One of the many, many things I’ve struggled to deal with throughout our infertility is the feeling of standing still whilst the world rushes on around you. Weeks turn into months. Months turn into years. The seasons change, another Christmas goes by, and still no baby to take pictures with next to the Christmas tree. Meanwhile all around you, your friends start settling down into their own little families, and you notice even those kids who were in the years below you at school are popping out sprogs themselves. Life goes on. Right?
Wrong. How very wrong we were.
Before our first round of IVF, before the pregnancy and before the miscarriage, we were dealt not one but two devastating blows that didn’t even occur to us would happen. In February 2018 - within the space of 9 days - J and I both unexpectedly lost a grandparent. For me, I was (ironically) at a baby shower when I saw that my mum had tried to call me, twice in succession. When I finally realised and called her back, she delivered the awful news that my grandma had passed away in her sleep. I was inconsolable – I had only just had a roast dinner with her the week before – she had been fine! I couldn’t handle that as well as our infertility troubles and coming to terms with the fact that we would have to go through assisted conception to be able to have a child, I had now lost my gran out of the blue. I had so looked forward to the day that I could present her with a great-grandchild that it didn’t even cross my mind that she wouldn’t be around to see me become a mum.
Over the next 8 days, we found out that J’s grandad had fallen and his injuries were quite nasty. After a short spell in hospital, he sadly passed, too. I had been quite used to seeing him often over the 12 years that I’d known him – always over for Christmas, or popping by for breakfast on a Saturday morning. It was like losing another of my grandparents, and I was so unbelievably sad for J and his parents, especially his mum who was fiercely protective of him.
This is the thing about infertility. It CONSUMES you. People say “just don’t think about it and it’ll happen!” Honey, oh my god just shutthefuckup. I literally eat, sleep and breathe fertility. It’s the first thing you think of when you wake up (usually because you’re taking your Basal Body Temperature) and the last thing you think of at night (usually because you’re - uh – trying to make a baby?!) Everything else in life takes a back seat. Want to go on that fancy holiday? Not this year, babes. Oh, you wanted that promotion? Better not go for it this time love, what if you get pregnant straight away?! Your life hits the pause button for as long as it takes. Because that’s another thing about infertility – it'll take as long as it takes.
Our grandparents’ deaths hit us hard, and I think it was because we were so all-consumed with infertility that we didn’t stop to realise what was going on with everything else. You just expect people to be around for you, in the literal and figurative sense. You don’t realise that actually you could be losing your family, friends and support system around you, because they don’t know how to cope with your grief.
What came next though was an immense outpouring of support from family. This was obviously a very family-oriented situation, and - like weddings - death brings everyone together again. I ‘came out’ to my cousins about our troubles, and their enthusiasm for IVF and support for it was incredible! Aunties, uncles, cousins all rallied around to just be there for each other, supporting each other through our own sadness. It’s so good just to talk about things, and realise what we were all going – or had been – through, too. It made J and I even more determined to see things through. J’s mum even made sure that his grandad’s funeral wasn’t on the day of our IVF consent appointment, as she knew how monumental it was for us! We were all in this together.
As you know, our first round of IVF wasn’t meant to be. But I believe that knowing we had two extra stars in the sky cheering us on was what gave us that glimmer of hope in the first place. It was that little bit of support that said to us “you CAN do this, you HAVE got this!” And we’ll do it again, no matter what. We have said time and again the phrase “when we are parents”, not “if we have a baby” and I think that’s such an important mindset to live by. We WILL be parents someday, and sure it might not be to our own biological children, or I might not carry my own baby... But IT WILL HAPPEN.
Fast-forward to July 2018.
After I realised I was miscarrying our babies, I rang the on-call nurse who confirmed what we had suspected. She called it a “chemical pregnancy” which I think is a really shit term to use. If you Google it, it’ll tell you it’s an early miscarriage. It’s deemed “chemical” because the only thing that proves that you were pregnant was the chemical changes to the hormones in your urine or blood test – essentially, you didn’t make it far along enough to be able to see anything on an ultrasound. It’s usually around the 5-6 week mark of pregnancy, and actually they’re so common that most women who weren’t actively trying for a baby would just mistake it for a late period than an actual pregnancy.
