PROCESSING THE REALITIES OF INFERTILITY

Life

May 11

Date

5.10.23

time

9:00 PM

Place

The Living Room

I never would have guessed…

That this would be a part of my story. Infertility that is. I always imagined that motherhood would be something that happened when I wanted it to. I always thought it would be in my 30s after finding love and settling into the life that I fantasized about as a young girl growing up in South Georgia. Perhaps I would still be living in New York and raising my children there. I’d likely be married to a banker who wore a trim suit as I continued pursuing my dream to be an executive in the Performing Arts sector or an editor of a major dance publication. My life is an evolution, or rather living proof that life does not always happen as we dream. In fact, growing older and into our maturity teaches us that life is full of surprises. Some happy, some painful. And regardless of the happiness or sadness those life moments bring us, they are indeed a part of our story. I feel the weight of our fertility especially hard as Mother’s Day draws near, as it was on this day about 3 years ago that I received a phone call from the Embryologist lab sharing that our second embryo had not made it. There are no words to adequately express what I felt in that moment. Being just a few short years removed from IUI and IVF, I can confidently say that dealing with fertility challenges is so layered and so complex. In fact, the pain of it all can be so painful that you simply want to retreat and never talk about it. However, all the work I’ve been doing internally over the years has taught me that not talking about it doesn’t allow me to truly process and/or heal. So today, I am taking a step of faith and sharing a few unfiltered glimpses into my experience with IVF and the rollercoaster of emotions that came with it.

My hope in doing this is two-fold:

If you’re walking this same road, I want you to feel seen and understood.

If you’ve not experienced this, I hope this post empowers you to say, “I don’t understand” and know that behind every woman that is going through this and saying, “it’s okay,” I wanted to be the voice that says that her heart is really saying, “I’m everything but ok.”

STORY NO. 1: UNSEEN

Physically, you feel like cattle being moved through a process.

I’ll never forget the day all of my medications arrived. We made space on the counter in our townhome to create a little medication station for me. Alongside all the supplies, we had a notebook prepared to make documentation of the timings, my next appointments, emergency numbers and so on.

The anticipation of waiting for the day that I would start to pump myself full of hormones had me on edge. Reconciling that this was the reality of life in order to see yet another life was a hard one, but one I had accepted for the season. As we began the process of taking the medications, documenting, the endless doctors’ appointments and blood draws to the lab, I realized that this experience really has a way of making you feel unseen and more or less like a cattle being moved through a process. This feeling was validated as I never actually saw my provider but whatever provider was on call. I felt like a number in the waiting room, a hopeful desperate, anxiously praying that she would conceive in a way that was anything but natural.

This feeling of feeling unseen had a sting of familiarity, as the first physican we ever saw regarding our infertility made me feel crazy. He never once took notes. His team never provided documentation or information about the cadence of the process. On a bright summer day, I remember needing to go in for an ultrasound. Upon arrival, I was informed that it was an ultrasound that I was not at all prepared for. At this time, we were fresh off the stay-at-home order and only I could go in. After realizing that it was a transvaginal ultrasound, I requested to chat with the provider. I could sense the offense and attitude as he walked into the room. Rather than listening to my concerns, I got a lecture about how time was of the essence and that we needed this to move forward with the insurance paperwork and so on. Unsure of what to do because of the complexity of it, I laid on the table and cried silent tears as he performed the ultrasound. I walked out of that clinic and never looked back. A few short days later, I received a text from the physician directly wishing us the best of luck, as he had heard that we requested our files be sent over to another clinic. The tone of his message made me numb. It had nothing to do with me and Jason, but everything to do with our file being a failure in his success rate.

story no.2 ONLY YOU, Not HIm.

Our first consultation was the Tuesday after the stay-at-home order was announced for our city. So, through the whole process, my husband Jason wasn’t able to go with me to appointments. Logically, I understood the need to keep others safe, but it’s really a lot to ask someone to go through this experience alone. Having to show up to appointment after appointment and leave the person I desired to create life with in the car, made everything feel even less personal. Like, “Okay, come on in, but leave your sperm donor in the car!”

Even after the stay-at-home order was lifted, there were still tons of restrictions. On the day of my egg retrieval, in April of 2021, they still weren’t letting partners in. My retrieval had to happen on a Sunday due to the timing of my body’s readiness, which meant I couldn’t be put under anesthesia: those are the anesthesiologists’ days off. I was prescribed quite a few medications to get me through the day: Percocet and Dilaudid. Naturally, because I was nervous, my heart was racing in anticipation. I remember laying there, feeling what felt like period cramps on level 10 with a vacuum sucking all my eggs out. The embryologist is in another room with a little window connecting with a tube, and they’re calling the count of my eggs as they’re receiving them. They were on egg 24 and she was like, “There’s just a couple more that I want to get,” but all I could think about was how bad I was cramping and attempting to use the breathing techniques I learned in pilates. They ended up getting 26 eggs, and the minute they removed the tube, I remember my heart rate going from pounding to what felt like nothing. I nearly passed out. I can still taste the cherry jolly rancher they gave me to get my blood sugar back up. I laid there for a good bit to allow myself to recalibrate. As I got up from the table, I noticed the bleeding I was enduring and the intense pain I still felt in my abdomen.

The days following the retrieval were very painful. I was so bloated that I could hardly walk. I spent most of the days laying on the couch. Just a few short days after I made it through this process, I got the call from the doctor: only two of the twenty-six eggs were viable for life.

STORY NO. 3: TRAMUA MAGNIFIED

After receiving the call from the doctor, they wanted to do a day 3 transfer to improve my chances to conceive. Still in a bit of pain, I made my way to the clinic and had the opportunity to see 1 of 2 embryos be skyrocketed into my body. It was like seeing a twinkling star move across the screen. I remembered leaving the office feeling so hopeful. However, that hope decreased significantly after I received the call on Mother’s Day to share that my other embryo did not continue to culture. I had to wait a few more days before I get the blood test to confirm whether or not the one that implanted had made it. In my heart, I had a sinking feeling that this IVF round would not be our testimony. The day came. It was a Monday and I got the email results back from the blood work and it confirmed that I was not pregnant. That night I cried endlessly. Jason cried.

The only way I can describe how I felt at that moment was unworthy. Why me? Why now? Why does it have to be this way? Unworthiness is a feeling I am quite familiar with. In fact, lots of my trauma is surrounded by this very word, and making our way through IVF just seemed to magnify this feeling at an even higher level: You aren’t good enough.

Despite the hardship of experiencing an empty womb for yet another Mother’s Day, I remain hopeful that God will use our story for good. That He will prove Himself true because that is just the kind of God He is. Until then, I will continue holding onto hope knowing that what the enemy might have meant for evil, He will turn it into good.

For my gals who are experiencing this journey, continue to hold onto hope.

For those who know gals who are experiencing this journey, check on them this Mother’s Day. With compassion, love and honesty, allow them to feel seen as they wait for their miracle.