Sara Jones shares bittersweet IVF story while grieving her father
A broadcast journalist has detailed the emotional rollercoaster of losing her dad suddenly, just days after another life-changing event.
TV journalist Sara Jones learnt she’d be bringing a new life into the world just days after suddenly losing her “best friend”.
The 32-year-old’s beloved dad Trevor died just two days after Jones had an embryo transfer that would result in a baby boy, due in May.
Jones first encountered infertility before falling pregnant with daughter Olympia, who turns two in February.
The Channel 7 Melbourne reporter and her husband Nik had been trying to conceive for a year before testing revealed he had fertility issues.
A laparoscopy later found Jones also had endometriosis and a similar condition named adenomyosis.
She juggled unsuccessful fertility treatments with putting on a “brave face” on the nightly news.
“We both got diagnosed with things we weren’t ever expecting to get diagnosed with,” she said.
“All of my best friends were falling pregnant for the first time, and for a long while I thought I was getting left behind.”
Jones and her husband endured 10 rounds of IVF, which included a pregnancy loss, before falling pregnant with Olympia on the 11th.
Jones was “terrified” throughout the pregnancy.
“I felt like until she was in my arms I couldn’t really breathe properly, and then once she was, that was the best moment of our lives,” she said.
Deciding to start IVF again for a second child earlier this year was daunting.
The day after the first embryo transfer in August, Jones got a call that her dad, who had a lung condition, had experienced heart failure and was in hospital.
The next day she had gone to get some air when her mum called and told Jones her father was about to pass.
“I wasn’t meant to run after an embryo transfer … but I don’t think I’ve ever run faster than through that hospital that afternoon,” she said.
Looking out the hospital window in her dad’s room, she noticed a double rainbow.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I hope this means something’,” she said.
Eight days after her dad died, she took a pregnancy test that came back positive.
“Part of me thought there was no way (the transfer) had worked — I hadn’t eaten or slept for days,” she said.
“Then there was the other part of me that thought, there were too many signs for it not to have worked.
“Dad knew we had transferred, and I actually said to him (in the hospital), ‘You better work your magic from up there’.”
The first words she uttered after the test result were “Thank you dad”.
“I just didn’t realise so many feelings could coexist,” she said.
She was writing the eulogy while at an appointment for the pregnancy.
“Grieving and running after a toddler was incredibly hard with such a heavy mix of grief and hope and anxiety,” she said.
Jones’ fertility specialist, Dr Lynn Burmeister, said both clinical experience and studies showed significant stress could temporarily affect libido, ovulation and menstrual regularity.
“However, the reassuring news is that large, high-quality research hasn’t shown that short-term emotional stress, even grief or trauma, directly stops an embryo from implanting or causes an early pregnancy to fail,” she said.
Jones said the pregnancy had forced her to look after herself.
“It’s almost a way my dad has made me stay strong during this time when all I’ve wanted to do is just fall to pieces some days,” she said.
“I don’t know how this little embryo stuck through all of the grief, but I’m so glad that it did.”
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Originally published as Sara Jones shares bittersweet IVF story while grieving her father
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