IVF (It’s Very F**ked-up)

I’ve thought long and hard about writing this blog post.

How to pick up from where we left off.  How to find closure for a failed cycle.

There are several blog posts on our laptop packed full of hilarious tales from our cycle we never got round to publishing, and now it just all feels a bit too sad to laugh.  I would never want to make a mockery of what we did, the price we had to pay and ultimately what we lost.  However, the highlights did include buying my wife a chlamydia test on Valentine’s day, being high on temazipam watching my wife clear snow of a car with a plastic sword and realising I wasn’t tripping, and let us not forget my trip to boots where I some how managed to spend over £200 on shit we don’t need to try and hide the fact I was buying 6 first responses ... eyelash curler anyone? 

Either way it’s been 8 weeks since our ‘BFN’ (big fat negative or bastard f**king negative, as I like to call it) - and we’re starting to make some sense of it all.  Our conclusion? There is no sense to any of it.  There is no reason why sometimes, a poor grade embryo implants and results in a pregnancy and for others, a seemingly top grade embryo doesn't even touch the side.  There is no sense that some people just get pregnant by accident and other women struggle for years.  It really is a betting-mans game!

We went into this process seamingly in great fertility health.  Neither of us had any gynological issues that we where aware of, we had regular periods and with 4 working overys, 2 working uteruses and the entire sperm bank at our disposal you could be forgiven if, like us, you put your money on us getting pregnant first try! 

Oh hindsight - it’s such a wonderful thing.

Here are ten things I’ve learned in the last 6 Months:

1. There is a shortage of sperm, it’s not quite as simple as click it, card it, ship it
2. Endometriosis - never knew it existed, turns out I have it 
3. First response pregnancy tests are expensive 
4. I love gas and air.  I mean seriously.  I’m looking forward to another blast on that bad-boy next time round
5. IVF really is an emotional rollercoaster.  You can be riding high on the news of 5 embryo’s developing well on day 4, to then being told 1 was a top grade to transfer and the rest are no good for freezing, you really are only as happy as your last phone call with an embryologist 
6. You turn into complete recluses when you're cycling (or as I like to call it - spinning uncontrollably) and then when you don’t get a positive result you don’t want to talk to anyone about it.  Socially we can just write-off the entire first half of 2018 and file it under IVF (It’s Very F**ked-up) 
7. When it goes wrong you find yourself pissed at everyone it goes right for, then you feel ashamed because you don’t want to feel negative towards another’s success.  I was always told if you can’t find anything nice to say, silence will say it for you! I’d like to apologise to all I have been silent with these last 8 weeks! 
8. I always thought, you never know how much you want something until don’t get it.  I was wrong.  You never know how much you want something until you think you’ve got it and then it’s taken away 
9. After 10 years together and 4 years of marriage I thought we had been through a lot together, I thought we where as strong as can be, but nothing compares to the last 4 months.  I can honestly say with 100% conviction I have married the right person.  We have both pulled each other back from places so low we didn’t know they existed and now we are tied even closer by a bond only the two of us can relate to
10.   Although all of the above sounds absolutely horrific and traumatic and you would be forgiven for thinking I am implying I won’t be trying again, the truth is IVF is addictive. The lows are brutal and sometimes soul destroying but the highs are like no other!

So here we are, today is my 33rd birthday and I think we are ready to start looking towards our next cycle, literally a year older on the consent forms, definitely a lot wiser, but mostly hopeful!