Enforced Patience

Lord grant me patience, but please hurry!

I am not a patient person by nature.  I was in a rush to get into the world and was nearly born in the car on the way to the hospital, my Mum always says I’ve been in a rush ever since. If I’ve made up my mind about something then I want it to happen straight away.

The thing about infertility is that you don’t have a choice but to be patient.  You’ve made plans, you’re ready to move on with your life and you’re excited about all the challenges and new experiences that being a parent will bring.  Yet you’re stuck in a constant cycle of getting yourself prepared for the biggest change of your life but equally being unable to  plan anything. It’s all on hold, do I book that big holiday next year, do we spend that money on the house, do I change jobs, it’s all up in the air!

If you know somebody is trying for a baby it’s best not to say to them “Just try to be patient,” because what they’re probably thinking  is “I DON’T HAVE A CHOICE!” (possibly with a few expletives added in for good measure). Life becomes a simple serious of waiting games, waiting for the right time of the month to try for a baby, the 2 week wait to find out if it’s actually worked this time, usually a series of thoughts much like this…. “Do my boobs hurt?” “Maybe I feel a bit sick?” “I am very tired today?” “I definitely feel a little bit sick but maybe it was just some dodgy chicken?” Then disappointment, then waiting that whole process starts over again but as time goes on a whole other layer of waiting is added in, waiting to be eligible for fertility investigations, waiting for appointments, waiting for tablets, waiting for referrals, waiting for letters, waiting for IVF….

 That is where I am now, waiting for IVF, our referral has finally gone off this week. I was told it had gone of 6 weeks ago but after a increasingly frustrating series of phone calls it’s finally gone off this Wednesday.  How long you have to wait to be eligible for IVF depends on where you live, in my area of Norfolk it’s 3 years in cases of unexplained infertility, although you’re eligible sooner in certain instances where there’s a clear reason you’re not getting pregnant.   In some places you’re eligible for IVF sooner regardless of whether they can find a cause, in others  they’ve cut funding altogether which is so unbelievably cruel and I really feel for those people now contemplating a £5000 bill or facing that they may never fall pregnant.    So now it’s just a matter of waiting for the letter from the infertility clinic, waiting for that first appointment, waiting for the treatment to start, waiting through all the weeks of injections….

So I am being patient but because I have to be, it’s never likely to be one of my greatest virtues.