Love in Real Life: Kildare couple share incredible IVF Journey

"The path to parenthood looks different for 1 in 6 of us" as was certainly the case for Kildare couple Niamh and Gordon Kelly.

Niamh and Gordon got married in 2018 and had been trying to conceive for over five years.

In a video for Sims IVF, the couple shared their unexpectedly long journey to parenthood and why they decided to go with IVF to have a baby.

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Niamh was diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 25 following a misdiagnosis of PCOS. Her diagnosis complicated the couple's plans but after five rounds of IVF, the couple welcomed baby Isabelle in 2023.

Speaking on the couple's journey to parenthood, Niamh said: "I suppose we found out quite early on that fertility might potentially be a problem. They thought I had PCOS but I would have only been with Gordon for about a year when that kind of came on the table.

"So we kind of had that conversation quite early, if you want children maybe I'm not the relationship for you and he said well if I have a child I want it to be with you."

It was following this conversation that Niamh found out she had endometriosis which at the time she said meant that there was a further reduction in the couple's chances of conceiving a baby.

Niamh continued: "We were together five years but we hadn't bought a house, we had only just moved in together, you know, we weren't quite ready for a baby yet.

"My endo got worse and worse so it's now stage four with bowel involvement but my choice was to keep my womb or my bowel and it was that important to me to have her and carry my own baby."

Following multiple surgery reschedules due to covid, Niamh felt she needed to do something to move things along, she contacted Sims IVF in June of that year without telling Gordon.

She said: "I contacted Sims in the summer when the surgery was cancelled for a second time in June 2020 to look at freezing my eggs,"

"I didn’t tell Gordon at this stage, I was just looking for the information but the consultant said it would make more sense to freeze embryos because we were married and you don’t know the quality of the eggs until you try and make them into embryos."

Niamh and Gordon had a conversation and decided that they would go ahead with egg collection and freezing embryos so that when Niamh had her surgery, she would be ready to try and get pregnant.

The couple did not expect their journey to take as long as it did as multiple rounds of IVF were unsuccessful but in February 2023, the couple finally fell pregnant via IVF and baby Isabelle was born a month early on October 16, 2023.

Now at 14 months old, Isabelle is thriving and Niamh will soon undergo a hysterectomy as result of the damage to her uterus and fallopian tubes caused by endometriosis. she said being a "happy and healthy mammy" was the most important thing for the family going forward.