1095 Folic Acid Tablets Later

Proverbs 30 v 16 (NLT)   

“There are three things that are never satisfied – no, four that never say, “Enough!”: the grave, the barren womb, the thirsty desert, the blazing fire.”

1095 Folic Acid Tablets Later

This is the first post for my infertility story. Of course it's 'our' infertility story really but I say 'my' rather than 'our' because these posts are my thoughts and feelings, I wouldn't want  to presume to speak for Matt. We're close and we'll go through each step of this toegether but our thoughts and emotional responses arn't always going to be the same.  It may seem strange to want to share this story, especially to share it in real time when emotions are new and raw rathar than as a reflection looking back after the event It’s something deeply personal, but I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and decided it’s a process I want to go through. Whether the IVF works of not, this year's is going to be significant for me and Matt. I have lots of things I need to work through and I feel like writing about them will help. I could just write for myself but I think there’s something in me that wants people to understand; Infertility can be a very lonely journey, even though you’re going through it as a couple the rest of the world often doesn’t know or understand. A lot of people struggle with it alone and that can mean they suffer all the more. For me, sharing what I’m going through helps and maybe it will help other people to know they’re not alone.

36 months, 36 raised hopes dashed, expectations ended only in tears. 20 babies of friends seen into the world with joy, and 3 more on the way. 23 heart felt congratulations, but despite their sincerity each one still stabs me right in the heart. I never thought it would get this far, I wondered if I’d struggle to get pregnant knowing that my Mum had had problems but I never thought that 3 years down the line I’d still be waiting to become a mum. Who would ever have thought that the word mummy could be such a hurtful thing, it actually makes my heart ache, physically ache, to say it out loud.

I had just turned 27 when we decided we wanted a baby and now I’ve just turned 30, a big chasm of time eaten up in broken hopes and dreams. I can’t say it’s been 3 horrible, sad years and I’m quite proud of how we’ve not let our struggle to become parents overwhelm us because I can see how it could very easily send a person quite insane. Yet still, it’s always there, a stabbing that waxes and wanes but never disappears, waiting to jump out at me when I least expect it. Now we’re looking to the prospect of our NHS funded IVF starting soon and we’ve decided we’ll take the cycles offered for free and not pay for any more. I’m a mishmash of emotions at the moment; Part hopeful, part finding it impossible to believe there’s any chance it might work. I’m stuck – in limbo with my life, ready to move onto the next stage and become a mum but unable to, in limbo with my heart because I can neither hope nor despair because I really have no idea what might happen and both hope and despair are equally dangerous, hot coals that I’m juggling and if I get it wrong and pause too long on one or the other I’m likely to get burnt.

Our story so far….

We started trying for a baby just over 3 years ago. At the time we’d been together for 8 years, married for 4. It had taken us a while to get to that point. Before we married Matt hadn’t wanted children and I did. As far as I really knew this stayed the same for the first 4 years of our marriage. People used to ask how could I marry Matt when he didn’t want children. If you ask me now I would say I knew he’d change his mind, I feel like I knew Matt better than he knew himself (hope he doesn’t mind me saying that!) and I could see what a wonderful father he’d be before he could see what he wanted for himself. It did play on my heart though, a few years into our marriage I did sometimes ponder what might happen if he never changed his mind and as the years went on and I got to the point where I was ready to have children an impending sense of panic began to creep in. I knew I could have told him that I wouldn’t marry him unless he agreed to have children and I’m sure he would still have married me, but I never wanted it to be on those terms. I didn’t want to have the slightest doubt when we had children that it was something that he wanted as much as I did, I wouldn’t have felt that blackmail was a good basis for a strong marriage and certainly not for having children!

On 1st January 2012, my 27th birthday, I made a joke to Matt about how we should have a baby, something that I used to slip into doing despite my best efforts not to, and he said “Ok then.” It really was as simple as that and I couldn’t have been more shocked. It wasn’t a snap decision for him, it was something he’d been thinking about for a long time but hadn’t wanted to tell me until he was sure, but to me it felt so sudden because I hadn’t expected him to just come out with it like that! It took a while to sink in and he was at work the whole next day with me sat at home wondering if perhaps I’d dreamed the whole thing. Everything had fallen into place and I felt so happy that now I knew that Matt had truly changed his mind and his heart on the issue and that he wanted the same thing as I did. I can remember that sense of joy, that hope, the plans. Things haven’t quite gone to plan since then.

