I logged onto my site after what has probably been over a year…it’s been a busy year to say the least. I found a blog post in my drafts titled “Our Journey” that had last been edited in November of 2021. It’s wild to look back at a piece of writing that you did while in a very different headspace than I currently am. So much has happened since writing it, but the emotions come flooding back. Why I never finished the piece or why I never published it, I’m not sure, but here it is.
Our Journey
“Never did I think this journey would be so long. Watching friends go on to have their 1st, 2nd and even 3rd child while we are still finding our way to just one.
The last thing I am looking for is pity. It actually makes me angry when people say “I’m thinking of you” or “you’re so strong” or “I’m sorry you’re going through this”. It is what it is and we wouldn’t be going through it if we didn’t want to.
We don’t need children to make us happy. We don’t need children to feel complete. Is it something we want, sure, but I also want a million bucks. Will I survive without it? I sure will!
This post is more about sharing our experience in hopes of helping others going through it. I am not going to go into detail about our diagnosis or our protocols but focus more on the thoughts that have run through my head through all of this. Infertility can feel like a lonely journey. It is still something that many people won’t talk about. People feel like others will look at them differently if they are having trouble doing “what we were made to do”, as humans.
Guess what, more people than you will believe are going through the same journey, 1 in 6 to be exact, and these stats are based on those that are willing to divulge the information and those people that have actually been tested for it. I have heard of so many couples that wait years and years and years to find out why they have been unable to conceive. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if rates were even higher!
This is our journey, and I don’t expect any ones journey to be the same as ours. There are so many factors, feelings and events that contribute to your journey.
It was about 4 years into our marriage. It was about a year into really trying, which consisted of tracking my cycle, using ovulations strips to time things out perfectly. After that time, we realized that maybe there was something else going on, and there was.
After numerous tests on both myself and my husband, it was found that we would have about a 1% chance of conceiving naturally. We were told IVF was our only option.
There was some comfort in having answers but we knew we had a long road ahead of us still. If anyone knows me, they know that I am a planner. I want to know the time line, I want to know what a year from now, 6 months, 3 weeks is going to look like. If this process has taught me one thing, it is, that you’ve got to throw any plans out the window. You are now on your bodies and doctors schedule. Forget planning a vacation or a party. Forget making plans with friends, because you just don’t know where in your journey you are going to be. I have found that to be on of the most difficult parts of this whole thing.
Once we had answers, once we had a plan, it was time to get to work. In prepping for our first egg retrieval, looking back, I can’t believe how calm I was. The injections were tough in the beginning but I quickly got use to them….I had to really. I was going to the clinic every couple days for monitoring….Monitoring sessions getting longer each time as they had to count and measure all of the follicles that were growing. The process is mentally and physically exhausting. It is lonely, it is all consuming, because your life just revolves around the whole process.”
Since then…
Since then, I have gone through two egg retrievals (one giving us zero viable embryos), a number of tests, about a billion needles, two transfers and the birth of our amazing baby boy.
I know that I am one of the lucky ones. Many peoples journies are much longer than mine and many never have the happy ending. All I know is that this journey has taught me a lot.
It has taught me to be present, live in the moment as much as possible. No matter how crumby that moment might be, it will pass. Cherish the enjoyable times with your partner, friends, family, inbetween all of the not so enjoyable times.
It has taught me to go with the flow (a little more). Being a very Type A person, this was something I struggled with, but a journey like this where you are so out of control, you have no choice but to give in and just let someone else steer the ship for once.
All the hardships we have gone through to get to where we are today only make me so much more grateful for what we have and I will never, ever, take that for granted.
Jackie Williams 