IVIE EFF THE INFERTILE FREAK

Welcome to my humble little blog about coping with fertility. Please bear in mind that everything written here is from personal experience and perspective.

The whole point of me writing a blog is to share the love of infertility in a non mushy way. If you've been hit hard with the news that having kids is going to be a challenge more than sleeping on your male partner's laundry, the last thing you're going to feel is optimistic. 

As you can gather this is not a site for pink doilies, wasted tissues and code names like Baby Dust or TTC, or DD or TVHTCBCGS or ABCDEJMLM. What I feel about infertility is what I'll say because, hey, licence. 

So here it is, the blog for all us infertile so called freaks of nature who didn't choose to be UnHenned. I'll update it from time to time when I feel like it. Expect emotions, motivational words and well, just someone going through infertility include the pleasures of IVF (ok, keeping my promise here, In Vitro Fertilisation).

Stay strong, people. 

I'm going to be blatant about this because it takes more than one type of mum to make the world. I have got to be the least maternal person who wants to be a mother.

I was never into motherhood. Even as a kid in the playground I hated playing Mummies and Daddies . As a teenager I still didn't get why people wanted kids so much. Especially when I made a rubbish childminder to my own younger relatives. My schoolmates were having babies at fourteen and dropping their education to play teenage Mummies & Daddies. Why?

As a young adult I went through every single herb, regular pill and condoms as thick as a World War 2 bunker to ensure I did not get pregnant. Later on I considered donating my eggs for cash but wasn't old enough. I witnessed horrible stories of kids and parents going through turmoil and prayed to God that I would never have children.

If there's one prayer I wish that God had ignored it would be that one. 

Fast forward to life in my thirties where I finally meet a man that would be not only an excellent husband but father, broodiness starts to kick in. And let me tell you, I was broody as fuck. So from the days of praying away babies because of shitty parentage and ok, ok not wanting to give up the parties so easily I go to town with fertile shopping. After a while of bareback nookie I was asked why there were no foetal accidents.

I couldn't really say but decided to do my own investigating. FSH strips, ovulation calendars and pregnancy tests bought in secret said negative results. After a year of mystifying family and friends with tantrums and what I now realise to be depression I decided to get myself checked out, after I got married.

After looking everywhere, including sneaking into a Fertility Show to check my egg tray, I took the cheaper route and went to the GP, again on my own which was tricky as fertility checks require both partners present and I had no idea how my husband would take it if it were announced I had ovaries that seemed to be empty as a balloon. 

I was put on thyroid pills and six months later referred to a consultation at the hospital. 

Thankfully, husband took it well.

Today I found out something that I suspected I was for a very long time.

No, I'm not a secret heir to the throne but I'll get there someday.

The clinical specialist just told me bluntly that I would need help in the task of breeding.

The one prime thing that keeps humans going.

The one thing that has robbed my bank account of £2.50 for over the past twenty years every damn month on sanitary goods.

The one thing that I was looking forward to when I got married to my dear husband.

I walked into the consultancy room all smiles and excited thinking Clomid for my geriatric mum status.

Ten minutes later I felt like shit after hearing the words IVF.

The specialist reeled off what was wrong with me. It wasn't my lack of alcohol. Nor was it my non existent addiction to recreational drugs where the nearest encounter I had to them was marijuana flavoured candy. It wasn't a string of non existent STDs and unwanted pregnancies, which I had taken every precaution to avoid. Nor was it the longed arsed named menstrual complications that my female relatives and friends had while my cycles were as regular as the yearly Tour De France.

Instead after living a healthy lifestyle of minimal caffeine, the lesser end of junk food (Waitrose, darling, not Iceland) and just being on the healthy side I was told that there were other factors to keep me from motherhood.  My ovarian reserve was shot. Compared to someone else my age, I'd be the ugly sister of eggs. 

IVF.

Something I thought would not be necessary. A mysterious procedure saved for rich celebrities.

I wanted to walk out of that room grateful for my blunt consultation that was brainstorming on how I could have babies. Instead inside I was shaking forgetting my manners and blaming myself even though I didn't know what else I could've done. For God's sake, me and my husband have an identical sex cycle, being the most horniest during peak ovulation. Now it turned out that Mimi the egg had been refusing a dance with Tommy the Tadpole for the past five years. 

