Category Archives: Infertility

I often receive emails asking for support & advice from fellow infertiles, whether they’re blog readers, from the infertility support forums or through Face Book, I get daily emails and messages from broken women asking for support, encouragement, advice or just to dump some of their stuff on someone who understands.

And I understand, boy do I understand. We had a long infertility history, longer than most, we also experienced almost everything infertility can throw at a couple, barring a neonatal loss, we had multiple chemical pregnancies, multiple first trimester miscarriages, multiple tests, X-rays and surgeries, we did multiple artificial inseminations, we did multiple invitro fertilitzations, we did a frozen embryo transfer, we were faced with the choices between surrogacy, using donors and just about everything else infertility can throw at a couple.

So I get it. I understand the way infertility leaves one feeling alienated and a freak and ugly and horrible for the terrible thoughts that one has during this journey. I know what its like to beg your partner to leave you so that he can go on with a “normal” woman and have a family of his own. I know what it’s like to contemplate suicide. I know what it’s like to live in a dark and twisted place, void of happiness and surrounded by emotional pain and trauma that that brings.

One of the questions that I’m most often asked is if it’s normal or ok to hate ones fertile friends? Is it ok to not feel happy for a friend when they announce their pregnancies? And while I don’t know the answer, I will say this, it’s perfectly normal, under the circumstances to feel that way.

This morning I was thinking about one particular incident that happened to Walter and I many years ago and I wanted to share it here. It’s evidence of how infertility puts the funk into dysfunctional!

I had two very close friends at the time, both of them fairly newly married, while Walter and I had already been married for more than 4 years by that time. One day out of the blue Friend A called me and told me she was pregnant. I was totally blind-sided by her announcement and instead of feeling happy for her, I felt the familiar stirrings of jealousy and self pity. When was it going to be my turn?

I was devastated.

Driving home that afternoon, Friend B called me. I thought she was calling to check if I was ok after Friend A’s announcement earlier that day. But what transpired was my worst nightmare. She started the call not asking if I was ok, simply stating she had to tell me something. I laughed and asked her if she was going to tell me if she was also pregnant? I was greeted with a pause and then a well, yes, actually I am.  I was shocked. How could this be happening to me? How was I going to survive this? How was I going to make it through the next 9 months with both my closest friends being pregnant while I struggled along trying to achieve what others seemed to achieve with ease?

I was deeply depressed, so much so that I took a leave of absence from work for a couple of days and spent them crying in my bed.

I also knew that all my emotions were being made worse because I had PMS and my period was due any day now. Having been infertile for more than 4 years by that stage, I tracked my cycles carefully and always knew exactly where I was on any given day of a cycle. As with most infertiles, that weekend, I decided to do a pregnancy test and was blown away when it came up instantly positive. Repeat blood tests over the following days confirmed that I was indeed pregnant and all my beta results were right on track and perfect. Things were progressing “normally”, as a side note, there is no such thing as a normal pregnancy for an infertile, especially one with history of repeated miscarriage. I had to shove progestrone suppositories in my vajajay twice a day, I had to have injections to prevent my own body from attacking the developing embryo. It was tough. I was terrified, having had 5 precious miscarriages. It was not a happy or easy time for me, but all I kept thinking was… maybe this will be my perfect ending. Getting to share my pregnancy with my two besties while they were pregnant too.

Friend A was the first one to reach the six week mark and go for her first scan. We were all shocked and to discover that she was further along than initially expected and her baby was showing at 9 weeks gestation.  A few days later it was Friend B’s turn to go for her 6 week scan and of course she came through that with flying colours. There was talk of how we were all going to share our first scan pics the following weekend because my 6 week scan was just two days away.

The night before my 6 week scan was due, I was anxious, I was terrified, my hands shook and I was overcome with an ominous feelings, scans had never gone well for me, scans never showed a baby that was developing on track. Scans always brought me heartache and devastation. I didn’t sleep well that night and at some point in the night I got up to use the bathroom, only to discover the traces of blood.

