Lindi Dercksen (30) knows this road so well and after five years of trying, she and her husband, Burtie (34), welcomed their baby daughter, Lianke (2) into their lives.
“It’s a journey you can’t explain to anyone. For five years our life was on hold. Everything stood still and becoming pregnant took over our lives. Every month you believe you will be pregnant, you cling to the hope and every month you have to live with the disappointment of another negative pregnancy test. But you keep on hoping, because you believe. It’s a cycle that never ends.”
Clomid
Lindi says they were married for three years before they started trying for a baby. A year and a half of trying later, they went to see the first fertility specialist. This specialist discovered Lindi had severe endometriosis and it had to be removed with a laparoscopy before she could be put on Clomid. For a year and a half on Clomid, the illusive second line on the pregnancy test did not appear. “We tried everything! Vitamins, ovulation tests, saliva scopes, different positions, etc. Eventually we had to give in and see a second fertility specialist.”
IUI and GIFT
Again they removed my endometriosis and discovered my one tube was blocked. The doctor tried to clear it, but couldn’t. He decided to do an IUI – this is an intra uterine insemination, which involves placing my husband’s sperm into my uterus to help fertilization. For this procedure he had to put me on medication to increase ovulation. When the time came for us to go for the IUI – during the time I was ovulation, the doctor was out of the country! He couldn’t do the procedure.” As timing with IUI is really crucial, they found another specialist who could help. “We found another doctor (dr. Coetsee in Umhlanga) who was incredible. He arranged for another doctor to to the IUI on the day it had to be done. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful.”
Lindi says throughout their journey, friends and family would constantly ask questions like: “when is the baby coming?”, “stop thinking about getting pregnant and it will happen”, “it will happen at the right time” and “just trust God”. She says all of these comments hurt, because no-one really understood. “If you haven’t walked this journey yourself, then you won’t really understand. You won’t even have an idea. Even though you might think you do.”
The couple started on another fertility journey with dr. Coetsee. “He suggested the next step would be to try GIFT. This is gamete intrafallopian transfer. Which means they mix my husband’s sperm with my eggs and place it back into my fallopian tube. Before the procedure I had to be on very strong fertility medication and injections had to be done daily. Again I had a laparoscopy to treat endometriosis. He also tied off the blocked tube and harvested 14 of my eggs in preparation for IVF, in case the GIFT failed.”
Lindi and her husband was again disappointed when the GIFT, in which they replaced two eggs, was unsuccessful.
IVF
“The eggs the doctor had harvested had to be frozen, because my body had to recover from the GIFT and my cycle had to normalize before we could attempt IVF. From the 12 eggs harvested only three made it to day five, showed improvement and the possibility for fertilization. So only three were frozen.”
Shortly after, Lindi went on IVF medication and injections. “They thawed the three frozen eggs. One collapsed, one was good quality and the other one was poor quality. They fertilized the two with my husband’s sperm and we did the IVF, inserting both the embryos. This whole process took 10 months.”
The dreaded two-week wait
The injections were sore and had several side-effects. “You go through it, with only the hope that you might become pregnant. You also have to do the injections up until 12 weeks op being pregnant. During the two week wait, we had to do daily injections and you don’t know if it’s working. It was horrible waiting. You have to pretend to be fine but inside you are so scared. Is it working?” They did a blood test on day 14 and decided if it was negative, they would never try again. They couldn’t handle it emotionally to go through it again. At R120 000, it was also putting a lot of pressure on them financially. But…it was positive!
Cling to the dream
“You have this dream in your heart to have a baby. We were ecstatic to be pregnant! I was so sick throughout my entire pregnancy but it was all worth it. When I look at my daughter now, every pain, emotional stress and injection was worth it.” Little Lianke was born on 9 June, 2015. Lindi gave birth naturally after an induction at 35 weeks. “I went into early labour but she was a big baby, weighing 3.1kg!”
“We were so lucky it was a success. We have an incredible daughter. This is a message of hope. Maybe not when you want them to but they do. Due to my blocked tube, we only had a 6% chance of falling pregnant – even with the IVF. I always thought I was the only one going through this but people don’t talk about infertility. If I can just inspire one person, even though it’s easy for me to say now, because I have my daughter. But miracles do still happen.”
Lindi and her husband carried each other through this process, even though it was a long and hard road. “I cried every single day. He had to see me so depressed. Just focus on each other and the possibility of falling pregnant. We totally relied on one another.”
*Please comment if you are also going through an infertility journey. You can also chat on our forum with other moms who are trying different means to fall pregnant, here.
