Quotes About IVF

Louise Brown's birth marked the end of the beginning of human IVF, acclaimed at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. This event was snubbed by some clinicians now styled as 'pioneers', who shouted that the test-tube claim was a fake! They did not matter.

People talk about the miracle of birth. No. There's the miracle of conception. I did IVF, but nothing happened. So I began to think of adoption, and then I got pregnant. It was definitely a miracle.

We lost a baby at 11 weeks when I was 34, and we got married expecting we would have no trouble having another child, because I'd fallen pregnant that one time. But it just didn't happen and we did about four years of IVF, trying very hard to have a baby.

Of course, I could try IVF. But having watched my friend TV presenter Clare Nasir go through it, I know how tough the journey is. Emotional fool I may be, but even I can see that's too selfish a course of action to impose on my family.

We have a generation of women who think that they can just have IVF, and everything will be fine. The odds are against you once you start having IVF, and the odds are against you over the age of 35. And to pretend that it's easy to have a baby in your 40s or 50s is - it's just selling women a false dream.

We have all these politicians that claim they're pro-life and that say women should not be able to get abortions and all this other stuff... there's nothing more pro-life than helping a woman who wants to have a child have a child. Then I realized that health insurance doesn't cover IVF.

For anyone who has found it easy to conceive, it is perhaps hard to imagine how IVF can become all-encompassing in someone's life. The endless check-ups, scans, tests, periods of waiting and finally the day when you learn the result. It's a physically punishing process for the women and an emotionally exhausting process for both partners.

You cannot be against embryonic stem cell research and be intellectually and therefore morally consistent, if you're not also against in vitro fertilization.

In her enthralling debut, Circle of Chalk, Christina McClelland tackles the complicated and sometimes controversial subject of IVF with compassion and honesty. McClelland doesn't shy away from the messiness but rather invites the reader into the decades' long journey. The story twists and turns until the very last page. Elizabeth Musser, author of The Swan House, When I Close My Eyes, The Promised Land

Some women can go 12 cycles of IVF and not have a problem. They love babies. They want to have a baby - it's all encompassing. I did it just three times and then I was out. I realised that I didn't want a child.

IVF is a wonderful thing. One has to ignore the injections as the reality is that nobody is going to invent a pill that you can take to get a baby.

The difficulty of IVF or of any fertility issues is the hope and the shattered hope, the dream that it might happen this time and then it doesn't happen.

I think patients and doctors alike minimise the physical, emotional, and financial toll of IVF.

God bless IVF because it's never too late to conceive any more. However, having said that, I have to point out that going through IVF is a gruelling procedure; maybe that's why only a woman can go through it!

I went through about 13 rounds of IVF before I got pregnant with Salome; it was very tough.

I wanted to transmit what it feels like to be on the so-called IVF emotional rollercoaster, and I guess I wanted to offer a shared aloneness to anyone who's desperately longed for a child.

IVF became the only way for us to have children after I was treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma 10 years ago with fertility-destroying chemotherapy. And while the cancer treatment was predictably punishing for me, I was struck by the anguish of the IVF process and in particularly the failed cycle.

My personal interest in IVF led me to author two reports into the availability of treatment on the NHS.

About 3 million IVF babies have been born since Louise Brown's birth in 1978. Bizarrely, when this life-giving treatment was first considered, it was massively controversial. A storm of vitriolic protest came from many religious leaders, journalists, politicians, regrettably even other scientists and doctors.

IVF is very commercial. The people doing it are among the best-paid in medicine: they charge a lot per treatment and it's not in their interest to make it more effective. Having people fail means that they come back again.

Each and every time I went in for IVF treatments, I knew there was a bipartisan group of Congresswomen praying for me, and I was honored that the same group was there at my baby shower.

The difficulty of IVF or of any fertility issues is the hope and the shattered hope, the dream that it might happen this time and then it doesn't happen.

We spent three years of active trying before we went to IVF. First I went on Clomid. Then I had some dye tests and found I had a collapsed tube, so I had laparoscopic surgery; the tube wasn't blocked, just spasming.

Carolyne and I were desperate for children of our own and I can't describe the happiness I felt when she became pregnant with twins after IVF treatment.