A perfect time for IVF?

Sometimes it seems convenient to make infertility and the resulting IVF treatments the scapegoat for my problems.

Truth is, I had issues with depression, had lost my career, had gained weight, and had lost track of dreams (not necessarily in that order) before IVF entered the picture.

I can not blame infertility for my woes. However, the temptation is certainly there to associate all that is wrong about my world on the most obvious and recent of culprits.

In the midst of a lot of confusion I need to remind myself that undergoing IVF treatments is tough, much tougher than we could ever have known. It is much tougher than anyone at the clinic bothered to explain, and so much tougher than the slim percentage chance that represents our chances of a achieving what the health care professionals term a “live birth”.

In many ways, this late-life first attempts at conception have brought many issues to their nadir. I raced to lose excess weight before beginning IVF treatments, I scrambled around trying to find a new career prior to our first cycle, I tried in vain to recall what I really had wanted for my life before it became consumed with the preoccupation of making a baby.

Age meant my ART enhanced life could not be delayed until a perfectly appropriate time. Truth is there is no such thing as the optimum time to commence IVF. I have lived long enough to know that life is never so convenient than to throw open a fabulously well-timed window of opportunity to set sail on a journey so fraught with difficulties and obstacles. Pre-existing concerns never stood a chance of being nicely wrapped up and dispensed with before our medically assisted baby making attempts commenced.

There will be problems always; problems creating varying degrees of difficulties. The human condition assures us of this fact. Each of my issues have some very willing understudies waiting in the wings for their turn at centre stage. There is no ‘perfect’ time for anything.

Realising that the world and in turn, my life won’t stop in order for me to take this time out for IVF is something I need constant reminding of. I am allowed to go on with other pursuits and dreams, and should do so without castigating myself for not paying constant attention to issues of infertility. I had personal issues before IVF arrived on the scene. I will go on being a flawed human being after IVF has left the building. I just have to make certain that the time in between shows some evidence of dogged attempts at progress. That in my own small way, I find ways to grow and evolve; that I strive to be the best Lifeslurper I can be, no matter what that entails.

Should this all sound too self-centred for my own good, I will attempt to remind myself of my higher purpose; the goal of giving my potential child the best kind of mother, one who is not frustrated by dreams lost and heights never scaled.

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