A must read blog from A Lust For Life reader illustrating the emotional, mental and physical distress of their journey through infertility and it’s various treatments.
The core message outlines how important it is to have compassion for ourselves and those around us. We can be incredibly hard on ourselves sometimes, and often overlook the achievements we have had throughout life. If we must cope with the more difficult chapters of our life we must celebrate the great parts of it too.
Have a read:
I spent the first 10 years of my adulthood in a haze of partying and abandonment trying not to get pregnant, and then the last 10 years of suburban, marital stability desperately trying to. Two more polar opposite lifestyles you cannot imagine and I often wondered was I being punished for the former. I began my ‘fertility’ journey at the age of 30 when my husband and I visited our brisk, elderly GP to tell him that our …ahem!!… activities in the bedroom were not leading to a celebratory pregnancy. Due to our geriatric ages (30 and 38) he decided to refer us directly to the NHS Conception Unit. The first requirement was to deliver a specimen of my husband’s semen to a laboratory at a city hospital. Oh the fun we had concocting ways to keep it at body temperature whilst navigating the roads to the receiving lab….until we got lost that is. Hysterics ensued as we found ourselves driving down one way systems and cul de sacs behaving like we had in our possession a transplant organ for a world leader. Anyway we got there and the reward was to tell us my husband’s sperm was, well …a bit crap. I imagined hundreds and thousands of lazy feckers in string vests drinking cans of lager shouting at my womb telly. Despite initial tests showing my eggs were relatively ok as the process moved on we also discovered that they had taken early retirement. So we joined the two year NHS waiting list for fertility treatment (a gratefully received and valued opportunity compared to my Irish friends unable to pay the extortionate fees for private treatment!).
Over the next two years we experienced many of the innocuous but hugely frustrating comments from well-intentioned aunties and family friends.. “Well, when are you two going to surprise us with a little one….” Little belly rubs with an “any time now…” remark. And when I shared our predicament the real wisdom would set in… “Sure it will happen when you least expect it” or my favourite “When you stop trying it will happen” … STOP TRYING!!!! I would shout in my head…” You do understand HOW people actually get pregnant!!!!!” My husband and I never stopped but bloody trying. In saying that though I decided from day one that trying to get pregnant would never become a laboratory experiment in our bedroom. No pillow under the bum, temperature taking and charts in our lives. However as time went on I became increasingly aware of my cycle and more than pissed off when my husband due to drunken stupor or exhaustion could not jump to attention at the required time. Sex did become more and more of a biological function than the fun and spontaneous coupling of our earlier relationship. I raged at every boys night, cigarette and alcohol beverage my husband partook in as each month passed. Ironically my copious amounts of wine guzzling did not count so much!!
Anyway treatment round one began. We entered the world of busy waiting rooms with forlorn looking couples refusing to catch each other’s eyes. I was amazed any of the couples made it to the clinic as it was located in the bowels of an old Victorian hospital causing every visit without fail, my husband and I to have screeching rows as we got terribly lost in the maze of corridors so by the time we got there I was teary and he was seething. What followed was a course of drug treatment which involved forcing my body into menopause so that it could be ‘medically’ controlled and then over the next few weeks plumping up my ovaries to produce eggs for potential fertilisation from a single ‘winning’ sperm selected from the lazy bastards. This all went smoothly, an egg and sperm had a wee romantic date in a petri dish under some ultra violet lights and produced a score 10 embryo( a prodigy people…. the embryos are given a 1-10 rating!!). My husband and I held hands as it was implanted in a room full of medics with the radio symbolically playing my favourite song ‘Make me Smile’ by Cockney Rebel and I thought…. this is a sign….it is not how I wanted to get pregnant but I will be able to tell my baby vividly the wonderful moment it’s life began (of sorts!).
After that there is what is called the ‘two week wait’ where if lucky the embryo cells divide and attach to the womb wall. Now most women who become pregnant will maybe feel a bit funny, have sore boobs or feel a bit sick, then take a test and either rejoice or despair in its positive outcome. For any woman undergoing fertility treatment we do not have this oblivious and mysterious experience. Instead we have a torturous, obsessive fortnight that brings on so much anxiety and worry there are numerous websites and blogs dedicated to it. I really did think I was losing my mind during this time. Every tummy rumble, twang and brewing fart is a potential symptom as I discovered when I started reading the other desperate women’s comments on the various ‘two week wait’ forums. In fact in the collective obsession, I am amazed no one has developed a Dulex style paint chart for the various discharge colours and what they are symptomatic of. Anyway within two weeks I had bled a lovely shade of ‘game over’.
