Miraculous pregnancies: when they don’t happen to you

About six weeks have passed since my last failed IVF and my decision to stop treatment. I have slowly managed to get nearly back to my old self, happy, positive, engaged in life and looking forward to tackling new projects – probably thanks to the intensity of my sadness, of getting it out of my system in a watershed, not repressing anything. I thought that perhaps the worst was over. I am not the kind to get hugely upset by seeing pregnant women on the street, or babies in the supermarket – a little bit, maybe, but not enough to put me in a horrible mood. A sting of pain, yes, but I distract myself, or take comfort in a now “shoulder-to-shoulder” embrace with my “little” one.

But something happened on Sunday that is making me cry as I type. My dear friend, a beautiful, wonderful woman that I care about so much, came to visit me with her boyfriend of four months. She is 32 and about two months ago underwent an operation to help correct her extensive endometriosis. She was told that both of her Fallopian tubes were blocked, and that they had to remove quite large portions of her affected ovaries. She emailed me while I was in the Czech Republic awaiting my embryo transfer to say that she, too, would probably carry on in my footsteps, as the doctors told her that she would probably need IVF to conceive. As a result of this information, she and her new partner stopped using protection, whole two months ago.

She is now, against all medical odds, seven weeks pregnant, and announced it with joy but also some trepidation when they both came to see us on Sunday – she knew well about our plight, and is a great and compassionate friend to both of us. It stunned me. She got pregnant immediately, without any trying and effort. I am thrilled for her because she worried she would never be a mother, and doubly thrilled because she has a wonderful man by her side, so in spite of the short duration of their courtship I have great hopes for them to work out perfectly fine. I am genuinely happy for them both. But happy for them as I may be, I am all the more devastated for us. This case only highlights the crazy randomness of conception, which has not been favourable to us, even though we’ve done everything we could to help things along and summoned the best technology and medical advancements, several times over. It drove home the horrible unfairness of it all. I watched them, freshly in love, knowing how these news would transform their relationship, and thought of the fact that my husband will never get to experience his child growing inside me, that we will never create life together, and it hurt beyond words. I couldn’t sleep after they left, and spent the night thrown back into the black hole I thought I had climbed out of.

I was surprised by how easily this pain comes back. I had grieved in the past, lots – my parents, my previous marriage. So I know grief comes in waves. Some days are fine, some days it hits you like a ton of bricks. I just hope that it will hurt a bit less as the months and years go by. It would be so easy if we could just leave the “baby world” behind, and embrace fully the adolescent and adult world. I am able to move my mind onto other things, for the most part – there is so much in the world to think about and do, thankfully. But events like these, happening to close friends who are parts of our lives and whom I wouldn’t want to lose because of some “baby jealousy”, strip the plaster off the carefully concealed wound, exposing flesh that is still pretty raw. I hope I will manage to be a good and supportive friend through it all. I hope that one day I will not feel that we have been cruelly cheated – or at least, acknowledge it without having a breakdown. For the moment, though, I can just sit with my feeling of emptiness and loss, and watch. Nowhere to run away from myself – that is the hardest part of grieving.

Adoption for infertile couples?

It’s only been a short time since our last IVF failed. I have only just started to get my head around the idea that baby no. 2 will not happen, at least not biologically. It’s too soon to look in any other direction at this point, and I know that. Too soon to run towards the next “fix”, also because there isn’t such a thing. Our child is irreplaceable. It lived in my mind and heart, for many years. It had a future, features, a voice, a character. It was made of me and the love of my life. What else can take its place now?

I am not willing to go down the IVF route any further – which we could still do, as we’ve always managed to produce good embryos (if only they stuck, little suckers!), and we are even less willing to explore the alternatives, such as egg donors, sperm donors, and any other advanced options on the clinical baby market. I’m tired. Discouraged and fed up with the artificiality and tenuousness of the whole thing. Rubber gloves and speculum meet Las Vegas. “You just may be lucky, who knows?” doesn’t do it for me. I have learned I am a poor gambler – in fact, I’ve always been. Moving on will be bloody hard but at least it’s a process I can control. I can pick up the pieces and start putting together a different picture. If I keep going, I can’t. I will always be at the mercy of chance, and fall into an even deeper abyss after each new failure.

