National Infertility Awareness Week FB Post

Here's what I wrote on my f.b page (and made public) last week. It meant a lot for me to write this all out. The whole journey - the stats, the emotional milestones, everything it encompassed.

This was cathartic:

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week and I want to bring light to the fact that 1 in 8 will struggle with infertility and you do not have to do it alone. And you don't realize how slowly the loneliness and despair can creep up on you, if you get to that point. Re.solve, the National Infertility Association, was so necessary for me - I found support groups, resources to share with family and friends when I couldn't find the words and a therapist who has been with me for 10 years. I encourage those of you facing this or know of someone who is facing it to use this resource and consider donating to it. It is invaluable.

Many of you know my story and have been with me to support me throughout it all:
-the quickly realizing I wasn't going to have a baby at the same time as my best friend even though we started family planning at the same time
-crying at a missed period right before a friend's wedding 6 months into 'trying to conceive'
-starting to chart to have 3 months worth of information to show to a doctor that you understand the timing ovulation
-feeling misunderstood when people they tell you to 'just relax' or that they got pregnant when they forgot about it all on a vacation
-letting doctors into the most private parts of our lives
-having the first appointment with an infertility specialist only to sit on the paperwork for 3 months because I couldn't understand it all
-finally getting on board and starting with IUI (intra-uterine  insemination) to have the second attempt end in an early miscarriage right at Thanksgiving
-the only time I’ve ever yelled at my husband was on the IUI medications and as soon as I started yelling I thought “who is this yelling at him?”
-taking the recommendation to have fibroid surgery and opting for the c-section cut so that I could wear a bikini without a scar, only to realize later that my weight has fluctuated so much that I never wore a bikini again
-getting pregnant again on our own twice within 6 months of each other after the surgery to have both times end in early miscarriage
-needing to take a 6 month break because it was too much
-not being on the same page with fertility treatments and adoption, starting marriage counseling
-finding an online blog community and making life-long friends
-taking the (what seemed at the time) HUGE plunge into IVF (and thank goodness we qualified for the shared risk program) only to have the first attempt end in an early miscarriage AND trip to the hospital from work one day because of abdominal pain which resulted in surgery to remove one of my fallopian tubes where the pregnancy was growing
-considering taking anti-depressants but not wanting to for fear of doing all I can to have a successful pregnancy (note: take the anti-depressants, a happier woman IS a healthier woman) (also hint: I started on them later and regretted not starting them sooner; no one should have to suffer that long)
-the year in which I did 4 transfers with negative results
-turning to listening exclusively to Christian radio because my soul needs it
-the Hopeful wall I created when I needed visual reminders of hope and to see how creative my family and friends got, and how those messages stayed up for a few years because that's how much longer it took
-how heartwarming it is when I’ve had to teach my best friend to not problem solve but to be empathetic with me, to let me vent or cry, to say "I know this is hard" and nothing else, and when I got to the point when I could just call her and say “I need you to come over so I can cry in your lap right now”
-the grace I've given to people to say the 'wrong' things
-when it got too difficult for me to go to church on Sunday mornings because I’d get too vulnerable and cry but I hung onto my Wednesday morning small group because I needed that spiritual place
-the perfect prayers my Pastor always seems to have
-not knowing whether a negative result is worse than an early miscarriage
-doing meditation, acupuncture, scaling work back to part-time, trying immunology treatments in Canada because the US bans it for fear of stem cell research, anything, anything, anything to make this work!!!
-wondering if I should change jobs because what if the next cycle works! (guess what - changing jobs each time I needed to was life-giving for me and my employers always understood what I was going through)
-the always having to plan only 2-3 months in advance for any type of travel because what if we were in another cycle, and the start of traveling on my own more because I needed that energy to fuel my next cycle
-the 3 IUIs, 2 surgeries, 8 egg retrievals, a cancelled cycle (leading follicle), 9 embryo transfers to me
-the devastation that it wasn't going to work for me to carry - that I had spent 7 years trying to make that happen
-going to a lawyer to talk about adoption and discovering she also does surrogacy law and realizing after a friend did surrogacy that that seemed to be what felt right for us as a couple
-researching and interviewing surrogacy agencies
-having friends from church, a friend of your brother's, your cousin and sister-in-law all want to be your surrogate
-the surprise bags left on my porch, the countless cards and messages I got from friends, some who were my best friends, some I didn't know that well but who had gone through it and were there for me in amazing, beautiful ways
-needing to get back on anti-depressants and adding in anti-anxiety meds during the surrogacy journey
-growing in my faith and my church family being there for me
-The 2 more years it took to decide on surrogacy, create and freeze embryos and get clearance for the process
-6 embryo transfers to surrogates
-8 miscarriages for me, 3 additional with our surrogates
-12 years total of this 'journey'
-1 extremely loving husband
-1 miracle son

L, one of my brother's best friends and an angel who offered to carry our baby out of the blue when she asked my brother how we were doing and he said 'not great'. N, my cousin who first offered and lives in FL when there was zika at the time and then offered again when we were on a sibling journey, and who had two early miscarriages with us. K, my sister-in-love, who did 3 cycles with us, carried a second baby for us to 14.5 weeks to then have to experience a miscarriage. C who was matched with us through an agency and while we weren't able to move forward, became my in-it-with-me surrogate throughout my remaining journey.

To my family and friends, I thank you for letting me share my pain with you and sounding like a broken record year after year, and for lifting me up when I needed it.

I don't have pictures of the countless needles I had to inject or many of the embryos transferred to me or our surrogates. I do have a video of Halong Bay in Vietnam that I used to watch during injections (because I'm a wimp) and I have the beautiful photos of our surrogates with the hope and love they held for us.

No one should ever have to go through this alone. I'm grateful for my community.

https://resolve.org/

 #infertility #infertilityawareness #infertilitysupport #infertilityjourney #ttc #ivf #fet #fertilityjourney #fertilitytreatment #embryotransfer #niaw2020