Baby Loss Awareness Week
Dearest 500 Reasons community,
This week’s nomination comes from our lovely member, Ellie.
This week marks the beginning of Baby Loss Awareness Week, culminating in the Global Wave of Light on 15th October.
As someone who has personally experienced a difficult and painful fertility journey, I understand the cost — both practically and emotionally — that these journeys can bring.
It felt especially meaningful that this nomination came at this time. We hope it reminds this couple that they are not alone; that their journey is being seen, supported and held by a community of 500 people who are behind them, to help them get back on their journey to get their baby.
Sending love to every single person in our community this week, and an extra-big hug to anyone who feels they might need one.
We see you. We’re with you.
Much love,
The Admin Team
And the nomination is below.
xxx
Hello there 500R Team,
This is a friend of a friend.
Wondering if we can help them.
Much love,
Our clinic collapsed on day 5 of our IVF cycle after handing over all our money
Hi, we're Pippa and Jay. We've been together for seven years, married for two, and we've spent the last two to three years trying to become parents.
We both have fertility issues and were advised because of that and our age (36 when we started) to go straight to IVF rather than any more affordable route.
We work hard and live in London but we don't have huge amounts of disposable income, and we carefully saved to be able to do this. We chose to go to Portugal purely because we couldn't afford the UK prices. We were quoted £15k per round here versus £5-6k there. Portuguese law for LGBTQ+ families is also very similar to the UK, which made us feel safer than some of the other options.
We managed to get everything together for one round and three vials of donor sperm, and went through our first round of IVF in February 2026. Sadly it didn't work. We always knew it might take more than one round, and we'd really enjoyed our experience with the clinic, so we began saving again to have another chance with them.
This time we made a plan to collect eggs from both myself and Jay and make all the embryos we can, to give this round the best chance of working. Our clinic advised that this was also the most cost effective way to do it.
Last week we paid our clinic, Ovomcare in Portugal, everything we had, hoping we could do enough treatment to secure our dream. We paid in advance for three egg collections, embryo creation, monitoring and a frozen transfer. We'd been treated well by them the first time round and we trusted them completely. I started my medication on Monday 25th August.
On Friday 28th August, on day 5 of stimulation, we found out the clinic had gone into insolvency. No one from the clinic, including the medical staff, gave us any advice about what to do if you are mid stimulation.
We are still in total shock, and in all this chaos we've been trying to work out how to save this cycle.
Our money is gone, tied up in an insolvency estate in Portugal. Our donor sperm is frozen in their lab, inside that same estate, and we have no idea when or if we'll get it back. I am mid cycle, still injecting, with no doctor supervising me and no egg collection booked. The drugs I'm taking cost money we've already spent and can't get back, and every day this cycle goes unmonitored is a day we could lose it.
We are doing everything we can. Jay has lodged a claim with the insolvency administrator and we've gone to our bank and asked for a chargeback, but the bank route isn't looking good. The insolvency could take a really long time and we've been told to expect that we won't get it all back. We aren't able to wait and see, because this cycle is happening right now.
We are lucky to have found someone to take us on, and that's what we're asking for help with.
We're raising funds to:
- Pay a new clinic to take over this cycle with comparable treatment
- Replace the donor vials we can't reach, or transport our vials from Portugal back to the UK where we will carry on treatment
We originally set this page up before any of this happened, when we were just hoping for a second chance. We never imagined we'd be back here asking again after losing everything to something so far outside our control.
If you can give anything at all, thank you. If you can't, please share this with your community in any way you can. We are also looking for legal support from someone that knows insolvency law, so please reach out if you know anyone that can help with that.
Pippa & Jay ❤️
Ellie
Comments