Where does the love go when IVF fails?
Trigger warning : this post discusses IVF, injections and pregnancy loss. If these topics are heavy for you, feel free to skip 🤍
Whether you’re in the middle of an IVF cycle, mourning one that didn’t work, or holding your miracle baby, today we celebrate our bodies for holding us through it all.
This photo series is a dedication to everyone who’s gone through the physical and mental toll of IVF. A special one to those who ended the journey without the outcome they’d hoped for.
‘‘53,000 people went through IVF in the UK in 2024.
21,400 babies were born from it that year.’’
The rest of us are grieving in silence.
A year ago this week (July 2025) we started our first round of IVF. The hardest part wasn’t the injections in my belly, the egg collection, or the countless sleepless nights waiting and wondering what the results will be…
It was the quiet grief that came after it was all over - the casual ‘’we don’t know what the problem is, but try again anyway’’ as if trying again was mentally, physically and financially possible.
All that love we carried - where will it go now? There will be no pregnancy announcement, no happy tears from our families, no gender reveal, no tiny human to pour it into.
People say grief is just love with nowhere to go. We sat with that for months - stuck in grief for a future we dreamt about for years, for the positive pregnancy test that came on my birthday, then disappeared a week later.
For months I felt like my body had failed me, and I hated looking in the mirror. But as time passed, life fell back into place, and a shift in mindset plus therapy helped change our perspective.
I slowly started to love my body again - for holding me through the hard times, the prickly needles, the surgery, the hormones, the pregnancy and then the miscarriage. I stopped blaming it for failing, and started loving it for trying its best. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a process I am still going through, it is never linear, but it is definitely moving in the right direction.
Little hearts mark the spots where the needles were injected.
Every single one, an act of love.
I’m not sharing our story for pity. I’m sharing it because I want those in the thick of grief to know that there is hope - hope of finding happiness, feeling alive, and loving life again.
You’re allowed to feel all the emotions, and you’re allowed to celebrate your life even if you didn’t succeed at creating another one.
We don’t know what the future brings, but we stopped waiting, and that truly set us free. My love is now pouring into my relationships, my art, our cat Luxio, and the sweetest kitten called Pixel, who arrived two months after that negative test; she’s filled my heart with so much love I still can’t believe she’s real!
Thank you for reading,
Lots of love,
Hind x