Skip to main content

The start

This isn't really the start.

I'm not sure where the start point is.
Maybe it was when we decided to stop using contraception and be "not trying, but not not trying". If so, that was around 8 years ago now.
Maybe it was more like... when I visited a doctor about something unrelated and she said  "You've been trying to get pregnant a really long time, that must be getting really devastating"...  and I thought - no... it's not devastating... because... I'm not trying... I just not not trying... 
Maybe it was after that conversation, when I realised, yes, seriously, it had been a very long time.
Maybe the start point was when I officially tried to get us timing sex. Whenever that was.  You might be able to gather I wasn't keeping track too well. 
Maybe it was when I saw that all my friends were falling pregnant within a few months of stopping contraception, and it dawned on me that... oh... that's normal. What was happening for us was not normal. 
Maybe it was the knowledge of my pending 35th birthday that got me to get out of my little daze of denial and see a fertility specialist.
I know that something definitely started when we made that visit to the fertility specialist and we were told...  your "infertility" is unexplained and you're probably going to need to do IVF.... wait what??  No... surely we just need to time sex a bit better. Ah, my friend denial likes to stay close.

But then again, I feel like it all started at some point far less definable...  when I simply had an idealistic notion in the back of my head that this is how it will all happen... one day I'll just be able to fall pregnant, and it will be from passionate spontaneous love-making with my partner. It won't be timed half-hearted intercourse. It certainly won't be from weeks of injections, surgery to remove eggs, and incubation of embryos in a lab. No, it won't be like that because I won't really have to deliberately force anything, because conception will be an inescapable consequence from all the love taking place... and it will be all be a smooth process, so easy and natural. And I'll have a glowing belly radiant with life. And when the time comes I suppose the baby will just glide out of me and I'll be a perfect parent.

If I am honest with myself, yes. I think I really might have believed that at some level.

But that vision has gradually eroded from the reality of our situation.

So I don't know precisely when this "journey" started. But I definitely know that today is a start of sorts... it is the start of a new cycle, my first day of round 5 IVF. And the start of this blog.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the stories that are out there

It seems to me that the happy-ending story that is so often "out there" about infertility is this: "Here is a couple who struggled and struggled to have kids, and then, finally, they had a baby. The end"... I think something about this story feels like a lack of honouring of the losses felt along the way for infertile couples. I know life goes on, and I know it does no one any good at all to get stuck in grief or pain. But surely there is some kind of transition for people to adjust from infertility to parenthood? Maybe there is a certain loss that is always felt? Transitioning to parenthood seems like it would be a hard process following infertility battles, and different somehow from a "normal fertility" transition to parenthood which I am sure would be hard enough (and I think is spoken about a lot). Something about the "...and then they had a baby" part of the story seems a bit dismissive about the infertility dramas, or gives a message of-...
17 comments
Read more

belonging or be longing somewhere

I heard a great radio segment the other day on the importance of belonging.  Belonging is a pretty core and pretty basic human need I would say, and we certainly don't feel great, in fact we probably do things like turn to drugs and alcohol or other addictions or avoidant behaviours, when we don't have a strong sense of belonging somewhere in the world. These notions of belonging got me thinking about the infertility/trying to conceive journey. I guess getting online and reading and writing a blog has been all about gaining a better sense of belonging in this process. But even in this lovely online world there is a sad kind of aspect to it that... some people move on to the world of having kids and it doesn't feel like I "Belong" with them in the same sense. Some move on to have no kids, but as I am still trying to have kids, in a sense, don't "belong" there either. I can perhaps feel that I belong wholeheartedly with other people in my position, bu...
13 comments
Read more

navigating in fog

I thought I was getting good with just not knowing. But then maybe I'm kidding myself to say that, because honestly, this whole infertility thing has got me feeling far less tolerant of uncertainty.  Right now I'm sort of doing nothing. I guess I'm doing something... I'm getting information and opinions, and just waiting... as always. I'm also doing a bit of just not thinking about it, which is good too. I'm also spending some time thinking about it way too much and trying to work out silly things like if I could only just get my diet exactly right maybe that will sort it out? So it's all a bit of a foggy mix and I'm confused. I'm trying to navigate around the idea of using donors. Am I ok with it? Is my partner? Is that even where are we headed? The weird thing about unexplained infertility is that on one hand I swing to the possibility that since no one knows anything about what's happening, something really simple might get us pregnant, maybe ...
10 comments
Read more