For those wanting to become parents, IVF, or in vitro fertilization, may be a difficult and emotionally draining process. The technique, which involves removing an egg from the ovaries and fertilizing it with sperm in a laboratory before returning it to the womb, can assist those with fertility issues or those in the LGBTQ+ community to conceive a baby.
According to The Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority, it is a lengthy six-step process with less than a 33% success rate for women and non-binary persons with uteruses under the age of 35. Leah Gordon, on the other hand, would go through the process “all over again” if it meant getting to touch her baby girl for the first time.
The 33-year-old told Tyla: “She’s so precious and it was such a journey for us to bring her into the world and it felt like everything was against us to bring her here. “And even though I questioned that many times and was like, ‘is this the right thing to do’? Because ‘maybe she’s not supposed to be here if it’s so hard’. But when I hold her, she is like the most precious little angel.
“I would do it all over again, even more,” the San Diego, California-based doctor told us. “You know, it was one of the best feelings in my entire life.” Leah and her husband Mike found they might have difficulty conceiving in 2015 before they ever contemplated having children together.
Leah was forced to test her partner’s sperm sample while attending naturopathic medical school at Bastyr University in San Diego. He just didn’t have any sperm cells. “That day was when I discovered that he had no sperm, and it was horrible. I was making slides like everybody else and I couldn’t see anything.
“He picked me up from school that day in his truck, and he was like, ‘so how’s my sample?’ And I had to break the news to him, almost like I was his doctor.” But, because Leah was in this tough situation, she felt compelled to put her own feelings on hold in order to keep Mike from feeling guilty.
The Womanhood Wellness founder told us: “I couldn’t really break down in front of him. And that was similar through a lot of our infertility journey because I didn’t want him to feel bad that he had no sperm and that he couldn’t make me a baby essentially. “But that was really hard because I was also suffering and struggling with this idea that we might not be able to have children, at least, not in the way that we imagined.”
Her little girl is now more than a year old, but Leah still remembers the feelings of shame which were attached to her personal struggles with fertility. “It took me a lot of years of therapy, a lot of crying,” the fertility consultant admitted. “I couldn’t even say… I couldn’t even have thought that we might have to do IVF at that time.
“It felt so traumatically defeating. I felt like a failure as a doctor because I couldn’t solve our case and I couldn’t get pregnant naturally.” While Leah’s conflicting sentiments are normal while dealing with infertility, it’s vital to understand that failure to conceive does not imply you’re a failure.
“I felt like a failure too, or that it was somehow my fault,” Emma Haslam, co-founder of independent and impartial reproductive service Your IVF abroad, said Tyla of her personal infertility journey. “It wasn’t and isn’t yours either. Please remember infertility is a disease, this is not your fault and be kind to yourself just like you would if speaking to someone else struggling with infertility.”
“There was really no option for us other than IVF. We were never going to have a baby naturally based on what we know now,” Leah reflected. Leah and Mike welcomed their lovely baby daughter into the world through a C-section six years after their original discovery and after a difficult 52-hour labor.
“I love her more than anything in the whole world,” Leah told us as she dried her eyes. “I could not imagine the world without her. “I think the world needs her and I don’t question our decision at all,” she said, confirming that their years of difficulties were all worth it in the end.