I knew what was coming. I knew it without having the horrible scan, without hearing my Dr sigh as he moved the dildo cam around inside me trying to get a better view of our struggling baby. And then he confirmed what I already knew…. the baby was not developing normally and was showing about 5 weeks of gestation and not the 6 weeks we expected. More blood tests were ordered. Blood tests that I endured with a blood pressure cuff pumped so tight onto my arm that it caused my hand to spasm and cramp and my arm to turn blue while the nurses repeatedly stuck me with needles in an attempt to get my collapsing veins to co-operate. That first blood test took more than an hour to complete, it was so sore, I was so distraught that I sobbed the whole way through, I knew I had to have the tests but didn’t see the point, past experiences had taught me was lay ahead.

Four days of repeat blood tests and it was confirmed that I was indeed having another miscarriage. I was devastated. Walter was angry. I hate my friends. I hated their pregnancies. I hated the ugly person infertility had made me, so self absorbed, so tuned into myself and my pain that I couldn’t see anything outside of that.

That night, me overwhelmed by emotional pain and Walter, overwhelmed by anger at what infertility was doing to us, we started to fight. We had a huge blow out, in our kitchen in our town house.  The screaming quickly escalated.  And before I knew what was happening, I turned, grabbed the first thing in view, which was our kitchen door, and I started pounding it. I punched and kicked that door, screaming bloody murder, till I lost my voice and was out of breath. I punched that door till my knuckles stood swollen, red and bruised on my hand and my foot throbbed from the way I’d been kicking it. I pounded on that door till the first cracks started to appear in it. Then Walter took over, he pounded into that door, with his head, his fists and his feet and eventually he ripped it right off of it’s hinges.

With both of us emotionally and physically spent, I collapsed in bed and cried myself to sleep. About a half hour later, I heard the front door being knocked, it was our neighbours, who were convinced that Walter and I were involved in some kind of physical altercation with each other. My female neighbour was screaming at Walter to bring me to the front door, she refused to leave till she had seen me and was sure I was in fact not beaten to a pulp. I guess our screaming and door pounding must have been heard by the entire complex.

The next morning was garbage day and we duly pushed our black municipal bin to the curb and sheepishly lay our shatter kitchen door on top of it.

Today, we look back at this story and we laugh about it. About how we lived without a kitchen door for years after that, how our garbage bin looked with the shattered door lying on top of it, of how we both pounded into that door till we were exhausted.

Of course, the story itself is not funny, its a perfect example of how infertility can make two seemingly sane, non violent people, turn into raving lunatics.

So my infertility sisters, I say this to you, forget about right and wrong on your journey, do what you need to do to cope, to survive, don’t beat yourself up for the way you feel, but allow yourself to feel whatever it is and always remember, you’re not alone in those ugly thoughts and feelings and right or wrong, they are perfectly normal.

Strongs!

xxx

A couple of week’s ago, while lying in bed one Sunday evening, me cradling my Kindle and Walter watching a show on Discovery channel about pregnancy and birth, he suddenly turned to me and asked me if I felt like something was missing or if I had missed out on something by not getting to experience a full term pregnancy and birth. The question floored me, mostly because I don’t like to go there, I don’t like to lift the band aid and peer and the proverbial wound healing underneath.

But Walter’s totally out of the blue question kind of forced me to have a long hard look at that wound and to answer his questions honestly. And the answer is yes and no.

No, because I wouldn’t change a thing about what I have now. No because I love Ava with all my heart and know that there is no way possible for me to love her any more than I do. No because I wouldn’t change a thing about our adoption experience, it was beautiful and perfect in every way.

And yes. Yes because I’m not sure I’ll ever feel completely and fully a woman without getting to experience everything that epitomizes femininity and being all woman is, without that pregnancy and birth experience.  Because that is such a large part of what makes a woman a woman and one of the things that separates us and makes us different from men. My uterus is just an empty shell, a pretty pointless organ taking up space in my abdomen with little to no purpose. It can create life, but it cannot sustain it, instead it will repeatedly strangle the miracle of any life that is nestled inside it.