One word has been following me around, and it doesn’t involve donors or needles: adoption. That might be a faint possibility. I picked up an information pack today at the train station on adoption and fostering today… if I were a believer in the supernatural, it would have been a sign! A sign from God! The good God who knows so well which blessings to bestow on his wretched creations, and when. Well, if nothing, it was convenient, and an interesting read. Although I don’t understand why four out of out ten pieces of paper in the folder contained complaints forms – to the ombudsman, to the council. Surely that’s not the best piece of advertising for prospective adopters? Already telling us on forty percent of the printed material that stuff can go wrong, and probably will? Can this not come later in the picture?

Someone whose blog I recently read asked, rather enraged, why is adoption offered as an option only to the infertile – especially when they complain they don’t receive any funding for treatment. Why should the infertile couple forgo the chance of having their own child? Don’t they have just as much right to have their own as fertile couples? Or just because life has dealt them a crappy hand of reproduction cards, they should just shut up and adopt? How would a fertile couple feel if, upon discontinuing their contraception and announcing their plans to build a family, they were told by their GP or family members to “stop being so selfish and adopt instead, since the world is full of children who need parents already?” I wanted to clap as I read it, because she probably echoed the sentiment of many of us… most definitely mine.

The bottom line is, rewarding as it may be, adoption is really a whole another ballgame, with its own set of significant challenges and pressing questions, and any transition from the infertility world to the adoption world must be done with great care. It is, in a way, another kind of gamble. On the one hand, there is the potential immense satisfaction one might experience from giving a child in need a home, love and security. On the other hand, raising an adopted child is likely to be considerably harder than one’s own. They come with their own history, trauma and pain, and frequently also genetic or health burdens. As a prospective adoptive parent you are always reminded that you are not adopting the child to satisfy your own needs, but the needs of the child. Sure, I get that. You are supposed to accept the child for what he or she is, and that’s only fair. But this is where adoption becomes, at least in the way it’s presented to prospective parents, radically different to having a biological child.

Becoming a biological parent is always a matter of satisfying a deep personal need. To bond, to love, to have as one’s own, to continue to exist through our children even after you die. People don’t create children selflessly. Wanting to become a parent is a drive, a biological imperative, so to speak, and although self-sacrifice is a big part of actually being a parent, the motivation to have children is ultimately a selfish one. When you are carrying your own child, you have control over what you do during each stage of bringing him or her into the world, and laying the foundations when they arrive. Biological parents don’t fret about their children’s attachment issues, behavioural problems or developmental delays, because they can be fairly certain that if they do a semi-decent job in caring for their child, he or she will probably turn out all right. There is, of course, always the chance that things will go wrong, but as biological parents, we are a lot readier to “roll with the punches”. It’s our blood, after all. For those of you who have read Dawkins’s Selfish Gene, the case for caring for one’s genetic offspring could not be clearer.

In my view, adoption should not be viewed, or offered, as an automatic substitution to having one’s own biological children. It will inadvertently involve a lot of soul searching. Can I be a good parent to a child who, due to unfortunate circumstances, may need much more of my energy, patience, time and dedication than my biological child would? I am wounded by the experience of infertility. Can the child I take into our heart and home help me heal? Or will the experience make the wound even greater? What if it even erodes what is already there – my marriage, my existing family? It’s a formidable task to sign up for, without the instinctive foundations that underpin a biological parenthood.