The next bit might be a bit too much information, so I forgive you if you want to skip ahead.
The next day, I just laid on the sofa, waiting for it to happen. I hadn’t actually seen any blood clots at this point, but I was remembering the comment about the 50p from my friend’s miscarriage. I wasn’t even watching TV, I was just lying there, doing nothing. J had gone to work, I told him to go as there was nothing we could do. Then at about 11:30am, the most excruciating pain hit me and I just felt an overwhelming urge to go to the toilet. I knew at that point that the pregnancy tissue had left my body and I had officially miscarried. There was nothing “chemical” about that part of my pregnancy.
Luckily, J came bursting through the front door at that moment – I don’t think I’d even flushed at that point. I know some people scoop it out of the toilet and bury it, or take it to the doctors for analysis, and each to their own. But I needed it gone. I can’t remember who did it, but I just remember sobbing that it had gone and that I believed it was my fault. This is so important - a miscarriage is NOT the mother's fault. Although the term is crap again, and implies that we somehow "mishandled" our pregnancy, there was just some chemical or hormonal imbalance which just did not mean that those precious cells would've created a healthy, living baby. I was so unbelievably thankful that J had come home at that point, it was like he knew that in that moment he had to be with me.
The summer of 2018 was a blur to me. I retreated far, far back into my own little bubble, which only J was allowed to enter. Friends tried to reach out to me, but I literally just wanted to be with J. Even if he was sat watching the football, I didn’t care so long as I was with him. I went to work, and went home again, not caring if I’d done a good job or if I’d gone the extra mile that day. Our families tried to rally around us, but no one could pick up the pieces. I uninstalled WhatsApp in an attempt to switch off from life, and I deleted my Instagram account for fear of seeing yet another pregnancy announcement. Friends could see that I wanted to be left alone, and I didn’t even realise as some of them slipped away for good. I don’t really remember much of what happened between July and November that year. I didn’t do anything remotely worthwhile, and looking back I realised that I stopped taking photos of things, too. I stopped seeing the beauty in the life all around me.
Straight after we miscarried, I tried to bounce back to normality and continue on with plans to go to a concert with my best friends. I ended up breaking down massively, probably putting a right downer on the weekend. All around me there were mums with their little girls, enjoying the concert. Usually, babies and bumps are triggers for me. But I felt a pain I’d never experienced before, as I never thought about the fact that of course those babies turn into children who can walk and talk and sing and dance to their pop idols. Seeing them all around me made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. This was supposed to be my future, and it had slipped away as fast as I’d celebrated it.
6 long weeks later, the hospital scheduled us for a follow up consultation – also known as the “What The Fuck” appointment. They agreed that ICSI would’ve been a better protocol for us, and next time we would do that. They agreed that I didn’t respond as well as they’d hoped to the stimulation drugs, given my age and ovarian reserve levels, so next time they would put me on a different medication. They agreed that we should try fertility counselling, and referred us to a specialist. All the while, everything was just spoken about in “next time” terms. Next time would be a long way off for us, as we were now out of NHS funding and would have to find around £5,000 to go self-funded.
Counselling wasn’t really for us. The therapist tried to get J to open up, which is like trying to get blood out of a stone. She tried to get us to start thinking about a Plan B, such as surrogacy or adoption. As I’ve stated, we are totally for going down that route, if that’s what it takes. But we’d only had one try of IVF, and I wanted to give it another shot – after all, the first round is described as a “tester” to see how you respond to things. She told me to avoid my triggers – pregnant women and babies – which was shit advice being that 99% of my friendship group fell into this category. We didn’t revisit counselling.
One thing that stood out massively for us at this point in the year is that my parents gifted us a generous portion of my grandma’s inheritance. They knew the money would be used towards future rounds of IVF, and I think this was the burst of light that I needed to get through things as best I could. The next morning, J and I toasted our next chapter at breakfast, and I broke down over my pancakes when I realised that our grandparents would be helping us achieve our dream of becoming parents. It was like that age old saying, one door closes, another one opens. I was determined to make them proud, and knew that the next round of IVF had to work, for their sakes as well as ours. We weren’t just doing it for us now, we were doing it for them, too!
KEB x
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