Lucy and David Boyd had their first child in November 2020. Getting pregnant with Will was not an issue, and although he was born at 32 weeks, the couple had no cause for concern about any future babies.
When their son was 18 months, like so many other Irish couples, their talk turned to trying for baby number two. “We were young, fit, healthy, and we thought ‘it will be fine’. Of course, the second time around, you expect it to happen again easily,” says 34-year-old Lucy.
In April 2022, the couple, who live in Dundrum, started trying for their second baby. “We ended up getting pregnant very quickly, but we miscarried at eight weeks. We took time to grieve and process that loss. Then we tried again and got pregnant in June-July of 2022, but we had another miscarriage, this time at six weeks,” says Lucy.
A subsequent pregnancy in February 2023 resulted in a third miscarriage at six weeks. As Lucy explains, once you’ve had your first baby with no difficulties, it can be a shock to the system when things don’t work out the next time. “When it doesn’t happen, you’re trying to manage all the emotions, and then you get into the whys: why isn’t it happening this time? Why did it happen the first time?”
Lucy and David (35) were facing secondary infertility, which is surprisingly common. Secondary infertility refers to someone having trouble either conceiving or carrying their second (or subsequent baby) to term. As many as one in seven couples in Ireland struggle with secondary infertility. Up to 40% of the couples who attend Sims IVF are experiencing secondary infertility.
Going through infertility and multiple pregnancy losses is a difficult experience for any couple, but Lucy had the added challenge of working as a nurse manager at Sims IVF in Dublin.
She found bringing such a personal experience into her workplace difficult. “I’m a private person at work. I leave my personal life at the door. So it was quite hard for me to have that conversation with my colleagues.”
She did find that the experience meant she could relate more easily to couples coming into the clinic. “When you’re experiencing it yourself, you have that level of compassion and empathy because you understand the loss.”
“The thing I realised with Lucy and working at Sims was that she sees all the time the bad things that can happen. With all the information she knows and what she sees, sometimes finding a silver lining in a tiny bit of good news was difficult,” says David, who works as a financial controller.
“I was waiting for something to go wrong before it did,” adds Lucy.
However, Lucy says she sees the miracles that can happen at fertility clinics, and she had an inside look at the expertise of the nurses and doctors at the clinic. “The team at Sims are incredible,” she says.
This expertise led to a breakthrough in her case.
Lucy has a rare congenital condition called uterus didelphys, which is also called double uterus. In these cases, the woman has two uteruses. “One of the side effects of uterus didelphys can be an inability to carry a baby to full term. As we mentioned, Will was delivered early, at 32 weeks,” she says.
After their third miscarriage, the couple proceeded with investigations and ultimately decided to try IVF. “During those investigations, two of the clinic’s stenographers found access to my other uterus. Previously, I’d had two hysteroscopies, and they couldn’t find it. The fact that my own clinic found the access was phenomenal,” says Lucy.
In May 2023, the couple had their first IVF cycle. The treatment resulted in a failed cycle, which hit the couple hard and felt like a loss in itself. A couple of months later, in August 2023, they did a frozen embryo transfer into Lucy’s non-dominant uterus and got a positive pregnancy result. For most couples, this is a time of excitement, but the feeling was quite different for Lucy and David.
“When you’ve been through pregnancy loss, you’re either waiting for a bleed, or you’re waiting for something to go wrong. So really, it’s hard to feel joy. You see that positive test, and you think this is great, but after that, it becomes a little bit more clinical. You’re waiting to get bad news because it’s nearly built into you that something will go wrong,” explains Lucy.
Helga Behan, the on-site specialist fertility counsellor at Sims IVF, says this is a common reaction for couples who have experienced pregnancy loss and failed fertility cycles. “The couple first have to get through that two-week wait after the transfer, this is where the anxiety starts — some don’t want to know the results; they want to live in limbo a little bit. That’s why I call patients at this time to say I’m thinking of them and I’m there if they need me. It’s about supporting them and telling them they don’t need to be worried about being upset and crying because they need to let it out. You don’t want to hold on to it in your body.”
As a fertility counsellor, Helga knows how important it is for couples to have a safe space to open up about what they’re going through. “As fertility counsellors, we provide that place where people feel understood, accepted and not judged for how they feel, and this is crucial for people going through a fertility journey.”
For most of Lucy’s pregnancy, the couple were on tenterhooks. David remembers being on edge for almost the entire time. “Every week that passed, I remember looking up the likelihood of a baby surviving at 24 weeks, 25 weeks, 26 weeks. It was my weekly routine.”
“Once I got over about the 30-week mark, I relaxed a little bit because for us, first, it was the fear of miscarrying, and then I was into the fear of a preterm labour,” says Lucy, who said she didn’t truly relax the baby “was in her arms”.
At 38 weeks, Lucy gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Sophie, after an elective Caesarean section. “As far as birth stories go, it was a lovely experience,” says Lucy.
“And we never knew she was going to be a girl,” adds David. “All our siblings either have all boys or all girls, so it was a really big surprise.”
The couple got their happy ending, but it was a difficult road. Lucy advises couples going through a similar experience to take time for self-care. “Be kind to yourself. And speak with relevant people. You may feel you need some counselling or just talking to someone who understands a little bit about what you’re going through. Because it’s a very lonely place, and having someone to talk to can help.”