Treacy Sheehan knew she wanted children ever since she "could hold toy babies and play mumma".
Almost 10 years, 16 rounds of IVF, and nearly $200,000 later, she was no closer.
"To put all those hormones in your body every month, and then to get a 'no' is just heartbreaking," Ms Sheehan said.
The Sydney-based recruitment business owner then visited a fertility acupuncturist, but it was not the needles that proved to be the breakthrough.
"His advice to me at this point was, 'Go overseas and do it. Just go overseas and do it,'" Ms Sheehan said.
Ms Sheehan was able to get three donor embryos in Spain and became pregnant with the first attempt. Sadly, her son Finn was stillborn at 38 weeks.
She went back to Spain to try with the second donation, which also worked, and her now six-year-old son Eamon was born.
While Ms Sheehan is happy to have Eamon, and her "angel" Finn, the long journey has had an impact.
"I'm blessed because I had Eamon and Finn, and I've had the experience and in the end I got my babies," Ms Sheehan said.
"But it was just incredibly heartbreaking and traumatic."
Like having a second job
Bronwen Graham and Simon Watt rifle through a large cardboard box of memories in their apartment at Clovelly in Sydney's east.
They are memories of their own arduous journey to conceive their child — fertility guides, books about sex, a sharps disposal bin, medication, and a Puregon pen for pro-follicle injections.
Compiling the mountain of research felt like having a second job for the couple, and it now serves as a painful reminder of a tough five years of trying to conceive.
"It was a project, one I couldn't fail," Ms Graham said.
IVF was the couple's most straightforward choice for a child of their own as Mr Watt suffered from congenital bilateral absence of the vas deferens, meaning sperm could not travel out of the testes.
They approached a clinic near their home but did not think it would take five years, about $20,000, some psychological counselling, and five cycles — including one medically induced miscarriage.
They eventually approached a doctor at the clinic they had discovered through their own research who was looking into what Ms Graham described as "natural killer cells".
After the first attempt with the new doctor, she gave birth to their daughter, Annabelle.
'You feel beholden to them'
Ms Graham stuck with the same clinic for her five rounds of IVF but, while the couple was ultimately successful in having their child, they would not recommend anybody use the same place.
They felt the clinic would keep telling them to try again, behaving more like a for-profit business than a medical service.
"You kind of feel beholden to them. They have all your records," Ms Graham said.
"I don't agree with their practices, and I don't agree with their approach."
Ms Graham recommended her sister go through the public system. Her sister took two attempts to become successful, which made Ms Graham feel that it could have been a lot easier.
Ms Sheehan also felt that she was treated like she was at a business and wished they had been more forthright about her slim chances of pregnancy.
She described the process as throwing money into a "bottomless pit".
Ms Sheehan said it had left her in a lot of debt, which, along with the emotional impact of the journey, had a lasting impact on her life.
"You so desperately want a child [that] you just keep going, and it's not cheap," she said.
"I wish they had been honest and said, 'You're too old'."
IVF advertising 'seductive'
Monash University researcher Karin Hammarberg said clinics tended to use advertising that overemphasised the chances of having a child through IVF, which was a problem considering people seeking a clinic might be desperate to have children.
"Every clinic wants to look as good, or potentially better, than any other clinic," Dr Hammarberg said.
"The wording is really seductive.
"It's easy to get caught up in, you know, things that are looking like it might hold some promise."
Transparency tool online
The Your IVF Success website, sponsored by the federal government, was launched in 2011 and featured clinics' success rates and a tool that measured an individual's likelihood of success by age.
"We've probably developed one of the most accurate transparency measures when it does come to success rates," Fertility Society of Australia president Luk Rombauts said.
"I think we can be proud of having probably one of the best rating systems," Dr Rombauts said.
Dr Rombauts said people should use the predictor tool before going to a clinic because it might show their chances of pregnancy were very slim.
He said clinics' advertising was regulated by the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee Code of Practice, but any subjectivity in advertising could be unpacked using the online tool.
