What I find most insulting is the fact that the journalists responsible for spreading this rumour know so little about IVF that it really does seem a feasible and easy option for them to get the child/children they want.

The idea that IVF can be seen as the "easy way" to have a baby is laughable. Given the choice of having sex with my husband in order to conceive over what we went through... I sure as hell know what I'd choose any day!

Some of the highlights of my IVF journey - bleeding constantly for over three weeks, at times so heavily that I nearly needed to be hospitalised; squirting drugs up my nose that gave me constant headaches for two weeks that no pain killers would budge (just to add to it, it didn't even work!); daily injections for over three weeks; becoming so ill as a result of an IVF cycle that I spent a week in hospital and was unable to work for over a month... Easy? Sure! Excuse the sarcasm. That's just dealing with some of the physical impacts of IVF, not even touching on the emotional impacts of failed cycles, miscarriages, and the toll that daily blood tests while cycles are being monitored takes on a person.

If someone is mad enough to go through all of that without the need for it, then I think the only thing that can be said is that they are downright mad.

As I said earlier, the insulting part of it is that people understand so little of IVF that people in society seriously do view it as an easier option than having sex to conceive. It's hard physically, emotionally, mentally and financially. I'm insulted by the implication that what I went through to concieve this child was easy in comparison to someone being able to conceive the natural way.

Even from DH's point of view it can't have been easy. Dealing with an irrational, hormonal and exhausted wife would be hard in itself. Getting intimate with a plastic cup on demand... hell, I can see how that's easier than having sex with your wife! Watching your wife go through hell after egg collections and spending weeks not only working full time, but caring for me either at home or in hospital because I'm so incapacitated that I can barely get myself to the bathroom let alone cook and clean.

We do IVF because we are broken. Not because it's an easier option.

BW