#infertility

"The first modern attempt at transferring a uterus from one human to another occurred at the turn of the millennium. But surgeons had to remove the organ, which had become necrotic, 99 days later. The first successful transplant was performed in 2011 — but even then, the recipient wasn’t immediately able to get pregnant and deliver a baby. It took three more years for the first person in the world with a transplanted uterus to give birth. 

More than 70 such babies have been born globally in the decade since. “It’s a complete new world,” said Giuliano Testa, chief of abdominal transplant at Baylor University Medical Center.

Almost a third of those babies — 22 and counting — have been born in Dallas at Baylor. On Thursday, Testa and his team published a major cohort study in JAMA analyzing the results from the program’s first 20 patients. All women were of reproductive age and had no uterus (most having been born without one), but had at least one functioning ovary. Most of the uteri came from living donors, but two came from deceased donors.

Fourteen women had successful transplants, all of whom were able to have at least one baby.  

“That success rate is extraordinary, and I want that to get out there,” said Liza Johannesson, the medical director of uterus transplants at Baylor, who works with Testa and co-authored the study. “We want this to be an option for all women out there that need it.”

Six patients had transplant failures, all within two weeks of the procedure. Part of the problem may have been a learning curve: The study initially included only 10 patients, and five of the six with failed transplants were in that first group. These were “technical” failures, Testa said, involving aspects of the surgery such as how surgeons connected the organ’s blood vessels, what material was used for sutures, and selecting a uterus that would work well in a transplant. 

The team saw only one transplant fail in the second group of 10 people, the researchers said. All 20 transplants took place between September 2016 and August 2019.

Only one other cohort study has previously been published on uterus transplants, in 2022. A Swedish team, which included Johannesson before she moved to Baylor, performed seven successful transplants out of nine attempts. Six women, including the first transplant recipient to ever deliver a baby back in 2014, gave birth.

“It’s hard to extract data from that, because they were the first ones that did it,” Johannesson said. “This is the first time we can actually see the safety and efficacy of this procedure properly.”

So far, the signs are good: High success rates for transplants and live births, safe and healthy children so far, and early signs that immunosuppressants — typically given to transplant recipients so their bodies don’t reject the new organ — may not cause long-term harm, the researchers said. (The uterine transplants are removed after recipients no longer need them to deliver children.) And the Baylor team has figured out how to identify the right uterus for transfer: It should be from a donor who has had a baby before, is premenopausal, and, of course, who matches the blood type of the recipient, Testa said...

“They’ve really embraced the idea of practicing improvement as you go along, to understand how to make this safer or more effective. And that’s reflected in the results,” said Jessica Walter, an assistant professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who co-authored an editorial on the research in JAMA...

Walter was a skeptic herself when she first learned about uterine transplants. The procedure seemed invasive and complicated. But she did her fellowship training at Penn Medicine, home to one of just four programs in the U.S. doing uterine transplants. 

“The firsts — the first time the patient received a transplant, the first time she got her period after the transplant, the positive pregnancy test,” Walter said. “Immersing myself in the science, the patients, the practitioners, and researchers — it really changed my opinion that this is science, and this is an innovation like anything else.” ...

Many transgender women are hopeful that uterine transplants might someday be available for them, but it’s likely a far-off possibility. Scientists need to rewind and do animal studies on how a uterus might fare in a different “hormonal milieu” before doing any clinical trials of the procedure with trans people, Wagner said.

Among cisgender women, more long-term research is still needed on the donors, recipients, and the children they have, experts said.

“We want other centers to start up,” Johannesson said. “Our main goal is to publish all of our data, as much as we can.”"

Part 2 to More than a Jane Doe, thank you to whoever requested I continue this! I also had a request here to write about endometriosis so I included it in this fic.

Summary: Baby Jane Doe now lives with you and Jack as her foster parents. You wondered if you should finally find out if your symptoms matched up to endometriosis, because you were getting broody.

Word count: 3k?

Trigger warning: mention of infertility, mention of surgery, mature content

“Something smells nice” Jack said as he walked out of the shower, towel wrapped around his hips and you quickly shushed him, pressing a finger to your lips. 

“How long has she been asleep for?” He whispered as he wrapped his hands around you from behind.

“Not long” you whispered back, feeling yourself sink into his warm touch “what’s on your mind?”

