Honour
They call them successes, babies smiling beneath clinic logos,
another miracle, another reason for someone like me to keep believing.
Nobody advertises the other side.The women who spend years trying,
who empty their savings into hope, and still leave without a child.
I was never told I was infertile. Eggs, embryos, blastocysts, pregnancies,
everything looked so promising. I simply never got lucky.
Eleven years. Around one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
No explanation at the end of each attempt, other than bad luck.
Every cycle was a rollercoaster. Build yourself up. Believe again.
Perhaps this time. Perhaps this test. Perhaps, finally, I get to be a Mother.
And while I was holding on to that,they were running a business.
Another appointment. Another client. Another procedure. Another massive invoice.
One scan: Look at all those eggs!You're about to ovulate, let's proceed!
Minutes later they actually checked my records, I was forty four. Sorry, you're too old to use them with us. Enough to make anyone crazy.
From soaring to falling in minutes. For one mad moment wondering
who on earth I could sleep with that night, before thankfully holding on to sanity.
A younger donor would improve my chances, they said. One egg, not even a blastocyst, while my own ovaries had produced up to fourteen, eggs I was no longer allowed to use.
Later they would count them during scans, until I learnt to stop them myself:
Please don't. I know I have plenty. Your rules say I cannot use them.
One clinic told me to start medication too early. I questioned it, twice. They were wrong. Their mistake cost me another month of drugs and scans, yet they still sent another bill.
Then, finally, a positive test. The rollercoaster climbed again. At eight weeks, feet in stirrups: no heartbeat. Go home and wait.
No call afterwards to see how I was. No one checking on the patient
who had just lost her baby. The bills still knew where to find me.
A £14 balance warranted a phone call. My miscarriage did not.
On the day another round was due to begin, I learnt my donor had produced a baby with a defect, making my remaining embryos unusable, and somehow I was left joining the clinics' dots.
One hadn't been told. Another thought someone else had told me.
I called the sperm bank myself, while my future disappeared in a telephone call. Nobody seemed to take into account I was the patient on a rollercoaster journey
Before my final attempt after my mother had died I was hopeful but then came an impersonal factual email: a list of all new tests, no explanation. I asked why nobody could simply call me to just talk me through it all, knowing what this last chance meant, knowing my hand was being held and I was being looked after.
The reply by email of course -It's policy !!!
Yet somebody could call about £14. Somebody could repeatedly ask
whether I wanted my remaining embryos destroyed. There was always time for administration but not for me the patient.
There was always another treatment too. Another test. Another protocol.
Another invoice attached to maybe. Hope is remarkably profitable.
And that is what became impossible to ignore.
They were running a business. I was a patient on the devastating rollercoaster of highs and lows desperately trying to become a mother.
The success stories get the photographs.The babies beneath the clinic logos.
The testimonials telling others never to give up. Even the newspaper articles. Always hope !!
But what about us?
The unsuccessful mothers. The women behind the small success percentage
who gave everything and left without a child.
There was nothing wrong with me. No diagnosis that neatly closed the door.
After eleven years and £150,000, I simply didn't get lucky.
Eventually I stepped off.
Not because I stopped wanting to be a mother. Not because I had finally stopped hoping. But because I had stopped believing in the clinics.
Eleven years of being their patient yet rarely feeling that anyone saw
the woman riding the rollercoaster, desperately hoping each time would be the time.
And somewhere along that journey, after the mistakes, the bills, the indifference,
I lost faith in the people I was trusting to help me become a mother.
That was my end, a loss of faith in the system I needed to trust to help me get pregnant but no longer did and a decision I always thought would be mine when the time was right was taken away from me.
