A love letter to the woman who is about to do IVF

I remember sitting at our kitchen table with a stack of paperwork from our fertility clinic in front of me. Fact sheets full of acronyms I didn't understand. Consent forms for procedures I had no idea about. And I remember thinking, how am I going to get through this if the paperwork alone is this overwhelming?

If you've just made the decision to do IVF, that feeling is probably familiar. Not excitement exactly. Not dread exactly either. Something messier than both.

This is everything I wish someone had told me the day I signed on that dotted line.

The paperwork isn't a sign you're already failing

Before you've even started a single injection, you're handed a folder of forms that reads like a foreign language. AMH, FSH, ICSI, PGT. Consent for procedures you've never heard of, let alone considered.

Feeling completely out of your depth with the paperwork doesn't mean you're not cut out for this. It means you're a normal person being asked to make major decisions about your body with almost no lead time to process them. Nobody walks into a fertility clinic already fluent in the language of IVF. You're allowed to not know what half the words mean yet, and still be exactly the right person to make this decision.

The fear of the needles is real, and it doesn't make you weak

I was terrified of needles long before IVF. Glandular fever as a kid meant I'd been jabbed so many times my arms were black and blue, and I'd even fainted once or twice. So when the nurse pulled out the needle to demonstrate how the injections worked, I looked over at my husband expecting him to step in. Instead, he'd gone white. Properly white.

Which meant it was going to be me. The girl who fainted at needles, injecting herself every night to try and have a baby.

If the thought of the injections is already making your stomach drop, you're not overreacting. You're facing something genuinely confronting, and it's normal to feel unprepared for it, even if you've done your research, even if you've watched every YouTube video on injection technique. Preparing emotionally for IVF isn't about arriving fearless. It's about starting anyway.

The shame of needing IVF has nothing to do with how capable you are

Here's the part nobody says out loud enough: if you've spent your life being the one who gets things done, IVF can feel like the first time your body hasn't cooperated with the plan.

I was the overachiever. The one who ticked boxes and hit targets. And here I was, having to admit that the one thing my body was supposed to do on its own, the thing so many women do without even trying, I couldn't do it without help.

That's not failure. It's not a reflection of your worth, your femininity, or how hard you've tried. Needing IVF says something about your biology in this particular season, not about your capability as a woman. Understanding what to expect emotionally during IVF starts with separating those two things, because your brain will try to merge them and it will lie to you every time.

You're allowed to feel relief too

Alongside the fear and the shame, there's often something quieter sitting underneath. Relief.

For almost a year before we started IVF, I'd been researching, adjusting, trying everything I could on my own to get pregnant. By the time we walked into that clinic, IVF felt less like a last resort and more like someone was finally looking after me. Like there was a way forward instead of another month of hoping in the dark.

If you feel relieved alongside all the fear, that's not a contradiction. It's what it looks like to finally have a plan after a long stretch of not having one.

This wasn't the dream, and that's allowed to be true

You never pictured this. Not when you were a little girl imagining motherhood, not even a few years ago when you first started trying. You never thought you'd be the one Googling clinics, sitting in waiting rooms trying to hold yourself together, reading acronyms you're supposed to already understand.

Maybe you even said you'd never do IVF. And yet here you are. Not because you want to be, not because it's the easy path, but because you're willing to do the hard thing for the chance to hold a baby. That's not weakness. That's not desperation. That's bravery.

And it's allowed to be both true at once, that this wasn't the plan, and that you're still showing up for it with everything you've got.

The comparison will hurt, and you're allowed to feel angry about it

Watching friends fall pregnant without trying is hard. Watching someone get pregnant after one night with someone she's barely been seeing, while you've spent years doing everything right, is harder.

You're allowed to feel angry about that. You're allowed to feel like it isn't fair, because it isn't. IVF isn't a badge you dreamed of wearing, and it's not the kind of choice that feels like freedom either. It's the kind of choice you make when the alternative is watching time slip away while you wait and hope for something that just isn't coming on its own.

You don't have to have it together

You don't have to be positive all the time. You don't have to fake hope on the days you don't feel it. You don't have to explain your decision to anyone, not your mum, not your sister, not your group chat, until you're ready to say the words out loud.

You're allowed to grieve the path you thought your life would take, even while you're actively choosing this one. Grief and hope aren't mutually exclusive here. You can hold both at the same time, in the same week, sometimes in the same hour.

What I want you to know as you start this chapter

You are not broken. You are not failing. And you are not alone.

IVF has a way of shaking your identity to its core. It makes you question your worth, your strength, your womanhood. But you are still you, the same fierce, loving, capable woman you've always been. This path doesn't take anything away from who you are. If anything, it reveals what's always been there, your grit, your tenderness, your capacity to keep going even when you're scared.

So take a deep breath. You're allowed to be scared. You're allowed to cry. You're allowed to hold gratitude in one hand and grief in the other, and take the next step anyway.

Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to Episode 10 of Ready. Set. IVF.

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