He turned you in his arms and kissed you deeply, one hand reaching over to turn off the stove. “So many things” he murmured against your lips “but it all depends if you let me…”

You hummed back as you kissed him “I do trust you… so anything you want?”

He leaned closer  “you sure about that?” 

𝘑𝘰𝘦 𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘹 𝘧𝘦𝘮!𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳

WORD COUNT : 3.5K

Summary : A bad news ruins all your hope to build a family one day. But I guess, miracles can happen ?

Warnings : infertility; lots of crying; reader feeling guilty; angst ?; reader’s insecure; mention of sex; FLUFF; no use of y/n; (tell me if i missed some !!); possible grammatical errors

Lillie talks : Joe saying that he wants a family really inspired me for this one !! This is the longest fic i’ve ever wrote but I loved writing it so much and I apologise if i hurt one of you with this ! 💕

English is NOT my first language, sorry if i wrote wrong !! c:

When your gynecologist first told you that you were infertile your entire world fell apart. It was like everything you’d done in these past years would be for nothing. Your husband, Joe, and you worked hard every day just in the hope to start a family one day, just to be sure that you’ll always be financially stable for your kids to grow up healthy. This was all you cared about in your life, your only goal.

You’ll always remember that day, you were sitting in the doctor’s office, your legs were trembling lightly, because somehow you’re always stressed during a medical appointment and imagine the worst things that could happen in your head.

When the doctor entered the office with few papers in her hand, she had that same neutral expression she always wore, a professional one. But this time it felt different and you immediately felt it when she closed the door. The way her smile was slightly different from the usual. She sat down on her chair, swallowing hard and licking her lips before speaking.

“So,” she took a deep breath, “I don’t see anything different from the last few times we saw each other, and-”

You immediately cut her off because you didn’t really cared about what she had to say, you knew you were healthy and had no problem with your body. “Can we skip directly to what’s wrong ?” You said when your legs started to tremble a little more.

She paused and looked at you for a moment, not really sure how she was supposed to tell you this ‘cause she knew. She knew about your dream to become a mother one day and it broke her heart to announce you that, because you looked so excited about becoming one. So she took another deep breath and swallowed again.

“You’re infertile.” Simple, yet completely gut wrenching. At this moment you felt something in your chest, something really hurtful, something you’d never experienced before. It was like your literal heart had fallen to the floor and you weren’t sure if you were strong enough to pick it up back.

You couldn’t even remember what she said next, you simply looked right into her eyes, nodded slowly and replayed her words a thousand times in your head, while she kept talking and explaining things you didn’t care about. Because this one word was enough for you and you couldn’t hear more.

What were you supposed to tell Joe ? He was so excited about the idea of you two becoming a real family. You’d planned everything, their names, what you wanted them to look like, you told Joe that you wanted a little girl with his eyes and hair, and he told you that he didn’t care about the gender as long as they look just like you. The two kids you’d imagined were now just a forbidden dream.

“There’s still small chances for you to be pregnant, but it’s very rare.”

Small chances. Those two words gave you a little hope that maybe you’ll be part of those rare person who are able to have kids even with their disease. But still, small tears peaked at the corner of your eyes, what if you’re not part of these rare person, what if you really won’t be able to realize Joe’s dreams.

When you reached your car the salty tears finally fell down your cheeks. You sat inside of it for almost 30 minutes, hands firm on the steering wheel while hundreds of tears flowed down your face. You kept thinking about Joe, about your future. About the ugly drawings that could have been stuck to the refrigerator, the little shoes in front of the house next to Joe’s big one, or the late-night feedings. Your medical folder sat on the passenger seat, you glanced toward it for a moment causing a small sob to leave your mouth.

Outside your car, people continued living, a mother pushing a stroller passed by. She looked happy, she smiled to her baby. A small laugh that contained no humour escaped your lips before you cried harder again. Guilt settled inside you like a stone, because it was your fault, it was your body’s fault. And because of you Joe won’t be able to have the kids he dreamt about so many times, you suddenly took away the future he wanted and deserved.

After thinking about it for a long moment you finally started the engine and started driving back to your shared apartment. The drive was long, very long. You tried to stay focused on the road even with your blurry vision.

When you finally arrived home, your eyes burned from crying. The second you stepped out of the car your heartbeat fastened. You tried to find a way to announce him that but couldn’t find one. You tried to hide the fact that you were crying, but your eyes were red, your cheeks too and so was your nose, and you kept sniffing.