Even though I am apprehensive about the whole process, I completely believe adoptive parents when they say they love their adopted child as their own. When it works, it works. In a research about the level of happiness post-IVF, four groups were compared: the ones that did IVF, failed, and remained childless; the ones that did IVF and succeeded; the ones that did IVF, failed and decided to adopt; and a control group of parents with no fertility issues. This research showed that the happiest group was the one with no issues, nor the one where parents had finally got their dream IVF baby, but those who adopted children. This surprised me, but I believe it has an explanation: a shared happiness will always be greater if it’s also accompanied by shared loss and pain. In the case of adoption post infertility, both sides will have lost: biological parents, biological children. To be able to reach the broken heart of a child, mend it, and win her love, must bring one the ultimate joy, and the ultimate healing.

As I absorb and work through the events of the past few years, I will continue to cautiously explore this possibility. And maybe, maybe, when I am strong again, I will come to embrace it, and never look back.

Sex, lies and infertility

Maybe I am a lucky anomaly but I’ve never understood the droves of women on on the many fertility forums and blogs who complain about sex being no longer fun while trying for a baby, and, conversely, also when not trying for a baby any more. “Sex became perfunctory,” writes one. “All the monitoring and charting and having to do it “on schedule” took all the passion out of it.” This “no fun sex while TTC” has become somewhat of a meme among the trying-to-conceive crowd. “Baby-making sex can take a toll on a relationship. Stress of being intimate for the sole purpose to create a life plays on both partners and the joy of it all can go out the window fast. My husband and I have had our fair share of what we coin ‘chore sex’ in order to have the children we do. I remember one week while trying to conceive our youngest — it was hot as heck out and we were in fertile zone and had to ‘get it done’. Sexy, right?” writes Devan McGuinness, an author of many articles for those on the baby-making road.

I don’t know how about you, ladies, but even in the midst of the toughest conception efforts, our sex was almost always fun. And yes, I did my share of obsessive-compulsive calendar molesting, checking cervical mucus, and inserting a thermometer in my nether parts every morning at 7am for half a year before we got our infertility diagnosis – heck, I even knew how high or low my cervix was (lucky to have long fingers), something not too many women know an awful lot about. Maybe our sex wasn’t New Year’s London-eye fireworks every single time, but fun it was. It was loving, sensual, and exciting, too, all the more so because we had yet another great reason to do it. Why wouldn’t it be? First of all, the window to get pregnant is relatively small. If you know anything at all about the process of ovulation and fertilization, you are aware that once released, the egg lives for less than 48 hours. Even if you add the recommended five days before ovulation and two days after, to cover all your bases, it’s still only a week. And that doesn’t even mean you have to have sex every single day. Every other day will do perfectly fine. So that’s sex three times in that week? Four times? Are you worn out yet? Relax… you can have your three week break soon. And if you get lucky and fall pregnant, imagine the bliss of not having to do this “dirty deed” for the whole of nine months and a further six weeks postpartum!

Second of all, isn’t ovulation the time it feels best to have sex? The time when our noses are super-sensitive to our partner’s skin, our mouths to his kiss, our breasts to his touch – when our whole body shuffles itself around to make us more attractive and sexy, inside and out, so neither party misses the signs that “it’s time to party?”  If anything, I want to schedule my sex for when I’m ovulating, because I know my body craves it during that time and I will have many happy orgasms. Am I alone in that, too? Oh, what a chore! I conclude I must love chores.

Us women are complicated, though. When conception doesn’t take place and the reality of infertility sets in, for many women sex suddenly becomes “meaningless”, because there is no baby to create. It has failed as a mechanism of procreation and is, therefore, just a pointless relic in a couple’s relationship, on par with, say, a drunk wank. So, first we complain that baby-making sex is too “perfunctory” and goal-oriented, and later, when its biological function is compromised, that it’s pointless. I’ve read enough stories by the infertile, and as much as I empathise and sympathise, because we belong in this club, too, this particular meme – no sex post-infertility because it’s useless – makes me want to shake them by the shoulders and say: woman, how many times in your life did you have sex just for fun, compared with the times you tried to procreate? Was the first kind always “meaningless”? Bonding with your love, sharing the most intimate parts of yourself, or even just getting your rocks off in the most spectacular way on a flimsy beach towel during your gap year in Costa Rica, meaningless?

