Resisting the IVF struggle

Everyday I rejoice at my good fortune at meeting the delightful Wobbles. Seems we are a pretty good fit. So we met when I’d endured close to the twenty years of lonely single living punctuated with a progressively worse group of waster, loser, user, liar, and scoundrel men.

Before I happened upon Wobbles, I had finally accepted my fate; I had to take care of myself and my own future. I needed to look to things that would – as I faced my forties – be good for me. Eventually I realised the men I chose where a direct reflection on how I had become to view myself. No wonder I was being mistreated and had grown accustomed to living without respect.

I bought a little house, and for a time retired happily to a rural existence surviving with part time work. I remained lonely and emotionally unfulfilled, but at least I was no longer wasting my love, time, energy, and what was left of my goodness on those that could never return it.

A cold hard stab from life brought me back to remembering what was important.

My beloved eldest niece had a brief case of ovarian cancer.

It lasted less than two months and it is a story that even now I find difficult to tell. She died after experiencing great pain and confusion, her body emaciated, those who loved her heart broken. I was with her throughout her illness, as the disease quickly spread through her body and she lapsed into terminal tremens in the cosiness of my mother’s lounge-room that was temporarily converted into a small but busy palliative care centre.

Much of the time I thought of the unfairness of it all. Most of the time I thought of all the love wasted. How that special role my niece had carved into so many of our hearts would not be replaced by another.

I was again acutely aware of my own wasting.

Suddenly I would have one less person of the so few I trusted. She had loved me unconditionally from the time she had arrived into this world just four years after me. She was not critical of my many flaws.

Somewhere in a mix of grief and a vague feeling of wanting to live a more honest or ‘real’ life I resolved to take a few risks. In the back of my mind was the idea that I would not give up on love, but intellectually my thoughts were that I would need to find other expressions for that love. I applied for and got accepted for a higher level job within the organisation I was already working for. I truly thought it would be the answer. I would go back to finding some kind of fulfilment through a professional role, accepting anything on a more personal basis was not ever going to be an option for this Lifeslurper.

That new job turned out to be a living hell. It was my worst work experience ever.

I left under very cloudy circumstances, and was for the first time nearly broken. A few months on, I was still having nightmares. For the first time ever, I consulted a lawyer. I felt I could not rest until I obtained a copy of a document written by the staff I had supervised that had been described to me by the CEO as quite outrageous. It had bothered me not knowing, and I had thought if I knew I would get some relief.

I had no intentions of pursuing legal avenues, although the lawyer pushed that I sue for compensation and various financial supports including counselling and medical costs. I could not do it.

Eventually, my request to obtain a copy of the document was denied on some dubious legal grounds, and I was given the expensive option of pursuing the matter further. I could not afford to pursue this any further.

I was doomed to spend the next few years living in the same small town as the people responsible for that document. Various members of this crowd would snigger at me whenever they saw me in the street. One lived just around the corner and regularly let her dog fowl my front lawn as they walked by. I started staying at home a lot more.

It was just over a year after the death of my niece and more than four months after the spectacular collapse of my career that I would bump into the gorgeous Wobbles.

I was surprised that he would quickly find ways to be kind to me. He did not lead me on, and wasted no time on deciding that our relationship had a future. In less than six months we would be living together. The ease with which it had all taken place was breath taking.

My past hurts did not disappear instantly. The loss of the career was keenly felt and required ongoing work to overcome. Somewhere in the midst of Wobbles’ stealth like attack of shocking affection and awe inspiring love a whole new world of possibilities was opened.

Slowly it would become easier to let go of many things that were not useful to my living (or loving for that matter!) I quickly learnt the joy of being with someone instead of pain. Relationships could be mutual, fun and enriching. This Lifeslurper could actually live with another in domestic harmony.

Quickly we turned our eyes to the grand prize: a baby of our own.

Despite already being over 40 we were slowed by the first obstacle: The general practitioner decided we needed to wait a further three months to prove we could not ‘go it alone’ on the fertility front before sending us off for further help. After that we were again temporarily stalled when it seemed that Wobbles’ pre-Lifeslurper attempts at a vegetarian diet (heavy on pasta, low on all sources of protein) had reduced his vitamin b levels (and therefore his sperm count) to dangerously poor levels.

Concentrated attempts to work on Wobbles’ dietary intake and months more rumpy pumpy and we were not pregnant.

“You know women over 40 do have problems getting pregnant naturally” I would tell him, while all the time trying to calm my thoughts with easy tales of IVF and other forms of fertility assistance.

Some fast talking enabled us to avoid a lengthy wait to see a local gynaecologist. What happened next, the many lows and lower lows of four almost whole IVF cycles has been raked over endlessly by yours truly on this blog.

Today, I have faltered as I sat to sign a thick wad of documents denoting the start of our long delayed fifth cycle.

Unlike the hope of finding love, fertility is something with such a finite time limit hanging over it.

I don’t have twenty years to get this sorted out. I can change my thinking constantly, in the hope of locating that ‘right’ attitude, but endless IVF cycles are not possible to be tried in conjunction with attitude adjustments.

I can try to visualise a baby, and have no more success than I did in imagining a Wobbles. Okay, so he proved to be out there – could I have saved myself twenty years of heartache if I’d had that belief he would eventually materialise?

A few years on after first getting together with Wobbles, I still have trouble believing he is actually here. Sadly, by the time he arrived my faith and self-belief was more than a little battered. I find it hard to fathom that I am in the situation where this gorgeous, intelligent man wants to make a baby with me. He really does. How old and out of shape this fertility challenged body is does not faze him one bit.

The results of four previous IVF attempts are far from stellar. We have made it to only one embryo transfer. Not that this means an escape from much of the agony of ART, just ‘cos we have had a few cycles cut short along the way. Oh and the financial costs are all the same.

Really, like so much else in my life I have been late at attempting this, and find myself dismally ill-equipped.

I panic at the thought of another cycle.

While I do not fear blood tests, surgery, injections or the like. It is the constant head against brick wall sense that the odds are stacked ridiculously high, and a growing sense that the race may indeed already be over. Once I enjoyed the challenge of odds being piled against me. After time spent with ART I find myself conforming to the limited expectations grudgingly bestowed upon me by medical professionals and other fertility clinic staff.

Our fertility specialist will give us one more go with my own eggs. Failure to get to embryo transfer will mean the end of the line. If and only if we get to transfer, he says he will allow us a further cycle after that.

I have been honest with Wobbles.

My feeling is that this cycle has no greater chance of success. My realism sometimes clashes with his optimism. Our recent ART endeavours would suggest that ‘pessimism’ is not a more suitable label for my thoughts.

While I admire those who see a baby as their right, and those who expect IVF success, my own life events tell me that I should not set my expectations without any hint of altitude.

My sense of gratitude tells me that perhaps I should be content with a life alone with Wobbles. Life with a fabulous man and his child would surely be too much wonder for one lifetime.

Only thing is that I fear my infertility is sentencing Wobbles to a life spent with just me.