In the elevator you felt like your heart was going to explode. Your cheeks were full of dried tears. When the elevator reached your floor you stepped out and glanced at the door for a minute before finally deciding to go. You exhaled slowly before opening.

“Hey baby,” Joe said with a huge smile, already up from the couch, “how’s the appointment ?”

You slowly closed the door, swallowing hard before turning around to finally face him. His expression immediately shifted into concern the second he saw your red eyes. You felt the tears coming back.

“Hey, hey, what happened ?” He asked quietly, stepping forward while you tossed your purse aside. His arms wrapped around your waist and he pulled you against him. When your face was finally resting against his chest, you let out a breath you didn’t knew you were holding and started crying again.

Joe looked down at you, confused, then lift your chin to make you look at him.

“I’m so sorry.” You whispered between two sobs.

“For what ?” He asked still confused. His hand was now resting on your cheek, thumb brushing the tears away.

You sniffed quickly, “I’m infertile.” you said quietly, watching his expression shift. His hand moved to your hair as he exhaled slowly, pressed your head against his chest before leaning down to kiss on top of your head and inhale the scent of your hair.

“It’s okay,” He mumbled into your scalp, “there’s other ways to do it.”

“I’m so sorry, Joe.” You repeated in another sob.

“You don’t have to be, it’s not your fault..” He said quietly, closing his eyes and stroking your hair with his hand while tears still ran down your cheeks.

When you pulled back he took your hands in his and searched for your blurry eyes. “I know how much you wanted this.. and I just ruined everything.” You said, your voice cracking at almost every word before breaking again. He shook his head slowly, his hands moving to cup your face gently. “I can’t give you the family you wanted.” Your lips trembled.

“You are my family.” Joe said quietly, lifting your head up to make you look at him.

You began crying harder when he pulled you back against his chest, and you fell apart once again. Your hands clutched his shirt while his arms wrapped tightly around you. You could hear how fast his heart was beating.

“It’s gonna be hard,” he started, resting his cheek on your head, “really hard.. but someday we’ll figure out what comes next.”

“What if there’s nothing next ?” You sniffed.

“Then we’ll still have each other.”

You knew Joe was heartbroken but he didn’t show it, maybe it was a way to make you understand that this wasn’t your fault, and that things like that happens in life.

Because this is the whole point, life isn’t always full of highs, in fact, it mostly has lows. And those highs are what matter most. It could be moments you’ll never forget about or some good news you’ve been waiting for so long, but it always will be something that brings a smile to your face no matter the situation. Joe was your high.

Later that night, you sat in silence around the table. You barely ate the dinner Joe made, even though his cooking is your favorite. Sometimes you glanced at him. His eyes were focused on his plate, moving his fork between his food while he swallowed the ones he had in his mouth. He was thinking, about your future and the multiples ways you could have children. He glanced up at you when he felt you staring, your eyes quickly looked back down at your plate. Suddenly he reached for you hand across the table, squeezing it gently and drawing circles with his thumb. It was reassuring.

When you did the dishes after eating, you silently broke again. Tears fell down your cheeks again and you swallowed hard. You felt Joe’s hands sliding around your waist and hugging you tight against him. He left small open-mouthed kisses on your neck.

When you got comfortable in your bed, you couldn’t fall asleep. You kept thinking about it, replaying the words of your gynecologist a million times in your head. Small tears still fell down your cheeks and lend on your pillow. Joe on the other hand was sleeping very deeply.

For a whole hour you stared at the same dark spot in your room. “You' not sleepin' ?” Joe asked quietly turning around to wrap his arms around you.

“I can’t.” You whispered.

“You need to.” His face was buried in your neck.

“I know.”

You don’t remember at what point you fell asleep.

—

The first month after the big news felt unreal. You were still proceeding the thing. You were grieving a dream that could never happen. Some days, you would wake up in the morning and forget. You’d stretched under your blanket and think about your day, before it would came back to your mind. You couldn’t walk through the baby aisle in the grocery store anymore. All those items staring at you like they were judging. One afternoon you found yourself staring at a display of baby clothes. Without realizing tears began rolling down your face. You were mourning someone that never even existed.

