The fourth trimester. Three words I had heard thrown about throughout my pregnancy; words I had read about in the pregnancy books; words I had seen mentioned endlessly in posts on Instagram, accompanied usually by a photograph of a postpartum mother; her hair scraped into a signature probably due a wash ‘mum-bun’, sat in her large maternity knickers and nursing bra, fashioned with a breast pump and a half eaten bagel, or to that effect. That picture is usually styled to high-heavens, staged to look candid and yet far too aesthetically pleasing to represent the actual reality. I knew it was com ..read more

The most difficult part of my infertility struggle wasn’t the miscarriages I endured or the failure to become pregnant each month. Believe it or not, it was accepting an involuntary childless life. I knew it was time to close the door on trying to conceive when my mental health hit rock bottom. After ten years of non-stop IVF treatments, the medication became more intense, causing severe anxiety – I was at an all-time low. Over the years it felt as though my husband and I had wasted thousands of pounds only to keep getting IVF fails! Deep-down, I knew we were heading towards a childless path w ..read more

It’s funny really, how you never expect to be one of the statistics. I never expected to be part of the 1 in 6 couples who struggle to conceive. If I’m honest, even three years into trying, until the words ‘You can’t conceive without IVF’ came out of my surgeon’s mouth, I never quite believed we were even ‘struggling’. I managed to convince myself that things happened when they were meant to, and it just wasn’t yet our time. Once our IVF ‘journey’ had started, I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t work first time. I knew on average it took 3 attempts, and yet I still managed to believe it wou ..read more

2021 was the year we all expected normality to come crashing back in, we hoped for a year better than 2020, and yet it stormed by with as much turbulence and as much confusion as the former. Reading is something I find incredibly therapeutic; it helps me to escape my own mind no matter what’s happening in the real world and immerse myself into the depths of someone else’s. Throughout the year, I have shared on Instagram my own personal reviews of the books I’ve read, from the ones I’ve loved and struggled to finish. So, without further ado, here are my top 5 books I read in 2021! Some of the l ..read more

When going through fertility treatment, it’s fair to say that you will explore any option that’s given to you. You reach a new level of somewhat desperation, willing anything to work and willing to give anything a try. Furthermore, when you enter the territory of multiple cycles, I’ve found that willingness can go one of two ways; you’re eager to try almost anything to help improve your chances of success and reduce your chance of needing to go through the whole rigmarole again, and yet, you become somewhat reluctant to try certain things because those sold to you before in which you invested ..read more

I don’t remember exactly when trying to conceive became my entire life; I quite often try and pinpoint where I spiralled. When did ovulation sticks, and basal body thermometers become part of my daily routine; when did pregnant women become a thing to avoid and baby showers the equivalent to putting a hand in a blender? When I look back over the last six and a half years, I’m not sure when I crossed the bridge into the murky territory, but I do know that keeping my head above the dirty water has been tough. On Sunday, I joined The Fertility Show for their first online summit for a chat about s ..read more

Hi, my name is Amber and I am a chocoholic. I have been a self-proclaimed chocoholic for as long as I can remember; I have never and will never relate to those individuals who tell me they don’t like it. If I’m really honest with myself, it’s more of a sugar addiction than a chocolate addiction. Whilst I truly believe that chocolate is the top tier flavour and nothing quite beats a large bar of Dairy Milk when PMS takes hold of me, I love anything sweet, and anything that means the nutrition information on the packaging is solid red. My love for sweet has developed more recently into a love fo ..read more

Tonight on Sky, we are being graced with the long awaited FRIENDS reunion. Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Joey and Phoebe are all taking their place on our TV screens once again, 16 years later. This time however, they are coming to us on Sky and not in character. Instead, we are looking forward to reminiscing one of (if not ‘the’… definitely ‘the’) best TV shows ever to have landed on our screens. Could we be any more excited? Absolutely not. So, what a better time to get nostalgic in preparation and look back at my 10 top Friends moments. I like to consider myself to be an expert in Friends ..read more

Dear my 14-year-old self, You’re approaching 27 now; you’re not much taller, if anything you’re slightly smaller, and life hasn’t quite turned out the way you’re imagining that it will. You’ve graduated from University, you’ve got a good job, you’re married (to an Italian may I add, you always vow to never marry someone with a dull surname, so congratulations on that front), you have a house, a car and a Labrador. On paper, it’s all turned out pretty sweet. However, in just short of 10 years, you are told that you’re infertile. I know this is going to come as a shock to you now; it came as one ..read more

Planning for our third IVF cycle is something we hoped we would never be doing. In the same breath, planning for our second cycle wasn’t something we hoped we’d be doing either. Honestly? We hadn’t ever anticipated that we’d be planning our IVF at all, and yet here we are, 6.5 years into trying to conceive. We have had two failed cycles of ICSI and we have only ever had one embryo make it to transfer day. We have no embryos on ice, we have no clearer idea as to why it isn’t working for us, and we regularly feel like we are still stuck on square 1. You would hope that after spending thousands o ..read more