His To Cope Eee?!

Although he is traumatised by gift giving

on the first day of class he bought his Lifeslurper..

a bunch of Wobbly flowers - for the first time ever!

Something irrefutable has finally dawned on me: I live in fear.

Fear of what will happen. Fear of what won’t happen. Fear of what is happening now. Fear of what happened before.

It is now crippling me.

Tempting though it might be to lay blame squarely on infertility, I will not. I cannot claim to have led a carefree wonderful and perfect life prior to my acquaintance with infertility. I was not blameless in my own misery. Failure to have a baby has not changed that. Infertility just has its own degrees of exquisite misery and heartache. For the most part these have to co-exist with other issues. Sometimes they directly impact on more aspects of our lives than we would wish them to.

Here at Camp Lifeslurper, things continue to be hugely shaken by Stuff I Am Not Yet Allowed to Mention and more. These things are affecting our attempts to have a family. The irony of the situation is not lost on us: for once we have the golden means to have baby success (in the form of a Super Wobbly Donor Embryo) but not the energy, circumstances, or much else it seems.Sure, I was knocked by the sudden absence of menstruation – but as my brilliant readers reminded me – that in itself does not have to be a problem, well at least not in this IVF business. It could be that as I have started to collapse under the weight of non-infertility stresses, my ability to cope with even the tiniest of IVF hiccups has been damaged. I wanted that low-effort all natural FET cycle, gawd dammit! Six months of heavy-duty naturopath lead detoxification I wanted my body to stay free of all those medical uglies. I wanted to not be drowning in progesterone. Flipperty heck – I will say it. I finally wanted to have an ‘easy’ IVF time. There! I said it!

Despite all that has gone before while searching for Baby Wobbles, I have mostly attempted to eventually forget the worst of it, in the hope of keeping the mind calm and free of all the things that can go wrong when dealing with ART. A late run at donor eggs, assisted by a simple drug-free natural cycles almost seemed like a ‘reward’ for all that has been endured before. I intended to enjoy every moment of it. Yes, I sound ungrateful, but after years of disappointments, massive expense, long-distance travel, and incredible clinic errors, I thought we would get to have these last tries in a less aggressive manner. Many would say ‘big deal’, but it was important to me.

There is something else driving my resentment: I wanted menopause to be celebrated when it finally came along. The ‘deal’ I had with myself was that menopause would be a welcome sign that I had ceased with this struggle with infertility: that I was finally getting the rights to my own body and being back. I wanted it to be a wonderful milestone, not something that has come along far too early and affected my other plans. I even resent the view of medical establishment. No tests, no examinations. It is simply my age and a failure to have a period after 40+ days and I am labelled ‘perimenopausal’. In IVF land it does not matter, well not in my case – even though it matters to me.

In the shock of my sudden change in conditions, I went for the ultrasound that had been ordered by Dr L as a pre-caution during our last appointment. That was back in the day when all was looking great and ready for another cycle – as soon as my period came. After that ultrasound I was contacted by Dr L’s staff to come in to discuss the results. Eyes off the IVF ball for a moment, I thought this would lead to an explanation of my loss of period. Maybe it was the other stress? Whatever the case, I was not expecting the news that I needed to have a hysteroscopy to remove those mysterious fibroids that have long been background players in this tragedy. Dr L was blunt: “Your missing period won’t stop you from getting pregnant – but the fibroids could!” Normally, I could have seen this coming. So swept up in being overwhelmed, it hit me hard, even though it should not have.

There have been umpteen surgical procedures already. This one in the scheme of things will not be big, but all same – it came as a shock. Eventually, I realised I had also presumed my time with rounds of endless surgical procedures in order to conceive were over. I started to try and estimate the increased costs of both an assisted FET and more surgery, and immediately felt my stress levels rising. Bewildered in Dr L’s office with him wanting to schedule things immediately, I tried hard to brush aware fears that this was going to interrupt the next post-graduate degree I had just started, and was going to further delay our already increasingly vague plans to do a another (not so drug-free or natural) cycle.

I suspect the Other Stuff is largely what is affecting my shift in attitude. I now acknowledge that ‘it’ (the long-term lending out of my own body to ART) now seems like it has become too much. I am struggling to cope with Other Stuff, studying to improve my own situation, suppressing my depression demons, while masquerading as a mild-mannered infertile. Things have deteriorated so much so that I eventually had to admit to Wobbles that I was almost relieved that Baby Wobbles had not survived, as he/she would have been born into a set of circumstances that were far less than ideal: two parents slowly being eaten alive by external events they have so little control over. Would Baby Wobbles’ arrival forever had been marked by this ugly spectre hanging over us?

I go to my hysteroscopy tomorrow with fear and dread. My last two experiences of anaesthetic were not good. I seem to have developed an anxiety about going ‘under’. I am also uncertain: the course I fought so hard to be accepted into has thrown up a few surprises. The time commitment has doubled instantly and I am annoyed with myself for approaching this under-prepared. In neither wanting to fail or have to drop-out, I have inadvertently placed myself in a ‘no-win’ situation. This course being the very thing that was meant to bring respite to the years of uncertainty through infertility treatment and suspended living, now seems like an added fear – one more thing to be hopeless at. One more thing to remind me that my concentration levels are failing me, and other things are consuming me. Suddenly, that much hoped-for second career seems like an impossible and depressing dream.

Yesterday I sat by Wobbles’ bedside in an emergency department examination room. My never ill man with a constitution impervious to illness had awoken before dawn with severe abdominal pains. In those hours as the morphine drip took affect, I had plenty of time to fear a life without him. My promise that I would continue on in the quest for Baby Wobbles briefly crossed my mind. More fear. I seriously wondered if either of us would live to see any Future Baby Wobbles to a good age, and feared trying to come up with some ‘replacement’ parents should we both meet an early demise.

Hospital staff were professional and thorough. Eventually came the news that Wobbles has gallstones, and these were likely to be the cause of his distress. He was referred on to a specialist and for further investigations. Of course, he went back to work today and on last checking had done nothing about following this up! I keep worrying about the time we have left, and find myself wasting precious time to that fear.

In the midst of much turbulence, I try to tell myself that the most important ingredient required to make a baby is love. Well, love mixed with lots of effort, money, medical support, science and more. There is no perfect time or circumstance for a baby to be conceived or born in, and that baby will bare no ill-affects from what transpired for his/her parents on the way to that conception and birth – well, not if the parents actively seek to avoid this. While our bodies and minds are capable of wonderful things, they also can seem to conspire against us. We cannot control or turn back time. We have now, and we have each other. That sounds like as good a place to start as any. Doesn’t it?

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