S5:E11 - Lucia (part 1)

The Long Road & the Night Everything Changed

Trigger warning: this episode discusses pregnancy loss and premature birth.

This is a two-part episode. Part 1 ends at the birth. Part 2 — the NICU journey and life now — drops next week.

Some stories you have to tell in two parts. Lucia's is one of them.

Luce is a nurse based in regional Victoria who froze her eggs at 36, made the decision to go solo shortly after, and then spent the next four years navigating one of the most complex IVF journeys I've heard on this podcast. Four egg collections. Multiple transfers. Multiple losses. A late endometriosis diagnosis that may have changed everything. And finally — on the most chaotic, stressful, nothing-going-right transfer day imaginable — the embryo that stuck.

What happened next nobody could have predicted.

Luce got to 22 weeks before noticing spotting one evening. She messaged her midwife friend. She messaged her obstetrician. She drove herself to the appointment the next morning, convinced it was nothing. And within hours she was in an ambulance, lights and sirens, being transferred to a tertiary hospital in Melbourne — four centimetres dilated, membranes visible, 22 weeks pregnant with the baby she had spent four years trying to have.

What follows — the week-by-week countdown in hospital, the handouts for each gestational age, the conversation about resuscitation at 22 weeks that no one should have to have alone — is one of the most honest, clear-eyed accounts of premature birth I've heard from a solo mum.

Luce is a nurse. She asked for the facts. She made the hardest decisions she could with the information she had. And she shares every part of it here, without flinching.

In this episode:

• Growing up in regional Victoria, training as a nurse and paramedic, and spending her 30s building a career while her friends got married

• Freezing her eggs at 36 after watching friends navigate fertility challenges — and giving a relationship a deadline

• Making the decision to go solo, finding City Fertility, and choosing a donor

• Her first transfer — a positive, a heartbeat, and then a missed miscarriage at nine and a half weeks

• Three subsequent transfers, multiple early losses, and the decision to do a second egg collection

• Changing specialist to Dr David Wilkinson and trying new protocols — including PRP treatment

• A third and fourth egg collection, endo discovered via laparoscopy, and her best-ever collection of 47 eggs at 40

• Nine embryos, three normal on PGT-A testing — and all three failing to implant

• The chaotic final transfer — stuck in traffic, blood pressure through the roof — and the embryo that finally stuck

• Getting to 22 weeks, spotting, and the morning that changed everything

• Ambulance transfer to Melbourne, four centimetres dilated, and the conversation about resuscitation at 22 weeks

• Counting the hours each week in hospital — and what it means to get to the next handout

Next week: Part 2 — the NICU journey and life now.

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Key Takeaways

• IVF timelines are unpredictable — building an emotional support system separate from your fertility clinic is not optional, it's essential

• Endometriosis is vastly underdiagnosed; if you have painful or heavy periods and are struggling with implantation, it's worth asking your specialist about a laparoscopy

• PGT-A tested embryos do not guarantee success — the science is still evolving and unexplained implantation failure is real

• Having a medical background doesn't protect you from the emotional weight of this journey — it just changes how you process information

• Knowing your why before you need to make hard decisions matters. Luce had thought through her values long before she needed them.

• A private obstetrician for a high-anxiety pregnancy is not a luxury — it's mental health support as much as medical care