The IVF Trauma Files: When Trying Turned Into Treatment

When People Think of IVF, They Don’t Think of Trauma

When people talk about “the IVF journey,” they usually picture hope, science, and miracles. But sometimes, IVF trauma begins long before the first injection—before the hormones, the ultrasounds, or the embryos.

For me, it started two years earlier—with timed sex, vitamins, ovulation apps, and the quiet panic that comes when nothing’s working.

Back then, nobody my age was talking about freezing eggs. My doctors never brought it up. There was no checklist, no warning, no “Hey, maybe test your fertility before thirty-five.” Just silence—until I made an appointment myself.

The Day “Trying” Turned Into “You’re Running Out of Time”

I was 34. The OB-GYN walked in, glanced at my chart, saw my birthdate, and her eyes went wide.“Oh,” she said. “We need to get this show on the road.”

That sentence detonated something inside me. Until that moment, I’d never considered that my body might fail me.

Then came Adam’s (my hubby) semen analysis—textbook perfect, of course—and months of waiting for a fertility clinic consult. At the same time, the clock I didn’t know existed suddenly started ticking in surround sound.

When the plan finally arrived, I was excited. Naively so. I didn’t even realize they’d skipped IUI altogether because I was already considered geriatric. What a word to assign to a woman barely midway through her thirties.

The Test That Changed Everything

The first test was the saline-infusion sonogram—“just some cramping,” they said. It felt like a grenade went off inside me.

Sweat poured down my legs. I couldn’t stand. They handed me water and a cookie, like that could touch the pain. My pain tolerance is high; this wasn’t pain, it was shock.

The next day, I collapsed at work. Ambulance. Hospital. Morphine that didn’t touch it. Wand-ultrasound after wand-ultrasound, five or six in total. I was terrified of that wand by then—the same one that had already betrayed me. No one could explain what had happened. “Something may have ruptured,” they guessed.

Two days in the hospital. Then, a Sunday call from the clinic for an urgent follow-up with more wands, more pain, still no answers. The doctor said I’d need a tubal ligation on the left side and mentioned it could “improve my chances for IVF success.”

Waking Up to a New Reality

I went into the procedure knowing I'd have one of my tubes removed. While uneasy, I found comfort in knowing there was still a chance that we could get pregnant if IVF didn't work.

I woke up without either. They cleaned house.

That’s how I learned I’d never conceive naturally. No warning. No time to process. Just gone.

Two months later, I was holding my first IVF treatment plan—still excited, somehow, because hope is a stubborn bastard. If only I’d known what was coming.

The Note That Erased My Pain

Years later, when we switched clinics, I finally got my medical records in the mail. I flipped through the pages expecting clarity. Instead, I found one line that nearly made me throw the whole folder across the room: “Patient responded well to procedure.”

The same procedure that landed me in the hospital. The one that had me sweating, shaking, and my body in shock... and later, without both fallopian tubes.

Reading that felt like being erased. That’s what IVF trauma inside the medical system often looks like... pain rewritten in polite language.

If you’ve ever walked out of a clinic knowing something was not okay, but the paperwork says otherwise, I see you.

Tell me: what part of your fertility journey still sits in your body, even when everyone else has moved on?

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