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Unintentional Intentions

Here’s the thing with humans. When someone we love is going through something really tough we rush to give advice and fix so we can walk away from the conversation feeling like we have helped. I do it, you do it, we all do it. And our hearts are obviously in the right place.

I am lucky enough to have an army of support but I have wanted to yell at most of my friends and family for their unintentional intentions. It’s not their fault, the fault doesn’t lie with any of us, but somewhere along the line it became more important to have our own voices heard rather than to listen. 

So I’ve compiled a list of the advice or things people have said to us whilst we’ve been on this brutal journey of trying to have a baby. I’m not the only person to have put this list together - there are hundreds out there - as one of the common denominators for us all of battling baby stuff is that people we love can sometines say all the wrong things.

So here goes:

1. You just need to relax

2. You just need to book yourselves a dirty weekend away with lots of wine

3. You need to get fitter

4. You need to change your diet

5. You need to not think about it

6. You need to not obsess about it or clock-watch 

7. You need to stop trying so hard. When you stop trying it will happen. My friends tried for 10 years and then decided to stop and boom, they fell pregnant.

8. You need to stay positive

9. You should be grateful that you have this medicine available to you

10. You should be grateful that you can afford fertility treatment

11. Don’t forget to be grateful for what you do have 

And the list goes on.

You see, although most of the list is on point, all I am hearing is that I am not trying hard enough and believe me, I am doing everything I feel I can. 

What friends and family don’t see is everything we do from diet to exercise, to all the appointments with holistic healers and the countless scans and blood tests that I have to have. The emotional strain is unavoidable and can leave me feeling quite depleted so when I hear these words of advice all I hear is “you need to do more”. And my default is always that I am not enough or not doing enough so my insecurities go into overdrive. 

My age is also slapping me in the face because as much as we have all evolved and are having babies later in life, evolution hasn’t caught up so our best baby-making years are still in our early to mid twenties. And of course I know there are millions of women conceiving in their thirties and early forties but we’ve been at this for three years and it hasn’t happened for us so my hope in the “miracle” faded a long time ago. 

Personally, I am doing the best that I can whilst trying to keep on top of a subtle depression. The daily struggle I have to get out of bed, go to work with some level of motivation and enthusiasm, to exercise, to eat right, to take a million supplements and still be a relatively present wife, daughter, sister and friend can sometimes feel like psychological warfare and one that I don’t often win. I don’t have the energy for much at all and what I do have goes towards slapping a smile on my face so I can exist in the world. It also goes into getting through the rigorous drug protocol. 

I know everyone means well and intentions are good. Of course I know that. But a nice thing would be to ask me what it is that I need. That’s more than OK and would be so very welcome! If you asked I would tell you that the most comforting words you could say to me are “I am so sorry you have to go through this. It sucks and you don’t deserve it. I’m here if you want to cry, scream or drown your sorrows. Whatever you need, I am here.”

That’s all.

X 

[mrsblf-blog1]

The Hell of Infertility

It’s taken me a long time to write about this. I’ve journalled snippets here and there, have recorded countless clips in moments of utter despair. I’ve sent many audio notes to friends and family too. I’ve filmed videos of myself in tears, in cycles of anxiety and insomnia and on days where I could feel the sun. And now I’m using the nearly two years of documentation to help me write our story. 

I swing from wanting to talk openly about our fertility issues and to wanting to keep our journey to ourselves. It’s not only my story to tell and my husband is a private man. But the thing is that now, nearly two years in, there is a creeping feeling that I should keep this all to myself, that it would be the ladylike and dignified thing to do and also that no-one wants to hear about it anymore. I know these thoughts are my insecurities in overdrive but they’re front and centre nonetheless.

Even though it’s our choice to pursue science, it feels like we’re intermittently standing in a line-up waiting for emotional assault rifles to pummel us over and over again. And men and women can handle things so differently that it’s takes a great deal of courage and work to stay strong and united as a couple. We’ve been together nearly five years and married for over one and we have had our fair share of struggle. When we’re on the same page we’re a formidable team but, like most couples, when we spend too much time in our own corners digging our heels in or licking wounds, we flounder and have to wade our way back. 

No-one can prepare you for the first round of fertility test results. The shock and weight of the results sat heavy as the wheels spun trying to make sense of it all. How could this be? No, surely not us? What do you mean we’re “infertile and that natural conception is highly unlikely?” You read and hear about all these stories and all this damn science but you never ever think you’ll be sitting in those rooms year in and year out hoping to conceive. And there is nothing that could prepare me for the physical, mental and emotional assault of the fertility drugs. 

To kick it all of was the endometriosis surgery which, to date, has been the most physically painful procedure from which I have ever had to recover. The trapped air in my diaphragm sent sharp stabbing pains to my back and shoulder blades which was not only excruciating but made it hard to breathe. And two weeks later, once I had recovered, doctors told us that it was the best time to start the hormone treatment as my uterus was the “cleanest” it was ever going to be. So we did. Like lambs to the slaughter we walked in with so much naivety, innocence and hope with daily mantras of “this is definitely going to work”. 

And then it didn’t. Our little embryos didn’t even make it to the halfway mark and just like that it was all over. The hope, the expectation, the financial investment. All of it gone in an instant. 

