I spent my savings on my daughter’s IVF – I was desperate to be a grandparent

“Have you got grandchildren?” It’s the question parents dread if their adult child is struggling to get pregnant or dealing with miscarriage. Their own children’s pain aside, they face the prospect of never holding the grandchild they’ve longed for – and the future can look very bleak.

Both of Ipswich-based Gabriella’s two daughters went through three gruelling cycles of fertility treatment. “When it turned out that both my daughters needed IVF and that I might never be a grandmother, it was absolute agony,” says the 68-year-old. “The sadness is with you 24/7. Having children is the best thing I’ve ever done, and I had always thought that having grandchildren would be absolutely wonderful, the icing on the cake. But the saddest thing of all was knowing there was something – a baby – that my daughters wanted so much. It was like a heaviness in my heart all the time.”

One in seven couples has problems conceiving, according to NHS data. That leaves many of their parents grieving for the grandchild they will never have. It’s even more painful given that barely a week goes by without yet another friend or colleague posting a joyful snap of a bonny new grandchild. You’d have to be a saint not to feel jealous. Many of these parents talk about the double blow of not only grieving for the grandchildren they will never have, but losing friends whose lives have been taken over by theirs. Others even cut ties with friends who are grandparents because it just makes them so sad.

Ellen Glazer, 79, is a social worker who specialises in infertility and pregnancy loss. Two of her own grandchildren were born through surrogacy, so she speaks from experience when she says, “Many would-be grandparents can become mean-spirited when someone else’s daughter gets pregnant.” That’s how she felt herself when her daughter, who has a medical problem that made pregnancy unsafe for her, was going through IVF. “Waiting to see if there were embryos, looking for a surrogate, waiting to see if the embryos implanted (it took two attempts for each child), and waiting to find a gestational carrier, I was certainly mean-spirited towards other’s people’s pregnancies. This was similar to what I experienced myself decades ago during my own infertility, and it’s been echoed by countless clients over the years.”

But Glazer wants “grandparents-in-waiting” to know that ugly, resentful feelings towards other women’s pregnancies, and even toward their friends’ grandchildren, don’t mean they are turning into bad people. “What I’ve seen again and again, and experienced myself, is that once one’s child is pregnant people stop wishing other pregnancies would vanish. You have to keep going on blind faith. Having a child go through infertility or pregnancy loss is a double sadness: you are sad for your child and for yourself.”

Parents are painfully aware that as time goes by and the older they get, the harder it will be to play an active part in any future grandchild’s life. They worry their son or daughter will leave it too late, and agonise about bringing up such a sensitive subject. It becomes the elephant in the room.

Many couples are so desperate for a grandchild that they contribute to the cost of their child’s fertility treatment. It’s estimated that one in three couples gets help from their parents now. At least that makes would-be grandparents feel they’re doing something to help; it’s the lack of control and helplessness that’s so hard for any parent to bear.

Gabriella says, “It really weighs heavily on the mother in you, because you can’t do anything, apart from pay for things like acupuncture and hope it helps. I felt I was dealing with fate. I’m not really a believer, but I kept making deals with God, like, ‘I don’t mind not getting that job if the pregnancy test is positive.’ It was really childish stuff.

“All you can do is try to be as supportive as you can. There were times when my older daughter was too sad to talk. I told her I was always available, but made it clear that I understood if she didn’t want to communicate. She felt a real sense of failure about not being able to get pregnant, and that really upset me. Because she is my daughter, I felt I carried both my emotions and her emotions about desperately wanting IVF to work. We were very enmeshed, and we saw much more of each other.”

Gabriella never chased either of my daughters to ask for news. “Of course, I was absolutely desperate to hear, but I knew they would tell me when they were ready. I’d often get a text at 4am with the result of the pregnancy test, whether it was a yes or a no. One time, when my older daughter had just got a bad result, I jumped on the train, and took her and her partner out to lunch. I always tried to do something to lift the spirits and look on the bright side. That got harder and harder with each failed attempt.”

Glazer advises parents to put their own emotion to one side, and allow their son or daughter to control the communication. Jacqui, 71 and from Oxford, contributed £7,500 from her savings towards her daughter’s IVF, went to hospital appointments and held her daughter’s hand while the eggs were inserted.

“I always tried to be positive, even when I didn’t feel that positive myself. In fact, I felt very anxious all the time,” says Jacqui. “Just a few weeks after the first cycle failed, we were sat having a coffee and there were a couple of girls with prams at the next table. My daughter suddenly got up and said, ‘I’m sorry Mum, I’ve just got to go home.’ I was really upset, but I could see that she just needed time on her own.” It took one more failed attempt of IVF until Jacqui finally became a grandmother.

Some parents adjust to life without grandchildren by building a close bond with children in the extended family, as Gabriella did with her sister’s granddaughter, who is now 11. “It felt quite grandmotherly, and I loved it. I still do – I suppose I had a surrogate granddaughter in that way. But I had to be sensitive because I didn’t want my older sister to feel I was overstepping the mark.”

Gabriella now has two grandsons of her own. “Those three years of IVF were so traumatic that I put my own feelings to one side. That’s something I learned as a single parent, to get on with the task in hand and wait for the other stuff to bubble up later, and deal with the trauma then. It’s probably not good psychologically, but I was good at switching off and getting on with my work when underneath what I really cared about and thought about all the time was whether my daughters would get pregnant. I kept reminding myself that while having grandchildren would be wonderful, life is too short to risk putting happiness on something that doesn’t exist.”