So life moved on. For the next year I experienced the physical after effects of IVF; hormonal imbalance, stomach pain, body hair in inexplicable places, you know….all these little insults mother nature interfered with by science throws at you. Meanwhile life goes on with my social circle excitingly falling pregnant, producing beautiful off-spring and losing the ability to talk about anything else except the best buggies, sleep routines and the texture of baby shite. So we decide to go for IVF round two and oh yes, this time would be different. Enforced sobriety, super healthy diets and alterative medicines (one step too far for my husband who thinks that’s all a hippy pile of pish!!). I visited a Chinese acupuncturist and he started me on a magic fertility tea potion. I was to drink this every day for a month. After two days of drinking what can only be described as my own vomit from a mug I threw in the towel on this one. I did stick with the acupuncture though and for someone who cannot bear for their feet to be looked at never mind touched I believe I revealed my unwavering commitment to my fertility through having multiple needles embedded in my feet (I find that hard to even write now!!) I took a month off work and prepared my mind, body and soul for the next onslaught of chemical flooding.
The treatment failed again!!
This time it hit hard. We had been allocated two (hugely appreciated) free attempts on the NHS and would never have afforded it otherwise. I always had quite a harsh, business like head to the process and did not want to be paying off a minimum £5000 loan for years to come on something that had a 20-25% chance of working. It hurt a lot and this time I really saw the pain in my stoic husband, the optimist, who always believed treatment would work. His support to me had been unwavering and despite me joking that all he had to do was wank in a cup I realised the emotional fall out was equally affecting for him. So what did we do…….we got a puppy!!!! We healed ourselves over time with the wonderful love of a dog and each other and started to move on. For the next three years we explored some other options (including adoption but that is a long story) and we celebrated the wonderful arrival of my adored nephew.
Behind the day to day existence however I still lived with this immense, what I can only describe as simmering grief. One thing I often hear couples experiencing infertility talk about is shame. I have to admit at no time did I ever feel shame or embarrassment, although I can empathise with those for cultural or personal reasons who do feel that way. What I did experience was a strange dissociation from my own body….the enemy!! Every late period felt like my body was mocking me and I wanted to give it a serious kicking for betraying me so. I also hated the affect it was having on our loved ones around us, our family and friends who I know felt our every hurt and were desperate for my husband and I to fall pregnant and I guess in that respect I also felt guilt.
And then my father-in-law sadly and unexpectedly died. There was a lot of grief and sadness during this time however in his passing he left us some money, which opened a gate of hope again for my husband and me. We decided to go private and give treatment one last attempt. How could it not work? The opportunity had come from an occasion of great loss and sadness, how could it do anything but lead to a wonderful celebratory outcome!!! Even with the posh coffee and boutique surroundings our private clinic offered behind it all were the same medical staff, same treatment, same rubbish sperms and now increasingly same useless, un-achieving fecking eggs!!
So that was it, three strikes and we were out, and I can warn you now there is no conventional happy ending to this story. For the past 10 years my husband and I had existed in a maelstrom of worry, anxiety, anger, hope, devastation, envy, grief and loss. After the first two attempts I brushed myself down, on the outside put on a ‘well it was not meant to be’ façade but internally had this physical pain that I carried. It was effectively a knot in my throat that grew and grew and became imbedded in my chest to the extend it felt like a large tumour making it hard to swallow. On the most part I got on with life and controlled this pain. It raised its head when I saw pregnant women and new borns and families in restaurants and supermarkets and at Christmas but day to day I got on. What was different for me however in the third and final attempts is I properly grieved. I never cried in my first two attempts, probably because at that stage I was not ready to give up hope.
So I cried…actually that’s an understatement I wailed, and sobbed, and mourned. I did this alone, with my husband, with my friends, family, out walking the dog. I grieved my lost motherhood and impending old age as a sad old lady and I thought how awful my life would now be.
Then there was a shift. Something happened that made me realise I had to let the pain go and start to accept the situation. A Facebook friend who had also been through fertility treatment, but had since wonderfully become a mother , posted (in apparent empathy) something that made by blood boil . It was an article about a woman like me who had struggled to conceive, went through treatment but was unsuccessful. The article was this woman’s tragic account of how she felt she had no meaning in life, how she regularly went up on a cliff and thought about jumping but did not want to hurt her elderly parents. Effectively she too saw her life without children as worthless. And then I just thought ‘FUCK THAT………that is NOT going to be me!!!!!’ At that point I realised I could not define my life by the failure of not becoming a mother. I have done great things and I am a loved and valued person. I have a wonderful career in a caring and socially conscious field; I have an amazing social circle, family and loving husband. I travel and have new amazing experiences all the time.
However I have become increasingly aware of how society and the media react to childless women……sad, unfulfilled, selfish. We see this whether it be in the world of celebratory, work or social circles. Poor Jennifer Aniston’s biological clock is under global scrutiny FFS!! Recently when telling a colleague about another colleague who has been diagnosed with breast cancer her first question was ‘does she have children???….’ Why, I thought, why does that matter? Is she not important enough; is her value in life only defined by having children??? I have come to realise through my experiences motherhood does not define or make any woman. Whether we have chosen not to have children or been unable women’s worth is far more than their ability to pop a sprog out. I think my experience has made me value that so much more and made me think about what I contribute to society, not as the mother I could have been but the colleague I am, the aunty I am, the daughter I am, the sister I am, the wife I am and the friend I am.