Trying to Conceive Wasn’t Supposed to Look Like This: An Honest IVF Conversation with Breanna May
When you picture yourself becoming a parent, you don’t usually imagine needles, waiting rooms, and your legs in stirrups while a room full of strangers watches a tiny embryo on a screen.
You imagine a moment of joy, maybe a bit of surprise, maybe a “we’ll just see what happens” story that turned into two pink lines.
For my guest, Breanna May, trying to conceive looked nothing like the story she grew up expecting. And if you’re reading this because your own conception journey is feeling nothing like you imagined… I want you to know this article, and this conversation, is for you.
In this episode of the Thriving Parenting podcast, Breanna opens up about her IVF journey with such honesty, humour, and heart. In this article, I’m walking you through the key parts of her story and the beautiful wisdom she shares for anyone navigating fertility challenges, IVF, and the emotional rollercoaster in between.
“I thought I’d fall pregnant easily”
From a young age, Breanna was told she was “super fertile.” Her parents fell pregnant quickly. Her aunties and cousins never really spoke about fertility issues. She got her period young.
All the messaging she’d ever received painted the same picture:
“I just thought I’d be that person who falls pregnant straight away.”
So when she and her now-husband eventually decided, OK, we’re ready, they did what many couples do:
They travelled a bit more.
They ticked off a few last bucket list adventures.
They assumed conception would happen easily and soon.
But months passed. Then a year. Then more. No positive tests. No “maybe this month.” Just silence and heartbreak.
The cervical procedures that changed everything
Part of Breanna’s story began years earlier, when she was 19.
A routine Pap smear showed high-grade CIN3 (cervical dysplasia) – essentially abnormal cells on the cervix that can progress towards cancer. At 19, not thinking about babies or future pregnancies, she did what many of us would do:
“I just went, ‘OK cool, do what you’ve gotta do.’”
Doctors removed a significant portion of her cervix. Years later, another abnormal result showed up. This time, knowing she and her husband wanted to start trying for a baby, she hesitated.
She turned to natural and alternative support:
Working closely with a naturopath
Addressing root causes
Trying to see if she could reverse the dysplasia herself
Her gynaecologist told her point-blank:
“You cannot reverse this naturally. It’s not possible.”
But Breanna had already found evidence that some women do reverse cervical dysplasia with holistic support. So she declined the surgery and gave herself time.
When she still hadn’t fallen pregnant after many months, and was now working with a fertility specialist, she was told the lingering cervical issues might be contributing to her trouble conceiving.
She made an incredibly hard choice:
“I felt caught between a rock and a hard place.”
She went ahead with another surgery to remove more of her cervix.
Then came the gut-punch.
The biopsy showed the abnormal cells had already regressed… back to stage one.
The “good news”: the abnormal cells were gone.
The “bad news”: her cervix was now very short, and she’d been left with a high-risk pregnancy profile for the future.
“I was told it couldn’t be done. But my body had actually started to regress those cells by itself. It was a reminder that my body could work with me – and at the same time, it deepened my distrust in the medical system.”
The grief of being told, “You might need IVF”
As the months of trying naturally continued with no success, IVF started to enter the conversation.
But if you know the feeling of wanting everything to be as “natural” as possible, you’ll understand why Breanna resisted it with everything she had.
She didn’t love the idea of injecting herself full of hormones.
She has a healthy cynicism around big pharma and over-medicalisation.
She wanted to fix the root cause, not jump to procedures.
Accepting IVF wasn’t just a medical step. It was an identity crisis.
“I didn’t think this was how it was supposed to go. I didn’t want my journey to look like that. Accepting IVF was actually the hardest part.”
A conversation with a client turned friend shifted something for her. They asked her a simple but powerful question:
“What’s more important to you – how you get the baby, or the baby itself?”
That landed.
At the same time, the pain of each month’s disappointment had built to a breaking point. She described it as walking around with a constant grey cloud she didn’t even fully recognise until it finally lifted.
“I just got to the point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I threw my hands up and surrendered. I remember saying to my mum, ‘I think I’m going to do IVF. I just don’t want to do this anymore.’”
“Am I playing God?” – the spiritual wrestle
For many people, IVF isn’t just a medical decision. It’s also a spiritual, ethical, and emotional one.
Breanna shared how she wrestled with thoughts like:
Are we forcing something that’s not meant for us?
Are we interfering with God’s plan?
Should we just wait for perfect timing?
A friend offered a reframe that helped her breathe again:
What if IVF is actually part of God’s plan?
What if the person who invented IVF was given that gift for women like you?
That perspective allowed Breanna to see IVF not as “playing God,” but as one of the tools we have access to in a complex modern world – a potential bridge between longing and life.
Reframing the injections: from fear to love
One of the biggest emotional hurdles for Breanna was the injections themselves.
She has always had a strong fear of needles. She’s fainted during injections since childhood. And now she was looking at:
Twice-daily injections
Bags of medications
A fridge full of hormones
Sharps containers on the bench
For someone who doesn’t even take Panadol, it felt like a full-body clash with her values.
The turning point?
She reframed every single injection as an act of love:
“I started telling myself, ‘This is for you, baby. I love you so much already. I’ll sacrifice this for you.’”
