My friend XBox is going through fertility issues. He asks the question why people who achieve pregnancy suddenly forget about their infertility, why they deny the pain they went through.
When people see me with the kids the last thing they think about is infertility.
A prime example of this is when I walked into the Naturopath’s office after ten months of unsuccessful trying to conceive post William.
She asked me why I was there and I said for fertility issues. I had all the children with me (at the time five in total) and her eyes boggled.
I’ve jumped ahead though. Best place to start is at the beginning.
When Dave and I were married we started trying straight away to fall pregnant. We both wanted our family at a young age. I was young, I was just 20 when I got married.
Pregnancy did not come easily though and after a year of trying I went to the doctor, who scoffed at me because I was young. He ran a few tests and told me I was fine, to get on with living, I had plenty of time to procreate.
I didn’t really talk to many people about it then. None of my friends were in the same position. None of them even married, let alone trying for a baby.
I wasn’t happy though, the thought of each cycle induced a kind of pain and distress and longing that is hard to describe.
Another (female) doctor and a few more tests and I was sent to a gynaecologist who discovered I had polycystic ovaries and a little thing called hyperprolactinaemia.
I started on the fertility drug called Clomid (clomiphene). It was supposed to induce ovulation because, apparently, I was not releasing eggs.
I did learn alot about primary infertility, I learnt alot about myself and now, I can look back and think about it and feel a little wistful about our first entry into the ‘trying to conceive’ world but when I was in the thick of it, I only felt pain.
I think I was about six cycles in when I discovered I was pregnant. We celebrated, told the world and put a cot on layby.
Eleven weeks later I miscarried.
The loss was devastating and it felt so unfair. The baby had died and I had to go back and start treatment again.
The gynae didn’t tell me until I fronted back up to his rooms post D&C that women who take clomid have a higher incidence of miscarriage than the normal 1 in 5 statistically prone.
Clomid and Parlodel (the medication I took to normalise my prolactin levels) made me moody, depressed and helped me, along with lashings of comfort ice cream, put on weight and I guess I wasn’t surprised when a new pregnancy, that started on the ninth cycle ended eight weeks later. It was still very distressing though and I found myself constantly wishing for a baby.
After a second year of nothing, we moved onto our first ever fertility specialist. This was hard core stuff.
IVF scary stuff.
My lowest point came when I saw a young girl, with a baby in a train station tunnel. The baby was in a rag of a nappy and nothing else and the Mum was begging for money. I wanted to take that baby and run.
I told David that night, lamented that this waif - girl could have a baby, had nothing to offer her (in my eyes) and that I could not even carry a baby past the 12 week mark.
Dave became very angry with me. Asked me what right I had to judge this girl and think that her baby was better off away from her mother. He was right, of course. I had none.
We fought alot, that year about everything and nothing.
I wanted a baby so badly though, every mother with a child was like a slap in the face to me. I had terrible bitter thoughts, anger and depressing lows.
I could blame the medication but in all honesty, that was how I felt, deep down. If you looked into the middle of my very black heart, those feelings were all that resided there. Those and the feeling that all of this was very unfair. I’d forgotten what it was all about really, the joy, the excitement, the awe of the human body, had all been replaced with the total suckage of trying (and failing) to conceive.
Things went from bad to worse when the fertility specialist took one look at me and told me not to enter his office again until I had lost twenty kilos. I was just “too fat” to have a baby.
Only seven kilos too fat, it seemed, because three months later, I found myself pregnant and with that first tentative ultrasound, found that we were having twins. Conceived naturally.
I’d love to say it ended there and that after that fertility was not an issue again. In fact, it wasn’t an issue with Lily at all. She was my ‘just meant to be’ baby.
However, when it came time to have a forth baby, that elusive pregnancy was four years of, what is known as, secondary infertility.
This type of infertility was worse for me than the primary infertility.
There were several reasons for this.
The first was that I already had three beautiful children.
It should be easy, right? I should be able to fall as easily and as quickly as I had with Lily.
I felt as though I was being greedy wanting another.
People made sweeping statements that went along the lines of being happy with what I had,
that some people couldn’t even have one baby,
it was God’s way of telling me my body had had enough.
When I went to an infertility specialist, he laughed and asked me why I would be crazy enough to want more children.
Of course, I went through all of the very same questions but the longing for another baby was strong.
Primary or secondary infertility; they’re still the same feelings, emotions, wants. You still make the same deals. Just with a whole lot of guilt for the people going through primary infertility added into the mix.
During that four year period I had two miscarriages.
One early and one at 16 weeks.
The 16 week ‘miscarriage’ of our little girl, Aubrey, brought me to my knees and almost had me giving up.
Two D&Cs, six rounds of clomid, one lot of dye blown through my fallopian tubes, a laparoscopy, a myriad of spiteful, angry doctors, so called friends and even strangers opinions and judgements.
My one last deal was with the door to the operating theatre at work. This particular door had a tricky code combination on it and I often found it difficult to co ordinate the numbers and turn the handle in order to open the darn thing, in a hurry. I was a midwife by then and I was on my way to an emergency caesarean.
…”if I can open this door first go”, I vented to the empty corridor,” then I am pregnant and I will carry to term”.
Yes, the deals were that ridiculous.
Of course the door opened and I rushed through to the birth of a healthy baby boy.
Nine months later we welcomed and farewelled William.
Post William, conception meant another 12 months of fertility treatment (clomid, laparoscopy, IUI x3) and tests, judgement and comments. It was our hardest period of infertility.
Truly.
Even though it was our shortest, it was the most tumultuous, gut wrenching period of time because there was so much riding on it.
I will never forget any of it.
Those periods of infertility.
Looking back on it, I know that I am a better person for having gone through it.
All of it.
Of course, it’s easy to say now.
It’s hard to put into words exactly what you go through. When you are the infertile one, there is alot of self doubt. I tried to turn David away. I told him to find someone else. There was alot of anger and tears and not much good came out of that time, except that we survived and we have some pretty special children at the end of it.
I guess, that is why I don’t talk about it anymore. Because I did win in the end and there are many people out there who are struggling, who never get their happy ending, who are going through awful, heart breaking stuff.
When you are going through infertility, you don’t want to hear that it will be okay. You don’t want to hear all the stories about how so and so tried for years and then the minute they gave up and relaxed, BANG! They were pregnant. So to have someone who has had six babies all up, come and tell you they understand, I imagine would be the ultimate kick in the guts. When you are infertile, it doesn’t matter how the other person got to parenthood, all that matters is that you don’t have it.