Sexuality is different from fertility, even if these two are related. For us who face fertility problems, the more we are able to separate these two in our heads, the better for our marriage or relationship. Unless you are very close to the grave, please have sex with your husband. Regularly. Otherwise you risk not only losing the dream of your baby, but your real, already-here and missing you, man. If you need counselling, then have counselling. Do your grieving, by all means – you may not feel up for anything at all for a while, and that’s fine… just don’t make the while last too long. Studies show, though (and I confirm), that a few good unprotected shags can make you feel significantly better, never mind your other half who is already probably pretty strung-out from the whole fertility struggle. I don’t think we should allow this experience, however harrowing, to push the physical connection out of our lives. Nobody makes a better point of the consequences than Michelle Weiner-Davis in her TED talk called The Sex-starved Marriage. This should, in my humble opinion, be compulsory watching for all couples, by the way, even the super-fertile ones.

So, a final thought for today: We might not be able to make a baby, but we can make a whole lot of wonderful, fun, and meaningful love, for the rest of our lives. And that is something to celebrate. 

Things people say…. and don’t

One thing we find out on our journey through the valley of infertility is that perfectly nice, intelligent and kind people, who often care about us deeply, will say awful, stupid and downright mean things in an effort to cheer us up. I am very much not a Christian, but “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” should be our motto here. They really don’t know any better, usually. And we probably wouldn’t either, if we were in their shoes. People react inappropriately to grief and loss most of the time; we’re not taught how to deal with it at all, except for sending a condolence card at best. Moreover, infertility is still largely taboo, not something people are usually ready to discuss openly at all. So there is a high level of general ignorance about it. Unless they experience it, most people will never know that infertility has dozens of causes, on the male side as well as the female side, and none of them can be cured by a bottle of wine, chilling out, headstands, not worrying about it, or adopting a child as a foreplay to sudden pregnancy.

“Don’t be upset,” one of my clients, a wonderful and kind woman, told me upon hearing about my latest IVF failure. She was one of the very few clients I told, mainly because I’ve known her for many years. “At least you will have freedom to do what you want. Free as a bird!” She shook her head and added: “I don’t know why people put themselves through these things… “ “Because it won’t work any other way!” I wanted to shout. “I didn’t exactly enjoy this ride, you know?” What do you think, on a scale from one to ten in helpfulness… a 1.5? 1.2?

When my mum died, I had just turned twenty. She died unexpectedly of a brain haemorrhage. It crushed me. I loved her, as much as a child can love a parent, all the more so because dad had already gone years ago. When choosing the announcement for the public notice board, my sister and I didn’t want anything moribund and gloomy, such as dead doves on a cross and tear-jerking quotes. Instead, we chose a blue frame with a yellow sun. I admit that it probably wasn’t the prettiest announcement ever produced, given the limited quality of printing in those days, but it was at least a little bit less depressing than the rest. Imagine then my surprise when my dear friend, my best one from childhood, remarked: “You know, the announcement was a bit tacky, don’t you think?” I don’t know, was it? And even if it was the tackiest announcement you’ve ever seen, does that matter? Do you know, dear friend, how incredibly painful it was to sit in the funeral director’s office and try to come up with something that would help us deal with the fact we had just lost our second beloved parent?

And so it goes. We all probably have a clenched fist or two within us, when we were hurt and our loss was belittled and misunderstood. I am almost certain that somewhere along your journey you were told: “Well, you’ve got …” insert name of your child. It’s supremely irritating when people say this to me. Yes, of course I am grateful!! I love my son with every fibre of my being, and the thought of losing him terrifies me, all the more so because he is my one and only and there won’t be any new additions. Stop giving me a guilt-trip already! In the minds of people who haven’t experienced infertility, an unborn child doesn’t really count as a true loss. If you had two children and one died, a comment like that would be unacceptable – and they would never say that. But somehow they feel it’s okay to say that about your unborn one. What they don’t understand is that if a child dies, or a woman miscarries, there is usually a silver lining. When the couple is fertile there is always a chance to have another one. Yes, it is utterly devastating to lose a child and if that happens, all sympathy and support should be given, not for months, but years. However, not being able to make one, ever, is also devastating, especially because of its finality. There will never be another chance. Our factory is closed, for good.

