For generations, the journey to conceiving a child has been shrouded in secrecy – with the reality of challenges like infertility or pregnancy loss often swept under the rug.
The silence has forced many people to navigate the intense ups and downs of medical interventions like IVF in isolation and self-blame.
But in recent years there has been a shift.
With more and more people courageously sharing their experiences to help inform and empower others, the veil is slowly lifting.
New mum Jess Reed says she struggled with feelings of shame and disappointment when she first realised she couldn’t naturally fall pregnant.
“In high school, you’re just kind of taught how not to have a baby, you know, use protection, be careful with STDs and STIs and all the rest of it,” she says.
“You were never told that it’s actually really tricky to have a baby for some people and that there are all these things you can do to make sure you’re ready and healthy.”
Jess and her partner didn’t want to rush into having a child – they decided to hold off so they could establish themselves in marriage, and build their careers and finances to a place where they felt comfortable enough to provide for a family.
But when this time finally came, what Jess thought would be a very natural process didn’t quite unfold that way.
In preparation for pregnancy, Jess – who was 34 at the time – stopped taking contraception and changed her diet to lose weight.
“I just remember feeling very tired and run down,” she says.
This prompted a visit to the GP who ran some blood tests and also checked her anti-mullerian hormone levels to find out how many viable eggs were left in her ovaries.
“My AMH level was really, really low,” she says.
After the discovery, Jess was referred to a fertility specialist at Genea, Dr Genia Rozen.
“I started seeing her and we came up with a plan – which was really, really important,” Jess says.
“When I spoke to her initially, it was very much: what are your goals? Are you wanting one child or three children?”
After telling Dr Rozen her goal of having two children, Jess says they had a very open and honest conversation about the best path forward.
Jess is grateful at the delicate and sensitive manner in which Dr Rozen approached issues around health, lifestyle and fertility.
“I started my weight loss journey at 132 kilos and I ended up losing about 45 kilos before I got pregnant,” she says.
“Having those conversations with Genia were crucial.”
At a time when her dream of giving birth was filled with uncertainty, she says this helped her not only find hope in the journey ahead but it allowed her to make some informed and empowered choices in what steps to take.
When she began IVF, Jess was really excited but when the first cycle failed, she felt devastated.
“It’s a very big emotional and mental rollercoaster,” she says.
“There’s so much mentally going on just during pregnancy to begin with as a woman, but then to have all of this added pressure and stress around fitting an IVF journey into your lifestyle as well.”
Another attempt to extract eggs left Jess even more heartbroken when the medical team discovered that the six ova they thought she had were just fluid in follicles.
Dr Rozen was waiting at Jess’ patient bed when she woke up to explain what happened.
“That was probably my lowest point,” Jess says.
“I remember just crying to her saying ‘just put a frozen one in. I don’t care’. [Genia] was really supportive.
“The Genea team was just on your side. It just felt like they were in my corner. So any news I got from them, if I was hurting, they were hurting too.”
Jess and her husband eventually found success after a few rounds of IVF.
She became pregnant at 36 and they’re now raising baby girl Evangeline.
They plan on having a second child later on.
“I have no pressure now because we do have some eggs frozen and some embryos frozen and I can just enjoy being Evangeline’s mum and not really worrying too much about wanting another child,” she says.
“It would just crush me if we couldn’t have a baby.”
Fertility rewritten
Modern science breakthroughs are transforming the fertility journey for people like Jess.
Genea has been at the forefront of many of these innovations over the past four decades.
From its pioneering work in developing a global gold standard IVF culture media – the nourishing fluid that helps embryos grow – to achieving one of the first pregnancies in the world from a frozen embryo, Genea has continued to push reproductive science forward.
It created the Geri incubator, which optimises embryo development in IVF treatments, delivering a 12% increase in the number of live births compared to traditional systems.
These innovations have not only improved success rates but they’ve also made fertility treatment more accessible and safer.
“And with that was the snap freezing of eggs, vitrification, that was a really huge breakthrough which allowed better success rates with thawing eggs and fertilising them to become embryos,” says Dr Rozen.
“The technology was actually developed for women with cancer – the treatment can affect the ovaries and make people infertile. Being able to freeze eggs before obviously can make that difference between being able to have a biological child or not in the future.
“So that’s where the technology was developed but because it became so successful, now a lot of women do egg freezing as an elective procedure because of the enormous impact of age on the quality of eggs.
“Australia has always been really quite advanced and at the forefront of IVF advancements and technology. It was one of the first countries to have an IVF baby.”
Dr Rozen says Genea has also led innovative advancements in embryo selection and transfer over the decades.
For example, in the adoption of Day 5 (or blastocyst) embryo transfer, where an embryo is transferred to a woman’s uterus after developing in a lab for five days – this approach saw success rates almost double overnight and other clinics have followed this lead.
Dr Rozen says Genea’s work in Day 5 embryo biopsy and genetic testing has also driven up rates of successful pregnancies and reduced genetic risks for thousands of families.
Some of the major advancements in ART actually occurred years ago, with treatments like Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) revolutionising the path to parenthood.
“It’s the process of injecting a single sperm into the egg, which really transformed the male infertility space,” says Dr Rozen.
ICSI is performed by specialised embryologists.
“Another thing that made a huge change was the way embryo culture was done.
“Originally we used sequential culture media, meaning the embryos needed to be transferred into different solutions over a series of days. Continuous culture media now means they can stay in the solution undisturbed as close to their natural environment [a woman’s fallopian tubes] as possible.
“Freezing and thawing of embryos has also come a long way: being able to do this at high precision consistently comes down to the program and training you have in the lab.
“This has offered patients the opportunity to have just one stimulated cycle – where they collect the eggs – and then come back for less invasive frozen cycles to complete their family.”
The advancements in fertility treatment and reproductive science are also leading to miracles for same-sex couples, people who want to start or grow their family solo and even those who may be receiving treatments for diseases like cancer and need to preserve embryos, eggs or sperm early on.
Medicare rebates have also helped support this journey making the treatment more accessible and inclusive.
Beyond the lab, Genea’s focus on improving patient experiences has led to innovative technologies like the MyGenea app, which allows patients to stay connected to their fertility team, get live-updates and track appointments.
But most loved by patients is the Grow by Genea app, a world-first offering that gives patients the ability to watch their embryos growing in the lab from a mobile device.
These advancements are transforming the lives of couples and individuals struggling to conceive.
And as more people open up about their experiences, it’s helping hopeful parents and others wanting to grow their families make more empowered and informed choices about their fertility journey.
Dr Rozen says that in Australia today, one in 16 babies are born through IVF – that’s at least one in every classroom.
And globally it’s now estimated that over 17 million babies have been born with the help of assisted reproductive technologies.
“Because of how common it is and how much media attention it has received, there is less stigma,” she says.
“In my practice, I thankfully see very little of that left.
“But some patients still do feel isolated or judged – and I think there is still a way to go with normalising fertility conversations.”