After this post I’ll be posting my writings from the period of time I went through IVF, leading up to IVF, during IVF and after IVF, but I wanted to preface it with the fact that there is not the happy ending you may be looking for.
It’s been a long time since I updated this blog. When we started this journey, I spent time scouring the web for blogs by other women who went through what I was going through. I always felt a sinking disappointment when their blogs would come to an abrupt end – assuming the worst, that their journey met with a final and decisive failure.
I did not want to be one of ‘those’…and yet, my journey has been hard and I did not meet with success in getting pregnant. I did learn a lot about myself, my strong relationship with my husband grew even stronger. Sadly, I learned that many people who claimed to care, didn’t, not when things got difficult. I felt very alone and isolated. Part of that isolation was my fault for not reaching out to a community of support from others who went through the same kinds of experiences. Part of that because I lacked a strong family unit that should have been there for me. In the end, I felt that besides my husband, there were only 1 or 2 people who cared about what we were going through – and even then, I felt like he was the only one that understood it completely…and still I experienced a unique pain that not even he could share.
On a brighter note, almost a year and a half after I’ve been through IVF twice, I’ve started to recover from the pain and loss. We have found different things to focus on, and we often review those things we’re able to do because we don’t have children that we couldn’t have enjoyed if we had. I haven’t turned into a parent-hater, but I feel like I’ve found a differnt kind of joy in life, and that is the joy that the opportunities not having children offer. It’s still hard around holidays and child-focused things. I mourn my losses. I well up with tears and sometimes they spill over. It still hurts, and I will probably never ‘get over it’. That’s okay and I think it’s normal. It doesn’t control me, it’s just there.