Lisa Messenger On Getting Pregnant After 17 Rounds Of IVF

Infertility treatment (IVF) has been more and more popular among Australian couples in the last ten years, with an 18% rise in IVF success rates nationwide. 

A study by the University of New South Wales found that 15,158 (89.6%) of the over 17,000 Australian children born in 2019 as a result of assisted reproductive treatment (ART) treatment came from Australian clinics. 

Despite the rising success rate, some couples have had numerous IVF procedures without success. 

On today’s episode of The Briefing, Katrina Blowers spoke to entrepreneur and author, Lisa Messenger, who has been through unsuccessful IVF treatment for 17 rounds over the past 8 years.

“We actually sold our house in Sydney last year to fund a lot of this. I don’t want people to think, Oh, it’s okay for you. You know, you’ve got all this money. No, we actually had to sell our family home, which is excruciating,” Lisa says. 

Lisa has been through a challenging and horrendous IVF journey, she has experienced 12 rounds of unsuccessful IVF implementations, where the clinic has told her that her eggs are healthy, but there was no good news. 

“I have to say, even being that type of person who has done a lot of personal work on myself, it has been excruciating.” 

On the 13th round, Lisa was introduced to the idea of using surrogacy at a regular fertility clinic during the scan. 

“You know, I think like anything, it’s just like these little iterations where you find these tiny little pieces of hope, little crumbs of hope. And so then, when she said that, which no one had ever said to me before, like, oh, you could use someone else’s eggs. Suddenly, I was like, oh, gosh, I have a new path.”

After witnessing Lisa’s arduous IVF treatment journey, her friend Sarah decided to help her with the surrogacy treatment. 

“We said to Sarah, why would you want to do this? She said when I’m at my rocking chair, I want to look back and go, I helped someone when I could.” 

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