moving.
What I didn’t think was about to happen was our doctor was going to shame us for the next 40 minutes.
Over the next 40 minutes our soon to-be-fired doctor went through all the required paperwork, signing us up to the clinic and getting us ready for the process of IVF. But she kept stopping and asking us questions about our relationship, why we weren’t married, and how come we had not had kids before.
At this point Brad and I had been together for about 14 years, and we were used to these questions. What we weren’t used to was someone constantly going back and forth asking more questions about our relationship and the choices we had made. Both he and I felt like we needed to make excuses for living our lives and choosing to make a family when it felt right for us, and when we were in a situation to provide for our family.
Over and over again we had questions that made us feel uncomfortable and judged. We should have realised then that this wasn’t the right doctor for us but we continued in the process because we were honestly desperate to get started with making our family after years of disappointment and heartache.
But we signed the dotted line and we moved ahead with starting our first cycle in the next month.
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