Many Fertility Road’s readers will be acquainted with Kirstie and Chris’ Fertility Journey to date. Diagnosed with premature ovarian failure in her teens, and now in her 20’s Kirstie was our youngest Journey participant. We have been following the couple’s journey which has taken them from Northern Ireland to Spain via the Greek Isles.
Following an unsuccessful cycle at home in 2016, Kirstie and Chris were chosen to participate in Fertility Road’s Journey project in 2018. Unfortunately, their first egg donation treatment was unsuccessful and the couple returned to the clinic in April of this year. The subsequent treatment was successful but heartbreakingly Kirstie suffered a loss shortly after returning home.
At Fertility Road we are proud to consider our Journey participants as friends and we endeavour to help their specific fertility path with as much support and guidance as we can. Upset by the outcome of the second treatment we were determined to help the couple find another opportunity and that’s when we had a very interesting conversation with Clinica Tambre in Madrid.
With the couple’s permission, we shared their medical notes with the medical team at Tambre who considered that they had the skills set to help Kirstie and Chris. No wonder, Tambre was established in Madrid four decades ago and has consistently helped individuals and couples who present with complex fertility cases achieve their dreams of starting their own families. The clinic not only agreed to speak to the couple but offered to undertake a free treatment cycle.
This extremely generous offer is not the only testament to the ethical and caring nature of Tambre but also to the extensive network of professionals which Fertility Road works with. Using our relationship with some of the best fertility specialists in the field we were able to identify a clinic who could help with the couple’s very specific requirements.
Fertility Road will accompany Kirstie and Chris throughout their Journey with Tambre and will, over the coming months, share news of visits, consultations, treatment and hopefully a successful outcome.
The story begins with a letter from Kirstie and Chris,
“After 2 failed egg donation cycles and 1 positive cycle (silent miscarriage) we continued our fertility journey. I took some time off work to grieve and allow myself to come to terms with what had happened. I just could not believe that the pregnancy ended, it was our worst nightmare come true.
Andrew, the editor at the magazine Fertility Road, kept in close contact with us during the time after the miscarriage, he was immensely supportive, and he deserves great credit for his kind nature and personal approach. Any questions we had Andrew was there every time offering his advice.
During such a traumatic time, you naturally begin to lose hope and wonder how or if things would ever work out. You start to question yourself and think you did something wrong. Of course, nobody did anything wrong, it was just one of these things. Going through the miscarriage and the weeks that followed brought us even closer as a couple and strengthened even further the love we have for each other.
Even after this natural period of grief, we knew deep down in our hearts that we can never give up on our dream of having a child. Chris & I are both firm believers in that “all your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them”.
We began to start raising the funds needed to go into another IVF cycle (using donor eggs). Here we are today, just a week or two after we received some excellent news. The best news we could have ever hoped for. Andrew was in touch with Tambre, one of the Spanish clinics. When they heard about our case, they didn’t think twice and decided to help us. We are looking forward to going through another fertility journey with Andrew in our corner, we couldn’t do it without him.
We both cried with joy and disbelief. We felt really blessed to have another chance in another place. We were on top of the world.
We just feel so lucky to be given this opportunity. After doing some research around Tambre, they really do sound like a top-class clinic and we just can’t wait to go there and meet everyone. Spain is such an easy country for us to get to which will hopefully help make things easier.
IVF is such a tough journey to go on. There are difficult moments throughout each and every journey. We feel ready to start our new chapter in Spain. I would advise anyone not to give up and to keep going. There have been many times throughout the past few years that we have struggled to remain hopeful but there is always hope and that’s what keeps us going.
This year has been a rollercoaster already and as I write this, it’s only September! There is now light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Clinica Tambre and hopefully with the best efforts of all of us, we can experience our dream come true with the help of them! We can’t wait to get started.
Now as we plan to head to Spain we look forward to meeting all the team at the clinic and of course Andrew, whilst we go through this journey together.”
Kirstie & Chris
