Navigating fertility challenges

it was the perfect time for my partner and I to start trying for a family. We met just over 12 months ago, we were happily renting together with our rescue puppy ralphie, in a coastal suburb in Perth, Western Australia. We were pretty naive about fertility and assumed it could take a while to fall pregnant. Luckily, to our surprise, we conceived on our first month of trying. We were over the moon, I booked in to see my GP and take the first steps in our journey to becoming parents. Everything was tracking well, I experienced a-lot of pregnancy symptoms including sore breasts, fatigue and mood changes as well as a funny metallic taste in my mouth. My hCG started a little low but quickly started doubling every 2-3 days as it should.

I booked my first scan at 6.5 weeks which i was nervous but excited for. Baby measured perfectly and there was a little flickering heart beat on the screen. Ahh the relief! We were so excited for our little baby growing inside me.

We started planning my pathway of care and we were discussing names for our bundle of joy until life through us a curve ball we didn’t see coming. I was 10 weeks pregnant about to do my 10 week blood test to assess for abnormalities and to find out the sex of our baby, when I went to the toilet and noticed some spotting.

I knew straight away that something wasn’t right, I phoned my sister who is a beautiful midwife and told her I had some bleeding, she reassured me this can be normal and told me to phone my GP or King Edward maternity hospital for advice.

I phoned my GP and got an appointment that afternoon, I noticed my spotting was getting worse and my gut feeling wasn’t good. The GP arranged a blood test and a scan at a local ultrasound clinic. My partner & I attended for the scan the next day.

Unfortunately there was no longer a heartbeat, my heart sank, I was so shocked and empty. My partner held back tears as he comforted me and tried to make sense of it all.

I had lost the baby around 8.5 weeks yet my body held on until 10 weeks. We decided to book in for a D&C to remove the pregnancy under anaesthetic.

Before having the procedure my body went into a ‘mini labour’ to try and release the pregnancy, the pain and blood loss was awfully scary and I was admitted to hospital for monitoring. I lost half a litre of blood, it was an awful experience for myself & my partner and we had no idea of what to expect when you suffer a miscarriage, something that’s not often talked about, a taboo subject.

After my procedure we were basically told to just try again, so we did. After grieving and navigating our loss, we fell pregnant once again, quite quickly which I was very grateful for but extremely anxious about. Unfortunately, we suffered another miscarriage at 9 and a half weeks. I had another D&C but had no explanation for the loss. At this point (in 2022) the public hospital wouldn’t test your pregnancy for abnormalities until 3 losses, crazy right!? In WA, it’s now changed so that you can have answers after just 2 losses.

We were again told to just ‘try again’ I had an excellent GP at the time who ran some further tests including antibodies, lupus, full thyroid exam, glucose, vitamin D and a test for coeliac disease. Everything came back normal.

I saw a fertility specialist who couldn’t identify anything wrong. So we thought we would try again, 3rd time lucky! or so we thought..

I fell pregnant in winter of 2023, an exciting but incredibly anxious period of my life. We were also moving from the city to the South West of WA, about a 3 hour drive south, into our family home we bought in the seaside town of Busselton. Sadly, we loss our 3rd baby at 8 weeks. I had another D&C and our pregnancy tissue was sent off for testing. I got the results several weeks later and discovered that embryo had Trisomy 16, a chromosome abnormality. I was told it was unlikely to happen again and likely due to my age (I was 35) and egg quality issues. I got an appointment with a specialist called Dr Saba in Perth that my dear friend Laura told me about. Dr Saba was a well known Obstetrician/Gynaecologist who looked at immunology and treated patients with infertility and reoccurring miscarriage.

Dr Saba discovered I had MTHFR gene mutation (I will discuss this further in another blog) which means I cannot take folic acid (which I’d been taking for 2 plus years) I needed methylated folate which my body would absorb and process correctly. I couldn’t eat bread, cereal or anything with added synthetic folic acid.

He conducted a biopsy of my uterus and discovered some low level immune cells, underacting and thus he recommended some intralipid infusions which is injected into the blood stream to boost immune cells and assist fertility, although at this stage it was still part of an ongoing trial and not 100% certain to assist fertility.

Prior to seeing Dr Saba we enquired about IVF, after our 3rd miscarriage, and following the tests, we were advised to try IVF with PGT-A testing of the embryos to assess for chromosome abnormalities.

We contacted Genea fertility in Perth and had our first appointment with a specialist.

We started our first round of IVF, this was quite unsuccessful after only retrieving 3 eggs with 2 fertilising and none making it to blastocyst. We tried another round with a change of medication which was far more successful however, unfortunately our healthy little tested embryo didn’t implant and we were back to square one.

We decided to have a break, we were exhausted from it all and needed some time out to refresh, relax and not think about fertility.

Last year in 2025 in May, I fell pregnant naturally without trying, we were very shocked but happy. I was under Dr Saba at the time, he gave me 2 intralipid infusions, and had me on aspirin and progesterone pessaries. He did our scan at 7 weeks and there was no heartbeat. He asked for a second scan to be completed at a clinic at Busselton hospital. To my suprise, the sonographer detected a heartbeat however I was measuring small and she couldn’t get a reading on the heart rate. That gut feeling came back again and the uncertainty left me feeling incredibly flat.

We had another scan, at this point I was 9 weeks and sadly our babies heart had stopped beating. Our fourth miscarriage I couldn’t believe it, I felt connected to this little bub and the fact it was unplanned I thought maybe this was our miracle rainbow baby, sadly not.

Somehow we stayed positive, kept busy and tried to move forward. My mental health wasn’t good & I had a 4 week stay in a mental health hospital to try recover.

Last year we went back to IVf, and attempted another 2 rounds. We had another frozen embryo transfer with a healthy pgt-a tested embryo that unfortunately failed to implant.

Fast forward to the present, I’m still on my journey to having a healthy pregnancy, I’ve just discovered I have high insulin resistance which has impacted my egg quality and implantation failure. I’m currently under an incredible fertility naturopath, fertility acupuncturist and taking a 3 month break to improve my egg quality and get myself in prime health for when we try again. I will not give up, I know my miracle baby is on the way, it’s just taking a bit longer. I’ve connected with other women in Australia navigating the unknown infertility journey, I cannot believe how many couples go through this, hence my interest in starting this blog to hopefully help others feel supported.

Stay tuned for the next blog! Thank you for reading, sending love and light!

Chloe ☺️