I needed to try one LAST TIME

Cat Strawbridge had put herself through so much to have a family

- SASKIA MURPHY, LUCY NOTARANTONIO

Nobody likes to let go of hope, especially when it comes to their dreams of starting a family. But sitting in the doctor’s consulting room in April 2018, with my husband, Bob, then 42, by my side, the fertility doctor’s words were clear. He told me I had just one more IVF attempt left before we should consider giving up. His words cut through me like a knife, but the truth was, after years of failed attempts, lost pregnancies and heartache, deep down, I knew that he was right.

When Bob and I got married in February 2012, we decided to start trying for a baby almost straight away. I hadn’t always dreamed of becoming a mother, but I’d always assumed it would happen eventually, and at 33, it felt like the right time.

But with every month that passed, my period brought with it a pang of disappointment. I told myself not all pregnancies happen immediately, but a year later, we still hadn’t conceived. We decided to go to our GP, who referred us for a string of blood tests and an ultrasound scan, but the results came back inconclusive. There was no reason why we weren’t conceiving, and so we were diagnosed with unexplained infertility.

Discussing our options with the Fertility Clinic at Homerton University Hospital, we decided to try intrauterine insemination (IUI). The procedure involves doctors placing sperm as close to the fallopian tubes as possible, in the hope of giving them a head start in the race towards the egg, but after three attempts, we had no luck.

In October 2014, after more than two years of trying to conceive, we had our first round of IVF on the NHS. Arriving at the hospital on the day of our embryo transfer, I was apprehensive, but my experiences with IUI had left me well prepared, and now, all I could do was wait and see what happened.

Two weeks later, we got our first positive pregnancy test. We were ecstatic and felt so lucky to conceive on our first round.