Admitting these things was hard, but it was also a big aha moment and I realize that a lot of how I see myself is linked to my barrenness, most especially the issue I have surrounding femininity , I never feel feminine, I’m always concerned about coming across as butch or masculine and I think a lot of this has to do with my seemingly useless girly bits.

Now I know all you pregnant ladies out there are going to say, I’m missing out on nothing, I’ve heard a thousand times how uncomfortable and unpleasant pregnancy can be, how painful and scary birth is, what hard work breast feeding is but can you imagine now having the liberty of choice?

When I read tweets and FB updates about birth experiences, and pregnancy diaries, about feeling babies first movements in utero, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t experience a pang of sadness, wondering what that must feel like. But I try not to dwell on it because it is so painful.

Thinking about all over this over the last few weeks and then discussing with a couple of IF friends on Wednesday, one of whom is currently pregnant with her second baby and another a fellow adoptive mom, I realized that I have not forgiven my body for it’s ultimate betrayal and I’m not sure I’ll ever find the place of forgiveness either.

Instead I abuse my body, I punish it and abuse and don’t take any care of it and it’s because I’ve not forgiven it.

While chatting with my friends, I began to realize that pregnancy and live birth for an infertile are very much a part of the healing and forgiving process and that perhaps for those of us who have adopted, who don’t get to experience the pregnancy and birth, perhaps the road to closure and forgiveness is a longer one.

Regardless, I peered under the band aid after Walter’s question and there was still a  bloody, oozing, wound underneath, I have a long way to go to fully recover from what I’ve experienced,  I have a long road to travel before I’ll be able to forgive my body for failing.

Today is International Bereaved Mother’s Day, a day started by the CarlyMarie Project Heal in 2010 & now falls on the first Sunday of May every year.

Thanks to Pink Hair Girl for bringing this to my attention.  When I first read her post, I wanted to comment, I wanted to acknowledge the 7 pregnancies/7 possible children we lost during our walk with infertility. But something stopped me. I did not feel that I was free to express sadness or feelings of loss over those pregnancies, over those 7 potential children, gone but never forgotten. I spent sometime thinking about why it was that I felt I wasn’t free to express those feelings knowing that it was most certainly not because of anything said in Pink Hair Girl’s post but rather because of the way society views a miscarriage, and more specifically first trimester miscarriages. When I woman experiences infant loss or late term pregnancy loss, she is allowed to grieve for a time but her friends and family will move on and they will expect her, at some point to do the same. I cannot imagine how very painful that must be, to have your children’s memory forgotten so quickly by everyone you hold near and dear to you. I cannot imagine the pain of a later term pregnancy loss or an infant loss, I do not know how those women get up and keep walking every day, living with the pain of that loss.

But what about those of us who experienced first trimester losses? We are, or at least I always felt that I was not free to express my sadness and grief over my losses. This is largely due to the fact that almost everyone around me expected me to be fine, after all, what I had lost was simply a ball of cells. They didn’t realize, nor never understood that what I lost, repeatedly, 7 times over, was so much more than that. A little piece of me died with each of those losses, it was the loss of my someday children, with each loss a little piece of my hope and a little peace of my dream was lost too. But I was never free to acknowledge or to talk about what I had lost and this was largely due to people’s reactions to my miscarriages.

So on today, International Bereaved Mother’s day, if you know someone who has or is experiencing an first trimester loss and you care for their feelings and want to help them through their grief, here is a list of things that should NEVER be said to a woman who has experienced or is experiencing a miscarriage:

• It least it happened now and not later on! This is by no means any form of comfort to anyone experiencing loss. Offering a platitude does not ease or take away the pain!
• At least you know you can fall pregnant! Again, not helpful! What good is being able to fall pregnant when you know such crushing loss?
• Why are you so upset? Its not like you lost a baby! People don’t seem to understand that a first trimester is so much more than just the loss of a pregnancy, it’s the loss of hopes and dreams, it’s the loss of a life that could have been and all the hopes and dreams that we started feeling from we moment we knew about the growing cluster of little cells.
• If you are pregnant, don’t say to your friend who has experienced miscarriage (and someone actually said this to me and it hurt like hell) about your pregnancy that you will do everything you can to protect your baby and not have a miscarriage. Believe me, I loved my babies from the moment I knew they were there! I did not do anything to damage my pregnancy, I did not loose my pregnancy because I never loved my unborn child enough or because I didn’t do enough to protect them. Those of us who have struggled with miscarriage already blame ourselves enough without the rest of the world having to point it out to us!