And I still had to give blood for the dozenth time after the consultation. Luckily enough like most of the nurses in the blood room, there was enough of a friendly atmosphere to keep me from trying to give myself the death of a thousand cuts by poking myself with a syringe. 

Honestly if I had been told that I had two weeks to live, I would've embraced the news abit more.  

To top it off I was supposed to start my period today. Now stress has made it go into hiding, making me paranoid about early menopause. I really do love this bitch of a body. If she was a person I would punch her right in the face.

If you're on the NHS and unless you're leaking money, getting IVF treatment is far from unfortunate. Private treatment can cost around £5k at least. I would recommend letting your manager know that you're about to start medical treatment and expect absence from the office as the entire process is strictly timed in appointments and procedures. Thank our wonderful bodies and their pedantic ways.

Here's what you need to go through IVF, which has the following chances of pregnancy

Under 35 years : 30%

35 - 38 : 20%

38 - 39 - 15%

40 - 42 - 10%

43 ++ - 2 - 3%

1. Take one round of pills daily to suppress Madam Period's cycle

2. Here's the fun bit. For around a week, it's being pin cushioned with daily self administered injections so that the body can be tricked into laying more eggs than usual. 

3. Off to the clinic for numerous scans. Expect seeing your insides on screen via a prodding cam wrapped in a condom.

4.  Going through an operation to collect eggs while partner donates sperm. This is fun, one minute I'm in the surgery wearing a gas mask and the next I wake up hours later thinking it's only been a few seconds. I recommend the post op biscuits, they are good.

5. Waiting a few days while a lab tries to get both your eggs and your partners sperm on a chemically infused blind date

6. Getting a team full of medics to stick the cell infused happy couple up your womb.

Stick around for the full journey soon. 

In short no.

A month later after the procedure I am still in mourning for a couple of cells while feeling that my husband may as well have married a brick. Support wise I'm still trying to get some support networks in place via my doctor after my IVF clinic contacted me with their sorries and possibility of me paying thousands for another round. 

Tip : when you go through IVF, please ask LOTS of questions to who you deal with. Given the amount of time and effort you have to give, you're entitled to know exactly what's happening and why. Support for infertile folks is still limited and I have been on the phone to my counsellor blubbering my ovaries out. 

But I promised you an update on the op so here it is.

Conceiving a baby via science is completely clinical, down to the attire. This is how it translates :

Usual babymaking way

Sexy Hair

IVF way

Blue hair net

Usual babymaking way

Sexy peekaboo satin lingerie

IVF way

Printed hospital tunic with peekaboo arse (or other if you wear it the wrong way round)

Usual babymaking way

Garters and fishnet stockings

IVF way

Dark green and thick circulation stockings with sexay heel and toe support

Usual babymaking way

Sexy heels

IVF way

Slipper socks

Usual babymaking way (husband)

CK underwear

IVF way

Fully clothed with a pale blue surgeons gown. And plastic foot covers. 

Are ya turned on yet?

There's a lot of it, before IVF takes place. A LOT. There's ingesting at least 2 - 3 long syallabled chemicals at a set time every day, through the mouth, front and back nether regions and countless needles poking the belly and thigh (thank heavens I'm a lardyarse).  As a result, expect more cottage cheese in the knickers than a dairy farm and needle bruising covering your lower gut resembling a tattooed firework display.  

I still haven't got the heart to post a picture of me and my husband's cells merged together so will keep this bleak as it is without a pic. Me and hubster were taken to a surgery room where a shot of our cells were on a screen. That was our kid. As I lay on the surgery chair I was fully conscious throughout the whole operation. Someone had stuck a picture of an island on the ceiling to distract patients. All I thought was on how it felt to be a car with a mechanic tinkering with your bits. It wasn't entirely uncomfortable. After about fifteen minutes the procedure was done and we were sent our way with a blessing for unprotected sex whenever we wanted. 

In a lonesome moment like an wistful idiot I said to the little cells parked in my womb (yes I spoke to my belly) that they would be making two people very happy if they grew. They would be worth every bit of effort that was nothing for other families. We would love them especially since it had been such a long road to get there.

Obviously that didn't work as I got a negative result two weeks later. Children never listen, looks like it's an early rule. Ungrateful little shits.