9 IVF cycles, pregnancy loss, surrogacy: The Injustice of Infertility & and what I learned throughout my 7-year fertility journey

If you've ever Googled "how many IVF cycles before giving up" at midnight, this is for you.

Not because I have a clinical answer. But because I've been that person, sitting in the dark, wondering if the number of failed cycles I'd had was the universe telling me something. And I want to tell you what I learned on the other side of seven years, nine IVF cycles, a surrogate, and two pregnancy losses.

Because there's a version of coping with IVF emotionally that nobody talks about. And it starts with admitting that this thing is changing you.

The part of IVF nobody warns you about

You went into this with a plan. Maybe you had the timing worked out, the maternity leave sorted, the due date already calculated in your head. You're the kind of woman who gets things done.

And then IVF laughed in your face.

Here's what nobody tells you about how to cope with IVF emotionally. It's not just the injections, the scans, the two week wait, the blood test, the phone call. It's what happens to you as a person when you go blow by blow, cycle after cycle, and the thing you want most in the world just keeps not happening.

Your optimism starts to feel fake. Your relationships take strain. You stop being able to just be happy for someone else. You become someone you don't fully recognise, and you grieve that too, quietly, on top of everything else.

One in three IVF patients stop treatment because of the emotional toll, even when success is still possible and they can afford to continue. Not because they've run out of hope medically. Because they've run out of themselves.

If you've felt that, you are not broken. You are human. And you are not alone.

My story, the unfiltered version

I walked into my fertility journey as a high-achieving, control-loving planner who had never failed at anything she put her mind to. I was the CFO of Australia Zoo. I had a plan.

Seven years later, I barely recognised myself. My colleagues had nicknamed me Cruella de Vil, and the worst part was, I understood why.

No one at work knew I was injecting hormones into my stomach on my lunch break. No one knew my sick days were egg retrievals. They just saw someone who had changed.

In Episode 1 of Ready. Set. IVF. I share the full story. Nine IVF cycles. A surrogate, my sister-in-law Renee, who volunteered to carry our baby. A pregnancy loss on our fourth transfer. A board of doctors who told me I would never carry a baby myself, and then, two weeks after our son Luca was born, a positive pregnancy test that proved them wrong. Followed by a miscarriage. Followed by Sophie, born when I was 39.

Two children. Two completely different paths. Nothing like I imagined.

I share it because your fertility journey, however many cycles in you are, is not a sign that this isn't meant to be. Sometimes the path just looks nothing like the plan.

The biggest lesson I wish someone had told me at the beginning

I thought that once we had our family, everything before it would be erased. That I'd go back to being the glass-half-full girl. That the happy ending would cancel out the grief.

It didn't.

You cannot go through the hardest thing of your life and expect that getting handed the prize at the end makes it all disappear. Grief and trauma don't work like that. And one of the most important things you can do, whether you're at the beginning, the middle, or nearing the end of your IVF journey, is to stop waiting for the baby to fix how you feel and start doing something about it now.

That is exactly what this podcast is for. Not toxic positivity. Not clinical advice. Real, honest support for women going through IVF who want to stop losing themselves in the process.

Listen to Episode 1 of Ready. Set. IVF.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

If anything I shared today resonates, there's more where that came from. The Injustice of Infertility is my full story, all of it, and you can grab a copy on Amazon or get a free chapter first at jenniferrobertson.co/book

Other links and resources:

Click here to follow me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/msjenniferrobertson/

Download our free IVF-Prep checklist and get IVF-ready without the overwhelm:
https://www.jenniferrobertson.co/the-playbook

Join the waitlist for She is... Ready: an online program to keep you calm and grounded through IVF's hardest moments:
https://www.jenniferrobertson.co/waitlist-she-is-ready

1:1 Coaching:
https://www.jenniferrobertson.co/fertility-coaching