Bev Y.'s IVF Story

I never wanted to be a mom, and I know that sounds weird coming from someone who's about to tell you her IVF story, but it's true. I'd sold two companies, traveled the world, ate what I wanted, went where I wanted. Life was mine and I loved it that way.

That started to shift around 38. Not because of some biological clock panic, but because I looked around and realized that everything I'd built was just for me. I had my parents, my employees, people who counted on me, but nobody who was truly mine. So I froze my eggs at UCSF without a partner, without even dating anyone, just thinking, you know what, I'm not getting any younger, so let's at least preserve the option.

UCSF

Fast forward a few years. I'd met my partner, we were ready, and UCSF was the obvious choice since that's where my eggs already were. We thawed my frozen eggs, did another round of extraction, combined everything with his sperm, and ended up with eight embryos, which felt like really good numbers.

What people don't tell you is that after you make embryos, you still have to test them for missing chromosomes, genetic abnormalities, all of it. And the numbers just keep dropping. Day one we had eight embryos, day four we were down to four, two boys and two girls. Science can even tell you the gender that early, which is kind of wild.

Then on day seven, I got the dreaded phone call. I remember exactly which parking lot I was sitting in. None of the embryos made it, all four were abnormal. From 20 eggs down to zero in a week, just like that, and the woman on the phone treated it like a scheduling issue. "There's no explanation, it just didn't work. Let's book your next retrieval." When I asked to speak with my actual doctor, she told me that would cost $500. I'd already spent over $35,000 at this point and they wanted to charge me to have a conversation about why it failed.

I was not a number. I was a human being going through one of the hardest things I'd ever experienced, and they were treating me like a line item. I eventually got the call with the doctor after writing to the medical director, but the damage was done and I was never going back.

Starting Over

Then the universe did its thing, or maybe just the algorithm, since Facebook clearly knew more about my fertility journey than most of my friends did at that point. An ad popped up for a clinic offering three tries for a fraction of what I'd spent at UCSF, and that included meds, injections, retrieval, implantation, everything. I almost thought it was a scam because the deal was that good, but I did my research, signed up for a credit card, put the whole thing down, and started over.

The new clinic was a factory, and I'll be honest about that. You get in line for your meds, get in line for your blood draw, get in line for your shots. But it was a well-run factory, and the difference in how they treated me compared to UCSF was night and day. The nurses knew me by name, and the head nurse actually gave me her personal cell phone number and said "Bev, call me anytime, I want this for you." After what I'd been through, that meant everything.

I also found something I didn't know I needed, which was a community. The clinic had a Facebook group where patients could ask questions, share experiences, and just be there for each other. Because the thing nobody talks about with IVF is how incredibly lonely it is. All my friends got pregnant naturally, so I didn't have anyone to cry to, anyone who understood what it felt like to inject hormones into your belly every day for weeks and then have someone call you to say it didn't work. These women on Facebook, strangers at first, became my support system through the whole thing.

Seven of us from that group all ended up pregnant, and I was the last one. I'll admit there was pressure in that, being the cheerleader for everyone else while wondering if it was ever going to be my turn. But on my second cycle, it worked.

Lake Como

We were in Lake Como, Italy for a wedding when the email came in. Your results are ready, open this email. It felt like waiting on a college admissions letter, except the stakes were so much higher.

I'd left my phone in the hotel room while I was getting my hair done, so I didn't see it right away. When I got back, my partner was there, and I decided to let him open it. He's the eldest of four boys and had been in a previous relationship where kids were never in the picture, so he'd pretty much made peace with the idea that he was never going to be a father.

He opened the PDF, looked at it, looked at me, and said "it's normal." After UCSF, where that same kind of phone call had meant devastation, hearing the word "normal" just broke us open. Then he said "and it's a boy." We called my mom immediately, FaceTimed her crying, and at the wedding that evening we told family in person. I couldn't have picked a more beautiful place to get that news if I'd tried.

What Nobody Tells You

IVF is not just a medical procedure, it takes over your body and your life. Eighteen vitamins a day, acupuncture every other day, hormone injections that make you feel like your body doesn't even belong to you anymore. You're giving everything you have to this process with absolutely no guarantee it's going to work, and for a lot of women it doesn't work the first time, which is its own kind of grief that's really hard to explain to people who've never been through it.

The financial stress compounds all of it. Between UCSF and the second clinic, I invested over $60,000, and that's not a typo. The emotional cost is even harder to put a number on.

What I'd Do Differently

Start earlier, for sure. I wish I'd started in my 20s or 30s, though I also wouldn't trade the life I lived in those years for anything. But if I could go back, I'd find an employer with amazing IVF benefits so I wasn't carrying the full financial burden on top of the emotional one.

Clinics abroad offer amazing treatment options. A friend of mine went to Taiwan four times and made a real trip out of each visit, exploring on the weekends and then coming back for the next stage of treatment. Another friend lives in China, and when I suggested she look into clinics there instead of flying all the way to the US, she stopped and said "oh yeah, why wouldn't I?" It's the same machines, the same science, and from everything I've heard, you're treated like an actual patient overseas instead of a number. I spent over $60,000, and that same journey abroad, flights and all, are a fraction of that for a much better experience.

But at the end of the day, I'm grateful. Grateful to science, grateful to the clinic that actually cared about me, grateful to the women who cheered me on through a Facebook group when nobody else understood what I was going through. And most of all, grateful to be mom to the most amazing little boy in my life.

Bev, 46, Irvine, CA, USA. CEO & Founder of TravelNanny.com.