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For many couples IVF represents the last hope to have children. Those who have had assisted conception well know the emotional highs and lows that go along with the procedure. Only those couples for whom the treatment failed understand the pain and bitter disappointment that comes when that 'last hope' is dashed.

How that failure is handled is very important. Handled wrongly and the initial pain may be only the start of much bigger problems, as my wife and I found out, the hard way.

Lorraine and I were both eighteen when we were married and within two years knew we could not have children naturally. At first this was not such a problem, upsetting, but not the end of the world. As the years went on, however, it got to us and we considered fostering and adoption, but decided neither option was for us. We tried artificial insemination but that didn't work, then in 1997 we looked into the IVF.

We were advised that in our case normal IVF was unlikely to work and that our best hope lay in the process called ICSI (short for intracytoplasmic sperm injection). As the name suggests, sperm is injected directly into the egg, this accomplishes the hardest part of the job of fertilization. This resulted in two very good embryos which were placed in my wife's uterus and left to take hold. The doctors even gave us a photograph of the two embryos. A nice touch, we thought.

Along with several other hopefuls we had been informed at the outset that the success rate was only one in three. When the time came to have the results confirmed we were to discover we were among the unfortunate two thirds of that statistic. Heartbroken, Lorraine and I cried together but decided against the counseling we had previously been told would be available on request. We figured that with having each other to talk to and a good network of sympathetic friends we would be okay. We were also of the opinion that we could just move on without fully acknowledging what we had lost. In my mind it had simply been a failed process, much like a car failing an MOT. This somewhat cavalier approach came back to haunt us.

Within a year or two we were having problems, and Lorraine was having it harder than I was. Mood swings, unrelenting sadness and a general lack of interest in life were among the indications that depression had taken hold, and this was confirmed by our doctor. We knew that there must be more to it than that we were then in our late 30s and without the family we had hoped for.

Lorraine had just started

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