Today, I honor myself and all women like me, carrying babies in our hearts and not in our arms, whether that be from infant loss, late term pregnancy loss of even first trimester pregnancy loss. Today I remember my unborn children. Today and every day I live with the pain of their passing, I live with the grief of not having them here with me and today I honor them to, gone but never forgotten.

Wikipedia defines infertility as follows:

Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term. There are many biological causes of infertility, some which may be bypassed with medical intervention.^[1]

I fall into the sector where my infertility cannot be bypassed with medical intervention.

What they neglect to mention is that infertility doesn’t have a cure, well it didn’t for me anyway. I am and will forever be… shall we say… fertility challenged. And really, that’s ok, I’ve accepted the hand I’ve been dealt, enter Ava-Grace and to be honest, I wouldn’t change a thing!

But the symptoms of my infertility will probably remain with me forever, in varying degree’s. The infertility bear in my heart has been silent from the day that Ava-Grace was placed in my arms but as she’s gone from being a tiny, helpless baby to an intelligent, loving, social little girl, I’ve felt the whispering of that bear once again.

The bear’s whispering has been getting louder and louder and there is one glaringly obvious reason for that.

Pregnancy announcements!

For the sector of the population who are not fertility challenged, the natural order of things, for those who want it, is to wait a period of time before trying to have another baby.

Ava is just over two years old and it would seem all my friends and family friends who had children around the same time as Ava have been busy trying for another baby.

I would be lying if I said it didn’t sting. Granted, it’s not the taken-to-my-bed-in-fits-of-sobs kind of pain that it was when we were still childless, but it still hurts.

It hurts to know that we can’t have what others seemingly take fore granted.

It hurts to know that while to a certain degree, my non-fertility challenged counter parts have some control over their process of family creation, we have little to none.

It hurts simply because I want it, we want it so badly.

Feeling that familiar hurt, the hurt that I lived with, was crippled by for 7+ years, reminds me that once an infertile, always an infertile. While the symptoms of our disease can be cured through medical intervention, adoption or fostering, the disease itself will never be cured.

We are waiting for you little one, I hope you will find us soon. Your sister can’t wait to be a big sister, she has already started asking mommy to have a baby and your daddy and I are looking forward to meeting you!

This time, 9 years ago, I’d been married for 7 weeks and we’d just, a few days earlier, received the amazing news that I was pregnant and approaching the 7 week mark.

I remember waking up to dull back ache and as I got out of bed, seeing the blood running down my legs. I remember rushing to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet and feeling the blood and clots flow from me. I remember Walter trying to reassure me that perhaps this was implantation bleeding? That’s exactly how innocent/ignorant we were at the beginning of this journey. But as I was wracked by cramps and spasms with each passing clot, I knew in my heart it was over. I knew our baby, a baby we had already jokingly decided was a girl child, we’d already named Zoe, was gone. And I was inconsolable and completley crushed.

I remember that drive, in morning rush hour traffic, to the emergency room. I remember the urine test, I remember the blood tests, I remember lying on the bed in the emergency room, utterly devastated and completley shocked. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening to me.

I remember the callous response of one of the female nurses. As I lay there sobbing, she stood over me and told me to pull myself together and stop crying. I remember for the first time hearing the revolting term, that would repeated so many times to me in the 7+ years that followed, the cold medical term: Spontaneous Abortion.

I remember going home. I remember lying in bed and just crying and crying and crying. I remember the feeling of complete emptiness and loss that I felt.

I remember the week’s and months that followed. Of the almost constant crying. Of the unbearable pain each time I saw a pregnant belly or a tiny baby. The feeling of utter loss and devastation.

