Ellen’s Story
Ellen Freel is a primary school teacher from Liverpool, and a reiki master and level 2 EFT practitioner who is passionate about infertility support.
I have ALWAYS wanted to be a Mum. My husband and I started trying for a baby when we turned 30. We assumed it would happen quickly. But month after month passed, with no pregnancy.
I could never have imagined what struggling to conceive would feel like, and what it would do to my mind…
‘I feel a little sick, could this be it?’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t drink tonight as I ovulated 9 days ago and I could be pregnant…’
And terror at going to the toilet in case there was period blood, for the 5th, 15th, 25th… or 75th consecutive month.
After 18 months of trying to conceive we finally went to The Liverpool Women’s Hospital. After many tests we were given the common diagnosis of ‘Unexplained Infertility’.
Due to losing my Dad when I was 11 and various other events, I had very little trust in the medical profession. I have health anxiety and was terrified of trying IVF, so I started to research anything that could help us conceive naturally instead.
I tried acupuncture (5 different acupuncturists in total! You wouldn’t believe the places I’ve had needles put!), law of attraction (don’t get me started on this), yoni steaming, basal body temperature tracking, ovulation sticks, panchakarma, mediums (one told me I would conceive within the year - I did not).
I also tried ayurvedic consultations (we travelled 262 miles to see one specialist who had forgotten the date of our appointment, and I had a panic attack in her bathroom), fertility massage, juice fasting, energy healing, therapy, hypnosis, NLT, fertility yoga, reiki, EFT, and a billion different supplements too.
In the end, we spent thousands of pounds trying to conceive naturally, but none of it ever worked. In 6 and a half years of trying to conceive we did not conceive naturally once…
Eventually we decided to try IVF. Our first cycle produced 6 eggs, 5 of which fertilised, and 2 made it. We had our first embryo transferred, and the embryologist said it was a top grade embryo and she was extremely happy with it.
After an excruciatingly long 2 week wait, we took a pregnancy test - we were not pregnant. We were left absolutely heart broken, but a few months later we decided to try again. We had our 1 remaining frozen embryo transferred. 2 weeks later? Not pregnant again. Our first IVF cycle had been for nothing. We were devastated.
The hard thing about IVF is that when you have your embryo transferred, you can see it, take a photo of your fertilised 3 or 5 day old embryo, and they are already your baby. You are already pregnant, it’s just about whether the embryo implants well and continues to grow. So in my opinion, every failed embryo transfer is an early miscarriage.
Our 2nd IVF cycle produced 8 more eggs, and this time all 8 fertilised! 4 of them made it to day 5. One of them was transferred, and the other 3 were frozen. After the 2 week wait, I tested again - PREGNANT! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We told EVERYONE. We couldn’t hold it in.
A few days later I tested again, hoping to see a darker line for more reassurance, but this time the line was barely there. We were broken. We’d miscarried at 5 weeks. But we still had 3 frozen embryos, and one day I sat in my car outside the hospital just to be near them.
A few months later we felt ready to have one of them transferred. On the day of the transfer we got a call from the embryologist to say the first embryo had not survived the thaw, so they would take a second one out. Then we got another call to say the second one had not survived the thaw either. And then, we got another call to say the third and final embryo had not survived the thaw. 95% of embryos do survive the thaw - so this made no sense at all. We were devastated. Our 2nd cycle had been all for nothing too.
I can honestly say that this was one of the worst times of my life and I found myself suffering from increasingly dark thoughts and poor mental health. I often felt like an unworthy human being because I couldn’t become a mum.
A few months later we gathered the courage to go for our third and final cycle, although we held very little hope by this point. This time, we got 6 eggs and all 6 fertilised, but on day 3 we got a call to say only 1 embryo was looking good. This felt really worrying because our other 2 cycles had gone much better than this. it felt like ever decreasing odds…
But still, we had that 1 little embryo transferred that day, and 2 weeks later I tested again. Incredibly, I was pregnant! We were overjoyed, but also so anxious after all we had been through already.
Thankfully our little embryo stuck around and after an anxious pregnancy (with bleeding and an arabin pessary inserted for 11 weeks to try and hold my cervix together to help avoid a pre-term labour), I gave birth to our beautiful daughter.
7 long years after starting our fertility journey, we finally got to become parents, and we feel so unbelievably lucky!
I am definitely a spiritual person, but going through this process made me realise how much spiritual gaslighting and toxic positivity there is out there. I had several people tell me I wasn’t conceiving because I was anxious, or because I wasn't using the law of attraction correctly.
This was the worst thing anyone could say, as they were basically telling me it was my fault that we couldn’t have a baby! What a horrendous and untrue thing to say to anyone!
Looking back now, I realise now that none of it was my fault, and that I was always a worthy human being - with or without becoming a mother to a living child. Of course I was! Some people have babies and don’t care for them, whilst some people never conceive and would have been wonderful parents. It's all so unfair.
But what I do know now, without a doubt, is that we are all precious and worthy, whether we eventually become parents or not.
To anyone reading this who is still in the pain of infertility and loss, I see you. I am so sorry. None of this is your fault, and none of it is a reflection of your worthiness either.
I really hope you know how perfect, whole, precious and loved you are, just as you are, right now.