IVF destroyed my health to the point a doctor begged me to stop. There’s a side effect of these ‘miracle’ fertility treatments they don’t tell women

When I first started trying for a baby, I thought it would be an adventure. I was in my early thirties, fit, healthy and a little naïve. 

I went off the pill and waited for my period to return – but it didn’t. Not for months. Then a year. Then two. At the two-year mark, the penny dropped: this might not be happening for me.

Trying to conceive became a second job. I tracked ovulation obsessively. At 35, I was officially ‘geriatric’, in fertility speak. I did everything I was told to do. I counted every calorie, every step, every supplement. 

I was determined to do everything ‘right.’ But I missed one crucial part of the equation: my mental health.

I controlled everything I could on the outside while completely ignoring what was happening inside. For years, I didn’t realise that my body was whispering to me. Then it started screaming.

By the time I was five and a half years into the process – after IUI, IVF, specialists, diets and supplements – my body had broken down. I was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, coeliac disease, depression and anxiety. 

My hair was falling out. I couldn’t get out of bed. At Christmas, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house to be with my family. I felt like I was disappearing.

The scariest part was I hadn’t seen it happening. I thought my constant anxiety was just life. I thought brain fog, exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed were just part of being a woman trying to have it all. But my nervous system was fried, and my body was screaming for rest.

Then my fertility specialist looked me in the eyes and said: ‘Lou, I can’t see you for six months. You need to stop. You won’t have anything left.’

I walked out of that appointment and bawled. I thought she was giving up on me, that it was over. I felt like the dream had died. But deep down, I also knew she was right. I was sick. Not just tired, not just sad – sick.

I took the dogs to the park and looked up at the stars. I asked the universe, ‘Please, there’s got to be something I’m missing. Help me.’ 

I was never spiritual before, but in that moment, something shifted. I felt lighter. Not better, but supported, somehow.

The next morning, I walked into my corporate office. Someone handed me an envelope with no return address. Inside was a sachet of FEM21 – an obscure hormone-balancing product an energy healer had recommended weeks earlier. 

I had brushed it off. But now, this sachet had landed on my desk. The healer didn’t know where I worked. I was gobsmacked. It felt like a sign: something was looking after me.

That was the moment I started listening.

I went home and told my husband: I want to get back to being me again.

I assembled a team to look after my mental wellness. For the first time, I looked at what I’d been unwilling to face: trauma that had built up over years.

I had spent my life being the strong one – the organised one. But I didn’t realise that my mind was poisoning my body. The stress I’d been marinating in had become my baseline. I was surviving, not living.

Healing became learning to say no. Sleeping. Crying. Sitting with truths I had avoided for a decade. Slowly, I was able to see clearly again. I could leave the house. I could laugh. The fog lifted, and for the first time in years, I felt like Louise.

The funny part? I suddenly wanted to get married. Brendan and I had been together for 12 years and marriage was never something I needed. But something inside me needed a line in the sand – a moment to say: ‘This is who I am now.’ So we did it. 

I found a venue, he booked a bachelor party, and we married on December 17.

On January 4, exactly six months after my specialist told me to stop fertility treatments, I went back to see her. She ran bloods as usual and the next day I was sitting on the train when my phone rang.

‘You’re pregnant,’ she said.

After six years of infertility, thousands of dollars, and every treatment under the sun – I had conceived naturally. For the first time ever.

Brendan was working FIFO in the gas fields of Western Australia. I couldn’t call him, so I went to the dog park again (the dogs were my emotional support crew by then) and whispered, ‘I’m pregnant.’ 

They just stared back at me, confused. I ended up texting Brendan, unable to wait for his shift to end.

He didn’t reply straight away – he was mid-transfer, getting on the work bus. When he finally saw the message, a mate sitting across the aisle noticed his reaction and snapped a photo of him at the exact moment he found out.

We have that picture now. I look at it any time life gets hard. That one second of pure, stunned joy reminds me: everything is going to be okay.

Nine months to the day after our wedding, we met our son. He was the first of three. All conceived naturally, all healthy, all after I stopped trying to force it.

But here’s what no one talks about: the trauma doesn’t evaporate just because you get your baby. Pregnancy after infertility is hard. You don’t just switch off the anxiety. 

Every scan, every symptom, every day brings a fresh wave of fear. I had to keep drawing on all the tools I’d learned in those six months of healing – deep breathing, nervous system regulation, mindset work – to not let the panic win.

Because for six years, I was sick – really sick – and I didn’t even know it. I ignored colds that wouldn’t go away, constant back pain, brain fog so intense I couldn’t function if my schedule changed unexpectedly. I became forgetful, scattered, a different version of myself. But I kept pushing through, terrified to stop, because what if stopping meant I failed?

The truth is, no one told me the toll IVF could take on my body. On my soul. Ten years ago, mental health wasn’t part of the conversation. No one asked how I was coping. No one suggested counselling. The language was all urgency and blame: ‘You’re 35, time’s running out.’ And when the shame set in – because infertility is dripping in shame – I just absorbed it.

Infertility is brutal on relationships, too. They say travel tests a couple – try six years of failure, trauma, injections and grief. I shut down. 

Brendan tried to be supportive, but I can’t imagine how hard it was to watch me suffer and not be able to fix it. We hit rock bottom more than once. It wasn’t until I let go of doing it all alone that we could finally come together as a team again.

Healing wasn’t linear. It was messy, overwhelming and terrifying. I had to unpack years of generational trauma, mental illness in my family, the pressure of being the ‘capable one’ and even my experience growing up with a brother who has Down syndrome. 

That experience made me who I am – it taught me love and empathy – but it also carried weight I’d never acknowledged.

But through the tears and therapy and deep internal work, I found something I’d lost: belief – not in a baby, but in myself.

Today, my children are six, four and three. I call them my miracles – but not in the way people think. They didn’t save me; I saved myself. And when I stopped living in fear, stopped pushing my body past its limits, stopped trying to control everything, I finally made space for them to arrive.

So, to the woman in the thick of it, the one who feels like she’s disappearing, who hasn’t seen herself in the mirror for years – I see you. You are not a failure. You are not broken. You are enough. Whether or not that baby comes, you will be okay. 

But please – be kind to yourself.

I wish women were told before they started IVF that it’s not just about science and schedules. It’s an emotional roller coaster. It’s messy and unpredictable. And those big, ugly feelings? They’re normal.

The shame, the envy, the grief, the bone-deep sadness when a pregnant woman walks past you in the street – it’s all valid. You can love your pregnant sister-in-law and still feel crushed that it wasn’t your turn. Those feelings can exist side by side. You don’t need to explain them or apologise for them.

More than anything, I want women to know that your intuition matters. Your body is not a machine. If something feels off, it probably is. You’re allowed to say, ‘This is too much.’ You’re allowed to ask for help, to rest, to heal.

You don’t have to wait until you break to listen to your body.

I spent six years trying to force something into being. And when I finally softened, when I finally gave myself permission to rest, the space I’d been so afraid of was the very thing that brought my babies home.

So take care of you. Trust yourself. You know more than you think. And you are doing so much better than you realise.