Joe only cried once in front of you. The day after telling him you found him sitting on the couch with a beer in his hand, in the middle of the night, as tears fell down his cheeks. You watched him wipe his eyes before taking a deep breath. When he turned his face and saw you, he forced a smile, sniffing. You approached him slowly and sat beside him. Your hand caressed his back before he reached for you and pulled you against him. He quietly fell apart in your arms, face buried in your neck. You watched him cry in your arms for a moment, before crying another time with him.

On the second month you somehow started to convince yourself that Joe deserved someone else, someone that could give him a child. He wasn’t the problem, you were. Joe could have babies, you couldn’t. One night you lay awake watching him sleep. His face looked peaceful when sleeping. You imagined what your kids could’ve looked like. You wondered if they would’ve looked just as peaceful as him while sleeping.

Eventually, you started pulling away from him. Not because you loved him less but because you loved him too much that you felt guilty. You stopped initiating kisses, stopped reaching for his hand and pulled away quickly when he hugged you. You thought you were protecting him from becoming more attached to someone who has ruined his dreams. Joe noticed, of course he did.

“Have I done something wrong ?” He asked one evening.

“No.” You looked down at your plate.

“You won’t let me touch you anymore.”

Your eyes burned, “I just..”

“You just what ?”

You took a deep breath before looking up at him, “You deserve better.” You finally admitted quietly.

The silence afterwards hurt more than anything, he looked at you like you’d spoken a language he’d never heard before. He shook his head, brows furrowed, “I don’t understand.”

You swallowed, “You deserve a wife who can give you children.”

His chair scrapped loudly across the floor as he stood, “I never asked you to give me children.”

“But you wanted them.” Your voice cracked.

“Yes.” He reached for your hand, “Yes I did.” He kneeled down beside you. “But I married you for the better and the worst. And this is the worst.” his voice cracked slightly, “But you know that it always was the better before this.” He took a deep breath, tears began falling down your face for the hundredth times, “What I’m trying to say is that we lived with it for years, and just knowing it can’t change everything between us. I don’t deserve another woman just because you’re not able to carry my child, just because we’re not able to accomplish one of our dream.”

He took your second hand in his, thumbs brushing your knuckles slowly, “You know some dreams are harder to achieve than others and that’s the whole point of life. Work hard for something you really want.” You watched him carefully, listening to everything he said. “I love you. I love you so much i’m ready to give away some of my dreams just to be with you.” A small smile appeared through your tears.

He reached up for you, crashing his lips on yours. It felt like he was kissing you for the first time ever. You smiled through the kiss as one his hand stroked your hair slowly. That night, after two month, you finally had sex with Joe again, and when you both came at the same time, you cried. You cried and smiled and kissed. He held you close all night, whispering sweet nothings as you slowly fell asleep in his arms. It was the first time in these two months that you really slept.

By the third month, you’ve finally started to accept it. Not completely, but enough for your life to feel like before. You laughed more, slept more and spent less time thinking about it. You rarely talked about it with Joe, instead you talked about work, about his next tour he couldn’t wait for to arrive, about the exciting news your boss told you. Your relationship now felt exactly the same as the very beginning of it, the conversation you had brought you closer. You had date nights at some fancy restaurants, you watched a lot of movies together. You did exactly what a husband and a wife should be doing.

By the starting of the fourth month, a huge fever kept you in bed for a week. Your head hurts, you coughed, you were exhausted and you had that pain in your stomach that not even pain meds could erase. Joe was worried, he made his best to take care of you. He came back home from the studio earlier just to make you dinner and help you get into the shower. Sometimes when you were too tired he even washed your back and hair. He cleaned the house, cleaned your clothes. He moved the appointment he had this weekend just to stay home with you.

“You should see a doctor.” He told you on Saturday night while laying in bed behind you, his arms wrapped around your waist.

You coughed quietly, “Yeah I should.”

“You want me to come with you.”

You smiled through your pain, “No, you don’t have to.”

“Okay.” He whispered into your ear.

On Monday you decided to listen to Joe, and go see a doctor. You were at the medical center around 9 a.m., you waited for about 20 minutes in the waiting room. When the doctor called your name, you stood up difficultly. In fact, a new pain had joined the other, a back pain that hit every time you stood up. The doctor examined you like always, usual things he did every time you came here. But this time he couldn’t really determined what you had, he hesitated between the flu, a cold, maybe bronchitis ? He didn’t knew. So he booked you an appointment for a blood test for this afternoon. He said that it was gonna help you know what you actually had.