I remember my intuition telling me something was wrong. I just inherently knew this was the beginning of something awful. I just instinctively knew something was wrong that  this was not just “one of those things”. But nobody would listen to me. Nobody took me seriously.

I remember hearing all the stupid comments that people made, actually, still make.

“Its better it happened now than later”

“At least you know you can fall pregnant”

“You didn’t see a heartbeat so it can’t be that bad”

“Miscarriages happen to lots of women”

I remember it all. It is still painful for me. All those losses. The start of a journey that would forever change me. The start of a journey that would mold & shape me into the person I am today.

You can check out my thoughts and my story here.

Thanks Krissi for featuring our story of hope!

Thanks for all the messages of support over my last two blog postings about the big ol’ can o’ worms that has been opened and the big decisions which need to be made. Walter and I have spoken in-depth about this and have, I think, formulated a way forward that is comfortable for both of us.

The truth is, we both want a second child. We both want Ava to know what its like to grow up with both the joy and irritation of a little brother or little sister.  And of course, we realistically realize that we don’t have the same liberty of just assuming that a few rounds of couch rugby will see us achieve those goals. We both realize, it will take another great miracle for this to happen. But we are both committed to doing the work to be able to receive that miracle, in whatever way, shape, or form that may be, I learned along time ago on this journey NEVER to limit the miracle.

One of the things we won’t be doing is a Valentines day special IVF this month or the next. The simple fact of the matter is that R19 000 is still a large chunk of change. And while we do have the funds, we would rather be spending our money on our second adoption attempt, which commences at the end of March and our application to emigrate (which is far more expensive than an IVF at full price or an adoption attempt).

We are seeing our SW’s on the 25th March for the top up assessment, and are ready to go immediately onto the waiting list. I realize that it would be down right stupid of us to expect that we would be selected immediately like we were the last time but I am hopeful that we don’t have a very long wait for selection.

In the interim our plans for emigration are going ahead with the full support of our SW and of course our migration consultants, who have encouraged us to adopt before leaving SA as adoption in Australia is apparently near impossible.

If we are no further with our adoption attempt by January 2012, we will make a consultation appointment with this other clinic. I am far enough down the IF road to know that you don’t just change clinics and hop straight into an IVF. There will be some top up tests that are required and we have spoken seriously about using an Egg Donor as with my history of recurrent MC’s I’m just not sure I’m willing to try another IVF with my own eggs. A lot of my readers and IF friends seem shocked that I can be so fickle as to move from one of the clinics perceived by many to be the best, not just because of what they offer, but because all 3 of the Dr’s there also happen to be the nicest and most caring people one could ever hope to meet. And while I understand that sentiment, and was, right up until this big ol’ can o’ worms was opened, of the same mind. However, I have given this some thought and the logical side of me realizes that fertility clinics are in the business of making babies and at the end of the day, it’s a business and we need to make a business decision and go where we believe our chances of success are the greatest, currently, this clinic is having very high success rates and this seems to be mostly attributed to their fairly new embryologist. It’s not because their facilities are better or the Dr’s nicer. This is not an emotional decision, it’s a business decision. I made the mistake once in the past of using my heart instead of my head and I stayed at my first clinic far longer than I should have, put myself through far more than I should have and spent way more than we should have.

So we have a plan, one I’m comfortable with and one that does not overwhelm me with fear, neither does it leave me being concerned that one day I will look back and wonder what if???

I guess you can never say never! You can never say you wouldn’t try IVF! You can never say you wouldn’t try and adopt! You can never say you would never use donor eggs or donor sperm! You can never say you wouldn’t use a surrogate because the simple fact of the matter is none of us know what we would or wouldn’t do, not till it came right down to the wire, not until we were backed against a wall and had to make a decision.

My head has been spinning.

I’ve been mentally making “pro’s & con’s” lists since a wine infused 3am conversation on Friday evening…er.. actually that would be Saturday morning.

