On the face of things, my fertility specialist and hairdresser have very little in common. Their work involves distinctly different regions of the body. Their skills potentially contribute to vastly different outcomes.
Heartbreak on admittedly varying scales can often be the most obvious result of their desire to experiment or use creativity.
At this stage of my life, I need my hairdresser almost as much as I need my fertility specialist.
For most of my days, I have had a thick head of hair in desperate need of styling. Only in recent years did I become aware that my fertility (or lack thereof) needed styling of a different sort; a type where my ovaries, and in turn, my follicles and ultimately my eggs would all fall into line, doing exactly what fertility specialists told them to do.
Ironically, I have an over abundance of the very type of follicles that will never assist my fertility. Naturally, it has to be my ovaries that are follicularly challenged.
From an early age, my hair was the cause of some unrelentless bullying. It attracted unwanted attention and contributed to my feelings of difference and low confidence. Years after making peace with my thick mane of ringlets and curls, I now contend with my infertility. The fear of difference and ridicule partly controls my desire to continue my relationship with ART in secret.
Once attending hairdressers was the stuff of nightmares; confident razor happy snippers who generally agreed that the best way to contend with “THAT!” as one so memorably referred to the hair I had been so desperately growing, was to shave it as short as possible. Short back and sides! This was always a distressing event for a young over tall girl who feared looking like a boy while longing to have free-flowing locks. My hair type was hereditary, and back then a source of family embarrassment. I did my best to stay unnoticed in the home until one elder domineering sister would screech; “Mummmmmm, Lifeslurper needs a haircut!”
For many years, I searched the night skies for falling stars. My greatest wish was to have long hair. As an adult, I replaced that wish with my heartfelt desire to have someone to love; someone who would love me back unconditionally. Okay, so he took a few decades to arrive. Predictably now my falling stars all assume the guise of heavenly babies looking for a homes here on Earth.
Decades later, I keep my quest for a baby and my reliance on IVF a secret from the bulk of my family and friends for a multitude of reasons. Whereas now, I don’t care who sees my hair. Sure the damage to the psyche never quite went away, but with age and handy assistance through a change in western society’s fashions others grew to appreciate my hair.
Ironically, once we began this round of infertility treatments that has so far seen us through four IVF cycles, my hair became the first my obvious external victim of this often arduous process. Early use of Synarel I am convinced led to hair loss, something I had never previously encountered. Whether it was the harshness of the treatments combined with the related physical stress, but the condition and shine I had fought so hard to achieve quickly went the way of the dodo. My crowning glory quickly became my tiara of thorns, prone to tangles and breakages.
Fact is, once ART enters the room many special ‘treats’ designed to help a gal feel good about herself simultaneously leave the building. The constant round of fertility related appointments and their financial costs see, hairstyling, skin treatments, and more fall into the realm of “extras” having been down-graded from their pre-IVF role as “essentials.”
Lifeslurper’s skin was once seen as her most striking feature. To help preserve things best I could, I had started using a Retin-A based moisturiser, and having matching facial treatments. It worked like a charm! No longer. My Retin-A product makers said they could not recommend their use during pregnancy, and recommended I cease their usage prior to commencing my first cycle. Now my skin has to rely on what is left of own natural strength to survive my consumption of the many hormones and medicines I use to help achieve a pregnancy.
Once I avoided hairdressers as long as humanly possible. Now I welcome this generation of more adaptable professionals. Similarly, it took a while to find a caring fertility specialist, who I did not feel was judging me over things for which I have, like my hair type, no control over. The lack of care shown by specialist number one, Professor Doofus has tainted all subsequent dealings with fertility specialists. Dr Loverley ,while still banging on the old, poor responder, end of ovarian reserve, try donor eggs message at least treats me with respect, and delivers these messages in a more caring manner. It is an important difference.
Both fertility specialists and hairdressers dabble in the use of chemicals. I would prefer to be chemical free, and intend to seek out a hairdresser who can colour my hair using more natural ingredients. Fertility has various possible natural enhancements, such as naturopaths and other alternative therapies, so far those have failed to work for me too.
Is it so vain of me to want shiny hair and glowing skin as I sit before my fertility specialist? He has my history before him on paper. Files will not deny the fact that I am nearing my 45 year own egg cut-off point. Yet it might save me from being the cause of another infertility blogger to remark; “I was the youngest in the waiting room by at least 10 years!”
In a few days it will be time for another fertility specialist appointment. My “reformatted” hair will again act as my special defence field against a system that is preparing to dispatch me off to the Isle of Failed IVFers.
I had better go make an appointment for a new “do.”
If only it was so easy to schedule my ovaries according to plan.
POSTSCRIPT:
Lifeslurper went bravely in search of a new hairdresser in her new town.
The appointment was for 2.30 the afternoon before her early morning fertility specialist appointment. She was without a watch and making her way through dozens of trashy magazines still with dye on her roots when staff began shutting up shop.
“Is it 5.30?”I asked. Indeed it was.
It was okay, according to the young hairdresser she could stay a while. Did I want a tiny trim off the ends? Yes, but what about the straightening? The tong straightening introduced by my most recent hairdresser that made my hair a third of its usual volume, twice its current length, and ultra smooth?
‘ How long does it usually take to do?’ asked my young hairdresser.
‘I’m really not sure…oh it doesn’t matter’” I lied disappointed about the prospect of not being able to hide behind my groovy looking ‘young’ hair at the clinic.
‘It’s okay…I will do it…have you got something special on?’ she asked.
‘Um…an appointment.’ I never ever reveal my other persona of a desperate fertility wannabe.
The young hairdresser proceeded to blow dry my hair in the most painstaking manner I have ever seen. No strand of hair missed the swirl around the huge hair brush. I do have a LOT of hair.
‘This must be a throw back to old blow-drying straightening techniques.’ I told myself.
Fatigue of having spent over a record three hours already at this session of follicle torture beginning to set in. My hair was thoroughly blow-dried, but not very slick, or groovy. By now, I just wanted out. My great hopes for impressing the specialist long evaporated. THEN the hairdresser got out the straightening tongs! She proceeded to tong straighten EVERY strand of hair!
When it was done, I could not leave quickly enough. I was embarrassed for taking up so much time, and causing people to stay back after hours. I was in shock that something I normally expected to take a maximum of 1.5 hours had taken an eon.
As I stepped out of the deserted shopping mall it was after 6.30.
My afternoon ‘quick’ appointment had stretched into a massive four hour plus ordeal. I became more stressed, and was weeping before I reached the car.
I had only noted the heavy rain in relation to the fact it was less than a month since the fire disaster and heatwave. This country is in drought, and my city on severe water restrictions. Not until I reached the car did I realise my smooth ‘do’ was now a curly ‘don’t.’
The next day the first thing to be brought up by the fertility specialist was my age. However, the nurse did ask if something was different about me, claiming I was “glowing”.
There was to be no giant leap for my tenuous grip on fertility, but I did however have a tiny step for my vanity.
