I didn’t intend to write a blog post specifically on fertility treatments, despite previously writing about my infertility, I thought that would be all I wrote about but today is hard, and if I can write it down, or even help another going through this, then that makes me happier.
For the last two months we’ve really been ‘trying’ – of course, we’ve been trying for the last three years, but something about these last two months have been different, we have both been 100% in it and I have been so positive about it all.
But that doesn’t stop the hard days.
I am currently taking a medication called Clomid. A drug that pumps you with hormones enabling you to ovulate – something I am pretty much unable to do on my own due to my PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome).
It’s hard to describe the effects of Clomid. The agony you have to go through each month in a bid to only attempt to have a baby of your own. The surges of sadness you get, the physical pains you get throughout the month, not knowing if you’re ovulating or if you’ve already ovulated.
This month is the first month I have properly tracked with OPKs (ovulation detection tests). I’ve been tracking my LH, a hormone which surges ahead of ovulation. On Sunday, I finally got that peak, the surge I’d been longing to see since the beginning of this entire process. The glimpse of hope that I am ovulating and that maybe, just maybe this will be the month I catch.
And then it comes, not my period – that I could deal with, that I have seen so many times before I have become numb to having a period, knowing that chance has been snatched away from me for another month, but five days post what I thought was ovulation, another positive ovulation test.
I genuinely thought we had done everything we could this month, and now my entire month has fallen into doubt. Have I missed my real chance this month? Did I not ovulate when I thought I did? How can this happen? How can when we’ve tried so hard, it all be potentially for nothing?
I know you are probably reading this thinking – why not just try now? But it’s not that simple. Chris is ill, and we haven’t ‘baby danced’ since Monday – and all I can think now is that we haven’t done enough.
I’m currently in tears right now writing this, trying to get all my emotions down, struggling to see and I peer through the droplets in my eyes, listening to sad music and generally feeling sorry for myself.
There are times I sit here and ask myself is being a biological mum worth this heartache and sadness every month? And what’s worse is Chris knows how much I want to be a mum and it puts so much pressure on him. And I feel the worst person in the world, not only for not being able to make that new life, but also because he gets the brunt of my heartache.
What person wants to sit and watch their partner slowly destroy themselves trying to make a baby?
In honesty I don’t know how much longer I can keep trying. I’m so sick of seeing the negative results, looking back through my last month and realising we didn’t do enough, putting so much pressure on myself and others that it almost forces us apart.
I’m emotionally drained. My heart can’t keep feeling this way, feeling I’m a failure, that I’m not good enough, not woman enough. And the physical pain that I bypass each month in the hope that that sharp stabbing in my stomach is the sign of implantation or an egg being released. The nausea caused by the drugs and hormones, my entire body feeling as though it probably should just give up.
I am slowly killing myself trying to make a new life.
Someone told me today, which I truly believe. They said: ‘Those who have natural maternal instincts, who long to be a mum, find it the hardest to fall.’ That is me, and right now I can’t ever see it happening.
Right now I can’t see Lily being a big sister in our home, I can’t see Chris kissing my stomach, telling it he can’t wait to meet our baby boy or girl, picking names, buying a cot, reading to my bump, feeling the first kick, hearing the heartbeat, meeting our bundle of joy for the first time.
And I’d love to post in a year’s time with a baby in my arms, laughing at how stupid I was, but I can’t see it happening. I was told today that I am positive but I’m not, I hide my constant fear, the longing, the genuine anger when someone I know announces they’re pregnant, the constant asking myself ‘why me?’ ‘what did I do so wrong in my life that I don’t deserve a child of my own?’ ‘Am I not a good enough mother figure to Lily to be able to have a child – is this a sign that I’m actually just a really bad parent and the whole world knows it except for me?’
I’m genuinely sorry for this pretty depressive post – but I needed to get it down, to finally release it from my head. I don’t know if we’ll keep trying, if I have the strength to see more negative tests, but I promise to keep you updated.
This journey is hard, and if you are going through the same I can only sympathise. I understand and I am here, you’re not alone.
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