Emma's Story

First of all, where are you today?

I’m currently 5 weeks pregnant!

Tell us about your TTC journey! 

I did my first fertility test two years ago when I was 36. A year later, I did another fertility test, and my AMH came back significantly lower than the test I’d taken 14 months before. It was a real wake up call, and I remember feeling like I was running out of time at 37. 

“I remember feeling like I was running out of time at 37... ”

Did you feel ready for children? 

Honestly, no. My partner and I didn’t feel ready, so we thought we’d start by freezing embryos together. It was quite the journey – we managed to get 11 eggs. 3 of those eggs weren’t viable and 6 fertilised, however we only ended up with one embryo, and genetic testing showed that this was unfortunately not healthy.

Did you try IVF?

IVF was just so expensive – the cost of doing just one round of IVF was going to be around £8,000, and to be honest I found the whole experience really overwhelming. 

Did you try any other methods? 

Yes! So we decided to try getting pregnant naturally, and I got pregnant in June 2023, which felt really exciting. Sadly, at 10 weeks I had a misscarriage. I went through a really traumatic operation for that miscarriage. By that point, I had already been tracking Béa, and knew I wanted to try it when attempting to get pregnant again. 

“Béa seemed like a good solution – it’s a natural thing to give a shot before forking out thousands on a really time consuming treatment process like IVF. ”

How did you feel about the Béa Treatment? 

I thought it was worth a try. My partner was skeptical – he called it the Turkey Baster, which I thought was funny. We decided to keep trying naturally without Béa, but we weren’t successful. Béa seemed like a good solution – it’s a natural thing to give a shot before forking out thousands on a really time consuming treatment process like IVF. 

Finally, I convinced my partner to give it a try, and we did our first Béa Treatment in December 2023. We had natural intercourse as well as Béa, and used the treatment on the day I had a positive ovulation test. 

How did your partner feel about Béa?

To be honest, it took some convincing! My partner felt a little anxious, almost like using the applicator was emasculating. I wanted to give him time to get used to the idea, so together we agreed on a timeline and made a decision about when we would start using Béa. When the kit eventually arrived, my partner really got on board and started thinking about how we would maximise our chances of success using ‘this tool’. 

Is there anything we could have done to help support you better? 

Probably more information and education that involved a partner. Resources for women to help them get their partner on board would be great. 

Note from Tess, Sandy and the Béa Team: leave it with us Emma! We’ll get on this right away.