Thursday 29 August 2013

Standing on the precipice

My session with the fertility therapist was fantastic.  I can't believe how much better I feel.

She spoke about our need to still grieve this last cycle.  Even though our embryo didn't take, it was still a life form that we had a created, it was still a symbol of hope, it was still our dream of parenthood.  And we shouldn't make any decisions until we have gone through the grieving process once more. I felt such a weight lift off me when I began to understand what she was saying.

I had felt that we had been heading to our forced decision to not continue with fertility treatments ever since the loss of our 12 week old foetus.  For me, that was the turning point.  It was at that point that my dream of being a mother was over.  And I had to come to terms with that.  Nemo, our frozen embryo, was our last chance.  Up until he was placed in my uterus, I didn't have any hope, nor did I want to be pregnant again.  I couldn't go through it again, and I felt that it was useless with my old and damaged eggs.

From the time that I walked out of the hospital after the transfer, everything changed.  All of a sudden, I believed it would work and I wanted to be pregnant.  I had Nemo inside of me.  There was hope again.

8 days later and it was gone and I felt that our decision needed to be made.

Instead, now I am standing on the precipice.

The therapist described it as standing in the grieving room and seeing open doors leading out of the room.  We need to take the time to look through those doors, to see what is on the other side and to decide how we feel about each option.

Because it turns out I do have some options.  She said in many ways, that makes our decision making so much harder.  We do have the choice of doing another round.  Whether it will work or not, another story, but we do have the choice.  With all the problems I have had with ovulation, it turns out that for my age, I have a high ovarian reserve.  I'm not 'dried up', but they are old eggs and, as we are discovering, have genetic problems.  We may never find the perfect little embryo that we need to have a child.

There also may be the possibility of a donor egg or embryo.  Very difficult here in Australia, but it is more of an option than I had realised.

We may still need, or be forced, to take the path of living childless/free.  I'm still not sure if I can take anymore IVF cycles.  Any there is also a financial consideration.  It has been an extremely long, expensive and difficult journey from which I am completely drained.

So, my purposes for starting this blog have shifted a little.  Yet they haven't.  I am on the precipice.  My old blog doesn't serve me anymore.  I still need the change that comes with this blog.   It's time to start exploring life on the other side of infertility.  So I begin to look through this door while I take the time I need to heal. 

2 comments:

  1. Hi Annie, thanks for visiting my blog. Everything you are writing here sounds very normal for the situation you're in... you do need to take some time to grieve and then regroup & think about what you want the rest of your life to look like. Just remember that Rome wasn't built in a day ; ) & you don't change a lifetime of hopes & expectations overnight. Take good care & be good to yourself. :)

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    1. You are right Loribeth. Thank you. It has been a lifetime of hopes and expectations. To shift directions is going to take time. Thank you for helping me to realise the depth of this decision. It's going to take a while to weigh the balances of the various opposing sides and to see what is right for us - not just in the present moment but for the rest of our lives.

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