So far we’ve had numerous investigations which have all proved completely normal, I can’t decide if it’s a blessing or a curse. In some ways it would be easier if they could find something wrong so that I could have some understanding of why I’m still childless when so many other people around me seen to fall pregnant so easily. On the other hand when it comes to IVF it’s a good thing that as far as I know there’s nothing there that makes it less likely to succeed. So because there’s no reason evident for why I’m not getting pregnant the only treatment we have been offered in 3 years is 6 months’ of Clomid tablets – a drug that stimulates ovulation, ordinarily used for people who aren’t ovulating. The NICE guidelines don’t actually recommend this for unexplained infertility anymore but our health trust still give it as they feel that sometimes it is of benefit. My suspicion is that it’s also good for women’s mental health to at least have something to try because if I’d gone 3 years and they couldn’t even offer me any treatment I might have come even closer to cracking up! Still, it didn’t work for me, something that was a big struggle as I think I’d put my hopes in it because I knew that it had worked for my mum. Even that seems like a crazily long time ago now though, well over a year.

I’ve felt like the whole infertility journey so far has been a practice in maintaining sanity, it would be so easy to let it consume you. I feel like my challenge each day, each month, is to try and just stay happy, just enjoy life even if it’s not what I had planned at the moment. I’ve spent 3 years trying to stay calm, not to panic and to relax. I think I’ve done a fairly good job really. It hasn’t been easy and there’s been a lot of tears, usually at completely unpredictable moments, I can be feeling fine one minute then something will trigger a thought, whether it’s an advert, a picture of facebook, finding out somebody’s pregnant, another unwelcome period, and suddenly I’m in floods of tears; But as a generalisation I feel like I’ve coped ok.

In some ways I feel better now than I have for at least a year if not more. The first year we had hope that things might just happen, towards the end of that year we had hope for the appointments at the infertility clinic giving answers. For a while I had some hope that the Clomid tablets might work. For the last year the hope that I might just fall pregnant has pretty much evaporated. It’s certainly not impossible, I know a few people where this has happened but still by this point I’ve pretty much given up hoping. People might say it took ‘so and so’ 3 years to get pregnant and look at the little one now, this offers a little bit of hope that maybe things will work out like them, but most of the time it feels entirely irrelevant because it only highlights a possibility, the possibility that things might work out for us as it did for them, but then all the other possibilities, all the ‘maybe this month’s’ that I’ve experienced over the last 3 years have been disappointed so I’ve lost faith in betting on possibilities. After the Clomid didn’t work there was nothing else the fertility clinic could offer us until it had been 3 years so the last year has been a very long and difficult wait and while I find out person after person that I know has fallen pregnant it’s been tough. At least now I have something to focus on, some small ray of hope that is IVF, some chance that it may work and I’ll get what I’ve always wanted. More than that at least in the next 18 months I’ll know either way. If the IVF doesn’t work it will be absolutely devastating, I can’t imagine what we might go through, the ups the downs, the tears, the disappointments, the pain. I don’t mean physical pain, I’m not really looking forward to that, injecting myself with hormones day after day, people sticking massive needles in sensitive places, my eggs being harvested, it doesn’t sound very pleasant but I’m really not that bothered about it, maybe it’s because I’m a nurse I’m a bit more relaxed about that side of things. It’s the emotional pain that I’m worried about, I have some inkling for what a roller-coaster the next 18 months is going to be. All the possibilities spin round in my head all the time, it works – unbelievable joy, it doesn’t work – devastating, it works – worry, what if I miscarry, it works and I do miscarry – utter devastation, it works – unbelievable joy again. I know lots of people would tell me, you’ve got to stay positive and urge me not to think about the negative possibilities but I have to prepare myself mentally and working through those possibilities is my way of doing that. I’m trying not to be unduly negative or unduly positive but focus and balance myself as much as I can for whatever may lay ahead, at the end of the day there’s pretty much a 50/50 possibility that it will work.

So my mission for this year is to stay sane, no matter what, through what I feel is the conclusion to our infertility journey. Either it works in the free attempts that I’m lucky to be offered on the NHS, or it doesn’t work and we take a different path and adopt, either way in 18 months I’ll know. So this blog is my way of trying to work through it, a means of keeping my sanity and perhaps helping other people in the same situation but who don't feel able to be so open about it, to know they’re not alone. I’ll finish with a song, there’s a few songs that have resonated with me a lot over the last 3 years and that I’ve listened to repeatedly when I’m feeling hopeful or feeling down, but this is probably the one I’ve listened to most. It’s not actually about hoping, nor is it about despair, it’s about what I’ve just been saying, trying to stay sane, stay myself, regardless.

That I Would Be Good – Alanis Morissette