I think I have made a decision. But this decision doesn’t really take Walter into consideration and I’m not sure if it was all the wine at 3am on Saturday morning, but he seemed very keen to do the exact opposite!

We had some friends over for a braai on Friday evening. Amongst our visitors were some newly made friends, a same sex couple, who have a little girl, a month younger than Ava born to them via a surrogate & egg donor and are pregnant with their second baby girl, once again usinig the same egg donor and a surrogate. They had had 5 failed IVF’s at the same clinic as I’d first attended. After the shoddy handling of their 5th failed IVF, they decided to cut their losses and try another clinic. They had success instantly! First IVF, BFP! Precious baby girl born January 2010! First FET done towards the end of 2010 – BFP, precious baby girl no. 2 expected June 2011!

The clinic in questions, while never popular amongst infertiles previously, does seem to be having a rather high success rate of late, especially amongst the “no hopers” those of us who’ve already had 4, 5, 6, 7 failed IVF’s, are now heading over to this clinic and getting pregnant, staying pregnant and having singleton’s, twins and even triplets on their first attempts with this clinic.

My sweet friends are desperate for Walter and I to give said clinic a call, set up an appointment have a quick consultation and take up this clinic’s “Valentines IVF Special”. The thought of IVF being on “special” makes me a little uncomfortable to be honest, I don’t really know why, it just doesn’t fit well with me, BUT having said that, an all inclusive IVF for R19 000 is not to be scoffed at.

Walter was totally onboard about giving this an attempt on Friday evening/Saturday morning. He feels that we took a chance with Ava-Grace, we took a leap of faith and it paid off, BIG TIME! He feels that if there is one lesson we should have learned it is that we have to grab every opporutnity that comes our way because God is a God of miracles but you have to be open to and willing to work to receive that miracle.

I on the other hand am… scared! I don’t want to open Pandora’s box again. I’m terrified of unlocking that part of my brain and thought processes that have been safely locked away for more than a year now. I’m terrified over going back to being “that” person again. The one who’s life revolves around injections, scans, blood tests. I don’t want to unleash that misery on us again. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted. I would be lying if I said my mind has been spinning in a million directions since that conversation.

But there is MUCH to consider. And the most important consideration for me is…. do I really want to be pregnant?? Repeat beta’s, sleepless nights wracked by anxiety, uncontrolable fear, dealing with the long term effects of PUPPS, spotting, feeling sick and ultimatley the possibility of another (my 8th) miscarriage or 9 months of anxiety torture and the possiblity of something going wrong. And the short answer is HELL NO!

But what if Walter wants to? What will I do then?

I stumbled across THIS blog posting yesterday and I LOVED it!

I AM INfertile…

But I am so much more “IN” than that…

I’ve been tested. I’ve been probed. I’ve been injected. I’ve missed work for appointments. I’ve researched. I’ve asked questions. I’ve worried. I’ve made phone calls. I’ve prioritized…

I AM INcessant…

I’ve gone to baby showers. I’ve smiled at other‘s “big news“. I’ve purchased baby gifts. I’ve babysat. I’ve missed chances. I’ve lost sleep. I’ve lost hope. I’ve lost embryos. I’ve lost babies…

I AM INdestructible…

I might be a mother. I might not be a mother. I might come to terms. I might never quit. I will survive…

I AM INvincible…

I am INfertile.  I am INcessant.  I am INdestructible.  I am INvincible.  I am IN.

I’ve spent the better part of a decade hating Murphy because his law always applied to me. When I had a miscarriage, guaranteed somebody close to me would find out they were pregnant just as I’d start bleeding from the miscarriage. If I was pregnant, somebody close to me would find out they too were pregnant and within days of their news I’d start to bleed. If I was having an IVF or battling through a failed IVF or failed attempt (IUI, Timed, Stimmed, whatever) then guaranteed someone close to me would always find out that they were pregnant and somehow I always just knew that I could trust that Murphy’s law would prevail.

