BFN

The problem with rollercoasters are, more often than not, you disembark at the bottom regardless.

BFN. Of course it was. I knew it. My husband knew it. We warned our parents not to put any hope into it. So then, why does it hurt so bloody much? Last night we put our son to bed. He was very sweet and gave us extra cuddles and kisses, almost as if he too knew what was coming.

I took the test upstairs and my husband and I sat on the bathroom floor. We covered the test with tissue and looked at each other for 2 whole minutes. There was not much to say. He asked what he to expect to see and I told him we were looking for a big fat cross. And then he lifted up the tissue. At first he was confused and I think for a split second he thought it was positive until I took it out his hand and told him otherwise. The evening just dissolved in to a helpless pit of tears. I thought I was stronger than this. The problem with the 2ww is that even though you shouldn’t you allow yourself hope. So although I knew the odds were against us I allowed myself just a little glimpse into the light and imagined what it would be like to see those two lines. I allowed myself to cuddle my son and tell myself his little sibling was inside and what a proud brother he would be. I imagined the announcement to our friends and family. And just like that it has gone.

Today we went for breakfast with my parents and I just didn’t have the energy to put a front on. My best friend is coming over later with her two older children so I am glad that they can just distract him from my misery.

I want so desperately to pull myself together but I just can’t. I have moments where my pep talks work and others when they fail.

I tried to find hope and answers on Google but all I can find are happy endings. Or blogs where people have poured their hearts out about the grief but when I click several years later they have their smiley three kids in front of them. I find myself almost angry- how dare they be all sad when it all worked out ok in the end. Which of course I am aware is utterly ridiculous. Who knows, maybe I will be one of those one day. Hope is a killer.

In some ways the psychic I saw was right. She told me in the Spring my freeze will thaw. I clung to that and hoped that it meant that I would be pregnant. But now I think it has ended. I know I need to stop obsessing, that I need to focus on this beautiful family I have before I tear it to shreds. My journey can not be just about striving for number two anymore. It can be there but it can’t be all I focus on. So in that way, my big freeze will thaw. I have to carry on somehow.

 

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and….

About a year ago I read a blog, I forget whose it was now, but it was a lady who went through 7 rounds of IVF to get her two children. She stated that every time she started her IVF she entered the boxing ring. If it failed, she dusted herself off and she went back in again. At the time I thought- now that is a good attitude- I am having some of that ! And that’s what I thought I would do. The thing is, this lady was an awful lot stronger than me. It is only now I think she was made of some serious stuff and hats off to her.

The thing is, I can’t carry on like this. Yesterday I snottily wrote an awfully depressing post which I think is better that it never sees the light of day. Today I do want to pick myself up. I don’t want to spiral. Maybe I do have a choice. Maybe I can allow myself to grieve but I think I can get up now. I did half- heartedly write a list (I love a list) of what is positive in my life and what I need to do next.

• I have one beautiful cheeky and healthy boy.
• I am married to a kind man who understands the struggle and would do anything to make me happy
• I live in a beautiful area in a house that we have so many plans for
• I have friends that I can cry on the phone to and be that shoulder of support.
• I have my health or so I hope.
• I am 33. I still have a couple of years hope. You never know.

So this is what I must tell myself. And here is what I must do:

• Join the gym that I have always wanted to go to. Not to make myself fit for a baby but to help mentally and this is something that I can control. I can’t control making a baby. I thought I could but it turns out I can’t.
• We are buying a flat to do up and to rent. This will be a project I will try and do if I can around my little boy.
• Speak to the IVF doctor and find out what went wrong. Is it worth doing again or do we draw a line under it?
• Write.  Just write, it is and always has been my therapy.
• Cry when I need to. But not too much.
• Have fun. Book a holiday, plan some trips. I can’t face a year of void. IVF was everything. That was what I pushed myself forward for but now its gone I feel empty.
• Salute the frigging magpie and move on. It is not an omen its a bloody bird.

I have entered the boxing ring. I will dust myself off and pick myself up. I don’t think I can go back in there for a while but I can do this. People have been through so much worse. We’ve got this.

 

Our firsts and lasts

Today I cried in Sainsburys. I needed to buy my son some new shoes and I picked up the wrong size. That’s all it took.

I will never be able to put a little child in a tiny size 5 again.

I will never feel the warmth of a tiny baby in my arms whilst I nurse them to sleep.

I will never moan about the broken nights sleep, slowly losing sanity of what a tiny human needs in order to settle them back to sleep.

I will never watch and feel pride as my baby takes his first steps again.

They will, of course, be replaced with new firsts. His first day at school, his first visit from the tooth fairy, his first girlfriend. But will they always feel so bittersweet? Am I a terrible person for feeling pride as he grows, yet feel a sadness for what we are all missing. He will not have anyone that will feel his grief as much as him when we die. I can’t bear for him to be alone.

I am so lucky to have him. He is, quite clearly, our little miracle. But I am so scared of loving him too much. I want to cling to him but I know I will need to at some point, stand back and let him grow.

I feel that I am grieving and I have lost every ounce of hope that we ever had. IVF was our shining light on the horizon and whilst I was never naive enough to think it would work first time, I did not feel that we would endure OHSS and all our embryos dying before transfer. Five long months and we have nothing to show for it. There’s not much that they can do for poor egg quality so this is it.

How do I move on from this bleak place? I so want to be happy again and this has sucked the life out of us all. I want to be the person I was two years ago but that person has long gone.

 

 

 

Broken

Well I didn’t think that this never-ending cycle could get any worse so perhaps naively we rocked up today fairly positive.

Our plan was to have our embryo transfer and then go home to watch boxsets and make the most of our afternoon alone. However we were told that out of the two frozen blastocysts, one had not thawed properly (we were told there was a 90% chance of survival so I had tried not to dwell on this as a possibility). The remaining embryo had only been out of the freezer for 40 minutes and it had not started to divide. The embrolgist gave us the option of waiting for another two hours or putting it in. With her advice we put it in as she said it would be the better environment for it anyway.

Instead of our experience being exciting I cried throughout. Here we were, 5 months later after OHSS and a painful wait and it all boiled down to one embryo that they couldn’t quite promise was suitable.

I feel broken. Like my heart has been ripped out. The tears have not stopped and I feel that I can’t carry on with this fight anymore .IVF clearly does not work for us and that was my final hope. Everyone around me is popping out babies and I can’t for the life of me work out how to do it. I can’t stop crying and now  I feel I am back where I was a few months ago.

I feel a fool as a psychic told me I had two pregnancies left in me and that in the Spring my freeze will thaw. I think I took this and held on to it so tight until now. My little boy is growing up so fast and asks me repeatedly when he can have a brother. I feel I am letting him down.

For now I have to wait for the  inevitable negative in 11 days time. I feel like I have been robbed of even the torment of a proper two week wait.

Another ramble but I had to write it down.