Then there are those who are silent. A good friend of mine and a mum of three, who lives in America, got in touch as she and her family are coming to Europe in the summer, and wanted to see if we could meet up in Germany. I wrote back, describing my infertility struggle, saying I’d love to see them but didn’t know where we would be financially and treatment-wise when they arrive. I have yet to hear back from her, and it’s been two months. Does she not have the time to reply? Or does she not know what to say to me? Either way, opening up to someone close and having it ignored doesn’t feel great.

Yet however unkind and ignorant people’s reactions are, we have to let them go, for our own sake. They really don’t mean it — they just don’t get it. But there is one thing we can do. We can let their inept words and the wounds they leave teach us to be better at saying and doing the right things when the time comes and it’s our turn to console. Things like “It must be so hard for you. I’m sorry.” “Please let me know if you need anything.” “Would you like to talk to me about this?”. “I feel for your loss.” “How are you handling things today?” And we should get really good at giving hugs, too, and at not pretending their world hasn’t just collapsed on them. Acknowledging grief helps so much more than expecting someone to “suck it up and smile”.

 

A warm welcome to you, parent of one

Hello, my name is Barbara. I never thought I would be creating a blog of this kind — then again, secondary infertility is not something most of us would expect to experience.  It was just one of life’s tough surprises. As I have decided to stop treatment, after several years of trying, I want this blog to be for people who, like me, are ready to face their loss and make the most of their life ahead. I want to hear from those who have found peace with their situation and resolved to live a full and happy life with what they have, and also from those who are still struggling and want to share their pain. This one is a lonely journey, and online companionship is often the only thing we have to fall back on. Even though there is an abundance of infertility blogs, there aren’t many that support people who have tried, not succeeded, and somehow had to get their heads and hearts around that crushing fact. Many blogs will cheer you on in yet another pursuit of pregnancy, no matter how improbable it may be, or how detrimental to your health, well-being, relationships and financial stability. The fertility world does not like quitters. But here, quitters are welcome, and celebrated, because they have decided to reclaim their life and step away from the endless torment of TTC, BFN, IVF, FET, DTD, IUI, AF and the rest of the abbreviated misery which could be effectively summed up in just one: WTF. In this blog, we do NOT use abbreviations. We write whole proper English sentences, because what we have been through cannot be abbreviated: it deserves to be articulated fully.

Actually, there are blogs for quitters. They are great, such as http://www.gateway-women.com or http://www.coming2terms.com. But those are for childless people who have a special kind of companionship among them. It is hard to explain to them how much it hurts when you cannot have a second one — you may seem greedy to them. So it’s close, but not quite. We can empathize, they perhaps a bit less.

Also, I have found no blogs for those who are experiencing secondary infertility with a new partner. As this is my case, I feel especially isolated. It’s a mix of primary and secondary infertility, in a way. You’ve had the experience of being a mother: you’ve given birth, you’ve brought up a child, sometimes on your own. But you cannot share your past with your new partner — your child is decidedly YOURS, especially if you met your new other half later in life and your little one is older. This brings with it a special kind of frustration: the inability to create a new life with the one you love, and the inability to share your own child the way you would want to, simply because you made it with someone else, and that someone else is no longer in your life. You can talk about past events but you cannot remember then together, whether it’s your child’s first word, that time he managed to run away from home in his pyjamas while you nipped into the loo, how it felt to hold him for the first time.

I hope to create a place where we can sit with our grief and loss, and in acknowledging it we can move forward, one day at a time, toward a life well lived.