As an example, my SIL fell pregnant, accidentally, with her partner who she’d been seeing for 6 weeks because they never used birth control ‘cos he said he suspected he was sterile from Mumps as a child, that was 3 weeks after my first, most crushing and most devastating miscarriage. Going through her pregnancy while dealing with the fall out of my miscarriage was hard. It was excruciatingly painful to spend Sunday family lunches ooh’ing and aah’ing over her growing belly, talking about baby stuff and listening to all the plans. I kept a stiff upper lip, I held it together but I cried great big silent tears that would slide heavily down my cheeks and make wet patches on my shirts in the car on the way home after every one of those days.

I hosted her baby shower, three weeks before her baby shower date, I found out I was pregnant again, what followed was almost two weeks of on and off bed rest because of unexplained spotting. Two days before her baby shower my miscarriage was confirmed. But I kept it together, I kept a stiff upper lip and did the very best I could. I hosted her baby shower with a smile plastered on my face while I tried not to double over from severe miscarriage cramping.

A few months  after I’d had my 6th miscarriage and reeling from our first failed IVF, Walter and I went away on holiday to my family in the Cape, we went to my parents holiday home on the West Coast at Langebaan. It was supposed to be a time of healing, a time of reflection and a time for rebuilding strength that my 6 miscarriage and first failed IVF had sucked out of me. Four days into the holiday we received a call that would crush what little strength I had started to rebuild. My SIL phoning to tell us we were going to be Aunties and Uncles for a second time.  My second nephew was born on the one year anniversary of my 6th miscarriage, 22nd November.

This is just an example of what has transpired along my IF journey, there are loads of examples like this which I could share. Where time and time again, just when I thought things couldn’t get any harder, something would happen that would push me even further into the deep, dark pit of despair.

The one “bullet” I have managed, by God’s mercy, to dodge is pregnant colleagues. I work for a small company, we are all of 16 employee’s and up until very recently, it was very male dominated with only a handful of women, of which all had either had children or were past the child-bearing age.  Until the beginning of last year when two female colleagues joined the company. Neither one of them married, both of them in the region of 30, both of them in serious relationships. As my IVF in March last year failed, they both got engaged and set wedding dates, one for November 2009 and one for February 2010 and I knew… I just knew… I was in big big trouble.

I knew what was coming, I knew that it was only a matter of time before suddenly champagne wasn’t sipped in the boardroom, before bellies started to grow and before I would be surrounded ( I work closely with both these women, we share an office) I would be literally surrounded by pregnancy and pregnant bellies and baby talk and baby plans and I was frantic. It was one thing to hold it together, to keep my emotions in check with family or friends when visiting once a week or once every couple of weeks. But how was I going to survive this? How was I going to come to work every single day and be faced with my lack of fertility, every day, 5 days a week for the bulk of the day?

But somehow God, in His greatness and mercy, stepped in and saved me from my worst nightmare.

When I cam back from maternity leave, I noticed that the female colleague who’d gotten married in November was looking decidedly chubby, shortly after that she announced her pregnancy, she’s expecting a girl and she’s being born in November.  Of course, having spent so many years longing for a child, I’m super in tune to all things pregnancy related and had noticed that my other female colleague, the one who got married in February, was also starting to behave decidedly pregnant. No champagne in the boardroom. No cups of coffee, no more traveling and then last week I saw it, I saw her stand at her desk and unconsciously rub her belly and I noticed the very early start of a baby bump. She’s since told me that although she hasn’t announced it yet, she is in fact pregnant and just past the 12 week mark.

Thank you God for small mercies, thank you God that my beautiful miracle child has saved me from what would have been unbearably painful for me to be faced with every day. Now instead, they come to me to ask for advice on baby goodies, on sleep routines on all things baby related. I can participate and fully enjoy their pregnancies without being so horribly aware of my own barrenness.

I’m so grateful for this small mercy!

I know this posting must make me sound like a horrible, bitter infertile but I just want to categorically state that I’m not one of those who feels that nobody else should be allowed to have a baby because I can’t, or that others weren’t allowed to rejoice in their blessings cos I couldn’t have what they had but just because I’m happy for others doesn’t mean I can live vicariously through them without being deeply affected by my own loss, pain and despair.