They told me I was grieving, only I wasn’t sure what I was grieving for. Was it the embryos that had the potential to be my future child: a living, breathing part of me with my DNA? Or was it the life I will never have? I will never carry a baby, have that first scan, feel that first kick or experience the horrific pain of giving birth - an experience so normalised by the world, yet totally alien to me.
Or was I grieving because my life will always be different from what I expected? There will be no one to pass on my legacy, no one to care for me when I’m older and no one to love me unconditionally as their mother. And I will not have that unconditional love for a child - a biological bond that can never be broken.
It was all of them. I was grieving for the fact that my womb would always be, empty.
When you are grieving, the world goes on around you. You see everyone getting on with their lives whilst you are stuck in a fog. It’s like the whole world is happy apart from you and there is no one out there who truly understands. A loss of a physical being (such as the death of a loved one) is acknowledged and empathised with; whereas infertility, negative cycles and even early miscarriages just seem to be passed off as just an ‘oh well, never mind’ scenario.
I spent five years of my life waiting for something very simple, something that the majority of people get without even thinking – two lines! Just two parallel lines, that’s all it would take to make my life complete. Every month I would stare at that thin, white, plastic stick and wait for them to appear; but they never did, not even once. My life remained ‘incomplete’.
Six rounds of IUI, three rounds of IVF and £23,000 later, I couldn’t physically or emotionally take anymore. It was time to admit defeat and accept a life of childlessness - a life that is becoming more and more positive with every day that goes by. It’s taken over two years to get to where I am today – living my Plan B and feeling positive about the future.
Two years ago, I couldn’t imagine ever being happy again. Fertility treatment had consumed me and emotionally, I was broken. I was alone and living behind a barrier that separated me from the rest of the world - a world full of happy families.
No one knew that I was on the outside looking in, wishing I had what they had and wondering what I’d done to deserve the hand I’d been dealt. No one knew that I considered myself a useless failure with a pointless existence, because when I did try to open up, I was considered over dramatic and self absorbed. Instead, I was told to relax, be more positive and that being a parent is way too stressful anyway. Surely I should be enjoying my lie ins and off-peak holidays? I was bombarded with stories of miracle pregnancies and made to feel guilty for not considering adoption. How could I consider adoption when I couldn’t even give my embryos a good enough home to live in? I pretended to be ok and hid behind a fake smile.
Fertility treatment removes all control you have over your life and you submit to doctors, needles and speculums and put all your trust in them to make it work, all the while convincing yourself that the next one will be the one with the two lines. I became stuck in a never ending loop of hope and sadness until I realised that no matter how carefully I followed the rules, I couldn’t make it work. You can’t control the outcome of fertility treatment, no matter who you are or how much money you have.
By accepting childlessness, you take back control and you can choose how you move forward. It may not be the life you wanted, or planned, but it’s still a life. Finally, I have acceptance and with acceptance, comes freedom. I feel like I’ve been set free after years of being chained down and trapped in a world of infertility; chained to the floor and not knowing how to escape.
My husband and I are now looking to the future and I believe our experience has actually made us stronger as a couple. Although we’ve each had our own battles to fight, we’ve fought them together making us stronger and more determined than ever. Moving on from treatment has been long, difficult and painful, but we’ve done a lot of soul searching and finally feel like our smiles are no longer false.
Infertility will always be a part of us and that sense of loss will always be there, but in time it’s becoming less and less painful. Part of me is thankful for the experience as I’ve learnt a lot and become a stronger and more compassionate person because of it. I no longer take things for granted and I’m thankful for what I do have, even though it’s not what I planned. I’ve also come to realise you never know what’s going on behind closed doors, and sometimes those who put on the happiest faces are experiencing the most sadness.
I appreciate the little things in life and realise that life is what you make it, and I definitely value lifestyle over material possessions. If infertility has taught me anything, it’s that money does not buy happiness. That longing to carry a child may never go away but what is more important to me is living life. I had a choice. I could fall apart and continue living in misery, or accept my fate and confront it.
I’m slowly making peace with the fact my maternal instinct will never be fulfilled, even though the hormones and the monthly cycle continue on, all set up to carry the child that never was.
Claire