So around 3 p.m. you got to the hospital, and waited for your turn again. The nurse called you and guided you to a quiet room, before starting to prepare the syringe. And after she’d punctured you she directly sent your blood to the laboratory. You waited for almost an hour, in the same room, for the results. When the nurse walked back in, she was smiling.

“I don’t see anything really wrong, you probably got the flu and maybe a little cold with that.” She stated with a little smile, you simply nodded. “But there’s nothing really severe that could put your baby in danger.”

Your face completely dropped, the polite smile you had on your face disappeared instantly, “What ?” You said barely above a whisper.

Her smile also faded slightly, “Oh. You didn’t knew ?” You shook your head slowly, your heart was beating so fast you were sure she could hear it, “Well, congratulations.” She said, her smile growing back.

You weren’t quite smiling yet, because you were scared. What if it didn’t last ? What if this ended before it truly began ? But your excitement took over you quickly and your vision started to get blurry. But this time not from sadness but happiness.

When you reached your car, you sat inside for a moment, replaying her words a thousand times in your head. Four months ago you were in this same parking lot, in your car, crying because someone had just ruined your dreams in one word, and today you were crying because an other person just revived it with one word too. You even pinched yourself to make sure you weren’t dreaming. You breathed in deeply before starting the engine to quickly go back home, eager to tell Joe.

You could already see him taking you in his arms and crying when he’ll realise that his dream is becoming true. But when you opened the door of your apartment, he wasn’t there, he’d left earlier this afternoon to go to the studio and you had no idea when he was going to be home.

You quickly got the idea to take a pregnancy test, just to make sure that this was real and that you weren’t imagining it. And when the result finally appeared, you cried again at the sight of that single word on a plastic thing : pregnant. You held it with a trembling hand, tears falling down your cheeks again, You jumped in the entire apartment and screamed.

You should’ve probably guessed it because of your menstruation. But you didn’t even realise that your period were late, your cycle had become unpredictable after all the stress the situation gave you. You couldn’t care less now, you had a baby growing in you. Your child, Joe’s child. Your dream, Joe’s dream.

You didn’t stopped crying for the rest of the afternoon. You watched tiktoks of babies, you searched up for baby’s clothes, already imagining it in your arms. You were still worried, actually more than ever, but you couldn’t help and imagined your future already.

When Joe walked through the door, he found you sitting on the couch, eyes swollen from crying. Worry immediately washed over his face as he crossed the room in few quick steps, he reached for you, taking your face in both his hands. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong ?”

You smiled through your tears that began to fall again as soon as you heard his keys. You couldn’t talk, you just handed him the test. He took it carefully, looked at it, then looked at you, then back at it. He stared for so long that you could see the realisation taking over his face.

“Is this.. or am I dreaming.” You slowly nodded, laughing quietly. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. He was slowly processing it.

Your smile faded slowly when you didn’t saw him smile, “I’m worried too.” He glanced up at you, “I’m scared that i’ll loose the baby.”

He slowly nodded, finally sitting beside you. He took your hands in his, “I’m pretty sure that you’ll be good.. and that our baby,” he stopped and smiled, “will be good.” He finally wrapped his arms around you, pulling flush against him. “I love you, baby.” He whispered in your hair.

“I love you too, Joe.” You said quietly.

This night it was just you, Joe and your baby. Maybe tomorrow everything will change again, maybe it’ll happen in a month or two or six, but for tonight, you were pregnant. You carried your dream and that was all that matter. Maybe miracles can actually happens.

Hope you enjoyed girlies !! Let me know what you think 💕

Read more of my work here : masterlist.

My Unlikely Existence 

“AI in IVF could be awesome, or it could be terrifying,” Catherine Mills, one of the researchers, tells me from her home office in Melbourne. “So the goal was to try to figure out where it lies between those two extremes.”

IVF is still an emotional, expensive gamble: nearly 3 in 4 cycles fail. In our latest piece, Phineas Rueckert explores how AI is changing the odds—and what could happen if the algorithm goes rogue. 

fili durin x fem!reader — a babe of his own tw - infertility

You hadn't the heart to tell him the truth. He loved you, dearly, you knew he did, and yet the words stayed deep inside of you, threatening to spill with every passing minute.

Fili deserved a life of love. That you could give him. You could give him every bit of love, worship, care, whatever—you just couldn't give him that. You couldn't give him a baby.

The prince had mentioned it in passing. You had barely even registered it at first.