Sometimes there is nothing like a break to give you a new perspective on things. Life over the last two years especially has felt like it has been partially on hold as we went through IVF treatment, particularly because in my case I was travelling very frequently for treatment due to the short length of my cycles and the amount that were cancelled part way through for various reasons.
In addition to this is sometimes not wanting to make plans too far in advance ‘just incase’. Now again, in normal IVF you could be pregnant after any cycle. For the type I did, mild IVF, they spend several cycles just extracting eggs hoping that after a few you’ll have enough good enough quality eggs to reimplant at least one. This means each cycle is extraction only, no re-implantation of embryos as happens in normal IVF. So in that way we were able to plan holidays as we knew we wouldn’t suddenly be unable to fly in 6 months time.
However, one thing you definitely become more aware of when at a clinic is that there are vast swathes of the world you can’t travel to without then having an enforced break of 3-6months of clinic treatment.
You’re probably wondering why this is? Well, unless you travel to the tropics it won’t be a concern. But if you do, whether for work or pleasure (or both in our case), you suddenly can’t.
But why? Zika.
Zika? You may have vague memories of this briefly being in the news cycle in 2015 because of a spate of babies, particularly in Brazil, being born with microcephaly caused by the mother contracting the Zika virus from a mosquito bite. Microcephaly causes the head and brain to be smaller than normal which naturally leads to developmental issues for the child.
Basically once you go to a fertility clinic for any treatment from IUI (inter uterine insemination) to IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) to ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) you will be told that if you visit any of the countries on a loooong list that they won’t be able to continue treatment for a time. This means no trips to anywhere tropical/sub-tropical even if the risk is low – why put yourself through that additional stress and worry?
This essentially means that since late 2017 we haven’t been able to travel jointly to anywhere within the tropics. For me this means I can’t visit any of the countries in which my organisation works as they all fall in this area, and many holiday destinations we are itching to go to (Central America for example) are off limits.
Yeah yeah, boo hoo for me I know. The point I’m trying to make is that yes pregnancy (and children!) bring a whole load of complicating factors into your life but IVF can turn things upside down in ways you haven’t even thought of yet…
I should probably finish this by saying that despite this ‘restriction’ we have been lucky to go to some incredible places in the past few years both in Europe and beyond and I am currently writing this blog during a holiday in South Africa and Namibia (which are out of the Zika zone fellow IVF travellers…). Yes, you can curse me now. Sorry, not sorry.