As Fertility Week draws to a close, COSRT’s Communications Manager Sarah Nichols, draws on her own personal fertility journey and how it’s good to talk!
It is no exaggeration when I say infertility not only robbed me of my early thirties but the first six years of my marriage. A time which is supposed to be full of fun and adventure was instead a black hole of treatments, drugs and intense overwhelming feelings. I was not fun to be around.
Dealing with infertility turned me into an anxious, jealous and let’s be honest slightly bonkers individual fixated on motherhood. Infertility is all consuming and I cannot stress this enough – lonely. Unless you have been through it I think it is inconceivable (excuse the pun) to understand what it does to not only a person, but a relationship, whether that be your relationship with your partner, parent, friend or colleague.
Sitting back and watching what feels like a treadmill of friends, family and colleagues conceive is painful and debilitating. Attending baby showers and christenings month by month wondering if it would ever be me. The pain of watching everyone before you and the names you had in your head get chosen for someone else. Why me!!! Why can’t I be happy for others? And the biggy will it ever happen? The not knowing is the constant driver that would spiral me into the darkest of places.
IVF is hands down the hardest thing I have ever had to do and I feel a sting of solidarity every time I hear someone else having do it.
No-one prepared us for the emotional challenges it would bring both personally and for our relationship. My husband and I both headed into our first round of IVF rather naively thinking there would be a baby at the end of it. We knew little of success rates, what the drugs would do to me, and what it entailed. When the doctor tells you at implantation you have two good embryos and there is a chance of twins you hang on to those words with everything in you. In the dreaded two-week wait you cannot stop the daydreams of the two babies that could potentially be part of your family in just nine months’ time. Then without warning and before test day my period arrived unexpectedly whilst at work and it was nothing short of gut-wrenching. A bereavement. A loss. I will never forget my work friend peeling me off the work toilet floor and getting me home. One of the many reasons I am a huge advocate for employers knowing what you are going through.
We didn’t know how to deal with the feelings that followed. Who would? The many changing feelings of anger and sadness and I didn’t know what to do with them or how to deal with them or support my partner who had their own set of feelings. But there was no offer of help or support and at that time didn’t work in the therapy profession so didn’t know there was that option.
To cut a very long story short, what followed was another four years of drugs, injections, embryos, miscarriages, operations and an ectopic pregnancy. It pushed us to the very limits, to hell and back.
For us I am happy to say that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Our sixth cycle bought joy in the form of a now six-year old boy who fills my heart every minute of the day. I am his mum. I am also mum to the ones that I didn’t get to hold and I carry them with me every second.
I am so proud of us for getting through it. With sheer tenacity and stubbornness I would not give in, but that made me very hard to be around. If I wasn’t going through a cycle, I was googling treatments and drugs and different clinics that we could try.
There were cycles after our son that didn’t work and I don’t think infertility will ever leave me. I feel guilt that we couldn’t bring him a sibling. Lockdown saw a resurgence in feelings I thought were buried. I longed for that large family life we wanted where he would have had someone to play with or talk to when my husband and I were both working. I long for that sibling every time someone asks ‘just the one?’ or ‘he must be so lonely?’.
My tip if I can pass something on to someone else going through it. Talk.
Talk to your partner, talk to your parents, talk to your friend, just communicate. I watched my husband bottle everything up and I wish I had known therapy was an option. I would have grabbed it with both hands.
I cannot imagine how lonely or terrifying infertility must be during a pandemic/lockdown, and if it helps please email me as I am more than happy to chat or just listen. And if you know someone going through it and don’t know how to help, just let them know you are thinking of them and cake always helps!
sarah.nichols@cosrt.org.uk