Our doctors sent us away to regroup. We cried, we raged, we battled. We spent and still do spend countless hours seeing homeopaths, acupuncturists, reflexologists, nutritionists and researching every organic and growth-stimulating supplement available. And when we saw improvement we threw ourselves into the Artificial Reproduction Treatment (ART) cycle again. We got further this time. Over 20 eggs out of me with two fertilized embryos making it all the way to growth day five which means we had two to implant. I needed a month to recover from the hormones before we could take the next step of embryo implantation so I had four weeks to rid myself of the artificial medication and mentally prepare for the drug protocol that comes with the transfer process.

But then came the large and painful ovarian cysts which I had never had before but grew as a direct result of the artificial hormones. They gave me fevers and had me throwing up. Hot on the heels of that was a doctor deciding my appendix needed to be whipped out which was followed by abdominal adhesions which brought my digestive system to its knees. For weeks I was swollen and so sore but there was nothing to do except painful physio treatments to try and get the adhesions to break so they were no longer wrapped around my colon. I sank to a level of exhaustion I never thought possible. 

Riddled with anesthetics, pain killers, hormones, antibiotics and physical pain, I fell apart. I went into a dark hole of depression and stayed there for about three months. I didn’t want to see anyone, I lashed out at pregnant friends and I raged, cried and battled all over again as tempting thoughts of death crept closer and closer. I had never felt so alone in my entire life. Of course I wasn’t alone, I am fortunate enough to have an army of support but they aren’t there when you’re still wide awake and pacing your house at 2am shedding your billionth tear. And they aren’t there when you imagine the lives growing inside the bellies of your friends which results in shuddering, shaking and bitter resentment that you can taste. My dark thoughts made me feel like a despicable human and they just compounded the already dominant voice in my head telling me that perhaps I don’t deserve to be a mother.

It was during this time that my husband whisked me off on our honeymoon. I had my endometriosis surgery a month after our wedding so we finally got to pack our bikinis and board shorts and head off to some sunshine. This trip brought me back to life and my comeback was on a super hero level. On landing back home I was ready, excited and incredibly positive that our embryo transfer would take and that soon I would be pregnant.

But it didn’t. I bled out on day three. I still kept up with the estrogen, progesterone and cortisone for the prescribed 12 days but I knew it had failed. On that third day, I felt all hope drain out of me and even though our doctor said we still had a shot, that many women bleed heavily, I knew it was over and it was confirmed on the day of our test. My husband and I went numb but we actually felt quite strong. We made plans, we had a few laughs, we went out for lunch...it all felt insanely normal. 

The grief descended on me that night and by the following morning I couldn’t move. Despair and rage pulsated on a level so deep that I shuddered and shivered most of the day. And the next. And for the next few weeks. I had moments of reprieve where I felt blissfully numb but for the most part there was engulfing pain and frantic anger. 

Why us? Why me? This world is so unfair? Why is it so easy for all of our friends and not us? Why do we have to go through this too? 

I battled through all of it and felt so guilty at the same time. You have a roof over your head. You have a family who love and support you. You’re not a Syrian refugee fleeing for your life. And although that is all true, it’s taken me a long time to accept that my pain is relevant and I have every right to feel it. 

And so here I sit, two and a half months later wondering if I can go through it all again. My husband and doctor want me to because I do have this “amazing” reserve of eggs and even though they’re 40 years old, “it only takes one”. I am obviously terrified of another failure as I’m not sure how many times I can bounce back and I once again find myself without hope or any faith that this going to happen for us. I feel defeated and depleted. And yes, I am aware of how fortunate we are that this science exists and that it is something we can afford but that does not take away the brutal emotional experience of it the process. 

And I’m scared of the drugs. I don’t handle them well and am over-stimulated by all of them. It’s actually the embryo transfer drugs that stop me dead in my tracks. The combination of the estrogen, progesterone and the cortisone is a really bad cocktail for me. The hormones make me feel like a different species and the progesterone coupled with the cortisone puts my digestive system into a coma. It’s PMS ten times over with an inflamed, sore and sluggish stomach to go with it.

A real treat for me was when people asked me how I was feeling and if I responded honestly they would retort “well get used to it because that’s what pregnancy is like”. Thank you for making me feel ungrateful and that I should be handling this better. I could write a novel on all the very stupid, reckless and thoughtless things people unintentionally say but I’ll save that for another post.

The above is long enough for you to get a glimpse into my life as a woman who is struggling to conceive. And honestly, from the depths of my heart and soul, to be a Mom is always something I have wanted. There was never any doubt in my mind although now I wish there was. 

A few days ago a good friend asked me how I felt. How I really and truly felt. My response: “I feel like a Mother without a child”. 

I realise that sounds odd because I haven’t had a child but I feel like I’m lost, or that I have lost something, and I am wandering around looking for it with rising feelings of panic and hopelessness. I know I have to dig deep and find some faith and hope somewhere but I’ve learned that you can’t fake it. As much as I want to rush to the end of this faithless funk, this reactive depression, I just can’t. I can only do it at my own pace. I can’t force the healing as I know with absolute clarity that on this infertility journey there has to be genuine and total readiness before I can throw myself into it all again.