Instead of seeing the meds as “toxic” or “unnatural,” she chose to see them as:
Baby juice
A starter act of motherly sacrifice
Her first initiation into doing something hard and uncomfortable for her child
That doesn’t make the physical and emotional load disappear. But it transformed her inner dialogue from resentment to devotion.
The first embryo transfer: trauma, pain and a brutal “no”
After months of preparation, testing, appointments, injections and emotional work, the first embryo transfer day finally arrived.
They did everything they could to make it special:
Planned a beautiful day together
Decided they’d go out for lunch afterwards
Talked about buying their first baby item to celebrate
But when they arrived in the procedure room, everything changed.
Because of the scar tissue left from her cervical surgeries, the doctor struggled to get through her cervix. There was intense pain, unexpected instruments, and at one point, what felt like her cervix being forced open.
“It was honestly traumatising. I screamed. I disassociated. Afterwards there was blood. I was shaking. And then they just left us to clean up and said we’d know in a week if it worked.”
Then came the two-week wait (in her case, a slightly shorter time because of a 5-day embryo).
The first test: negative.
The official blood test: negative.
The clinic’s message: “I’m so sorry. It didn’t work. We’ll start again on Monday.”
All of this… on Mother’s Day.
Breanna describes that first failed transfer as the moment something in her heart cracked. She reached a point where she thought:
“Maybe I’ll do one or two more and then I’m done. I can’t keep doing this to myself.”
The second transfer: surrender, a shooting star, and a digital “pregnant”
The second time around looked and felt very different.
Breanna went in:
On Valium
With a playlist full of songs chosen by friends
With more realistic expectations of the physical discomfort
And, importantly, with a sense of emotional surrender
“I just had this energy of ‘whatever’. Like, I’ll do this and then maybe we’ll go to Europe and take a break. I wasn’t gripping it so tightly.”
The transfer itself was smoother. Less trauma. Less shock. And a single moment that still gives her goosebumps:
As the doctor guided the embryo in, Paul watched the screen and was told:
“Now you’re going to see a little shooting star.”
At the exact same time, a new song started playing in Breanna’s ears:
“It feels like home to me…”
That embryo is now the baby she’s 6 months pregnant with.
This time, during the wait, she and her husband went camping off-grid. No reception. No obsessive googling. No symptom-spotting on forums at 2 am.
On day seven, in the bush, with a campfire, hot chocolates and shaky hands, they finally turned over the digital pregnancy test.
One word: pregnant.
“We both just sobbed. Paul even asked, ‘You’re not pranking me, are you?’ because it’s something I’d actually do. But it was real.”
What IVF is really like for partners
One part of the conversation I loved was hearing how much the process impacted Breanna’s husband, Paul.
Like many male partners in fertility journeys, he:
Felt largely invisible in medical appointments
Rarely had doctors look at or address him
Wanted desperately to help, but couldn’t “fix” anything
Held himself together to support Breanna, then realised later how much he had been carrying
He described that positive test in the bush as a huge emotional release from years of silent weight.
Now, months into the pregnancy, he finds unexpected joy in the physical reminders – like walking into the kitchen and seeing her growing belly as he comes home from work.
“He said it’s nice because I get reminders all day – kicks, nausea, back pain – but his life doesn’t physically change yet. So seeing my belly is like his anchor into this becoming real.”
IVF in three words
When I asked Breanna to describe IVF in three words, she paused and said:
“Resilience-building. Challenging. Worth it.”
And despite the trauma, the needles, the grief, the waiting and the fear, she says that IVF is now almost a distant memory.
Not because it didn’t matter.
But because the net emotional result – this pregnancy, these kicks, this baby – has changed the way it all sits in her story.
The biggest piece of wisdom: surrender
If you take anything from Breanna’s story, let it be this:
Surrender.
Not in the sense of giving up your desires or pretending you don’t care anymore. But in the sense of:
Loosening the grip on needing it to happen in a very specific way
Letting go of the constant need for answers and control
Allowing support in, even when it doesn’t look like your original plan
Accepting you can’t force timing, outcomes or perfection
For Breanna, surrender wasn’t a tidy, calm, spiritual moment on a yoga mat.
It looked like:
Crying all weekend at a retreat when someone else announced their pregnancy
Driving home with a splitting headache
Calling her mum and admitting she couldn’t do “this way” anymore
Finally saying yes to IVF from a place of being completely done
That surrender continued through her mindset shifts, reframes with injections, and her “whatever will be, will be” attitude during the second transfer.
And it’s a theme that will serve her – and all of us – through parenting, too.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t…”
To end the episode, I asked Breanna to share a quote she lives by.
She chose an old favourite she used to have in her classroom back when she was teaching:
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
For her, it’s a reminder that:
Our beliefs are incredibly powerful
Our internal world shapes how we move through hard things
We do get to choose empowering perspectives, even in painful seasons
She used this belief when she worked on her cervical dysplasia.
She used it to reframe IVF from fear to love.
And she’ll pass it on to her son as he grows up.
If you’re in the messy middle of your own fertility story…
I want you to know:
You’re not broken.
You’re not behind.
You’re not alone for feeling angry, resentful, hopeful, heartbroken and grateful all at once.
It’s okay to want a different story.
It’s okay to grieve the way you thought conception would look.
It’s okay to need support – emotional, medical, spiritual, all of it.
And it’s absolutely okay if your version of surrender doesn’t look graceful. Most of the time, it doesn’t.
