Failed IVF is Not the End of Baby Making: Why IVF Fails

When In Vitro Fails, Seek Alternate Route (or at least take a break)

   By Julia Indichova 

It was Leslie's sixth failed in vitro.Still, she wasn't ready to quit. When she came to the Fertile Heart^TM workshop, she was a patient of three different fertility specialists, preparing for another round of IVF. This time, she said, with a brand new protocol of fertility drugs.  

Her aim was to use the Fertile Heart^TM tools to make it work on the seventh try. But during the seven hours of the workshop it became clear to me, if not yet entirely clear to Leslie, that it was not the faulty combination of fertility drugs that blocked the road to Leslie's longed for baby.

After some prompting, Leslie decided to take a break from fertility protocols and give Fertile Heart^TM a try. The  drugs would always be there if she chose to return.  It was not a painless path of healing.  But for Leslie, as for me, her path became a road of recovery from lifelong denial.

Her daughter, Isabella, became her healer.  She taught Leslie how to become a better mom to herself. Without learning how to do that she could never truly become the mother she yearned to be. A failed IVF is often a time when the heart is most tender.  When, after spending your life's savings, or using up the allotment of in vitro cycles covered by your insurance, you receive the dreaded call that says: "Sorry, it didn't work," you find yourself standing at crossroads. 

For many women the best defense against experiencing the pain of failure is to schedule another round of in vitro before hanging up the phone. Especially when your fertility doctor points out the dangers of your racing biological clock.

But what if experiencing the failure of your last IVF is the key that begins to unlock the mystery of your misconceptions? What if spending time with your tender broken heart can not only help balance your hormones, it can help you heal every other failure you have avoided experiencing throughout your eventful life. What if taking the time to attend lovingly to that desperate dejected part of you can reveal the only secret to getting pregnant. 

The one you've kept hidden from yourself.   

A failed IVF or a cancelled in vitro cycle can be the first step of real healing. It doesn't mean you have to swear off assisted reproduction for the rest of your fertility journey. But to as sages of wisdom traditions tell us: "Nothing opens the gates of heaven as swiftly as a broken heart."  Discovering the true source of our suffering might to many of us feel like walking through heaven's gates.