Last week was when we finally said goodbye to our fertility journey. After so many years trying and going through so many rounds and rounds of treatment before we were successful in having our daughter (who is nearly 3.5 at the time of writing) the time had come to finally say goodbye to that part of our lives.
I’d always imagined having a large family. But if I have learnt anything over the last few years is that however much we might plan for things, life doesn’t always happen the way you want it to. Your job is to grab hold of what you can and keep going.
So, after so many years of trying, test after test, treatment after treatment and stubbornly continuing because I just couldn’t imagine not having kids, we were lucky enough to have our little bundle of energy who currently runs rings around us. Safe to say she has changed our lives in so many ways and honestly, all for the better.
However, something I haven’t written about is from when she just turned one. I wanted, we wanted, to try and have a sibling for her. After finding what I call ‘the magic recipe’ with our 4th clinic which gave us our daughter, and with 3 more embryos from the same donor in the freezer I felt confident we would be successful. And with time marching on as a geriatric mother I knew we had to ‘go again’ as soon as we were allowed, which from the clinics point of view was once our daughter turned one.
In order to do this I had to stop breastfeeding and restart all the hormones from the clinic. I didn’t want to stop breastfeeding. I’d battled for the first 2 months to increase my supply to the point that until we started weaning at 6months she was exclusively breastfed. After being told I wouldn’t be able to do it for x y z reasons it, for me, was such a beautiful thing to share with her. I was lucky and aside from the start had very few of the issues that many other women struggle with (breastfeeding is hard work!).
Life stepped in though, and after leaving her overnight for the first time in the days before her birthday to attend a work conference I came back with COVID (this was 2022) which meant we had to cancel her birthday party and isolate too. Then a few days later we found out we had 5 days to completely pack up and move out of the flat we were living in which was due to be sold the following week but which we had made an arrangement to stay in until our house renovations were completed. Planning a move, storage, new daycare etc. in the space of days was very stressful and I think she felt that.
The last time I breastfed was less than a week after her 1st birthday, and a day after we had to start scrambling to move everything into storage. As with many things in life, often you don’t know when the last time you do something will be, so I am happy I have this clear memory of when it was, because it wasn’t the norm anymore for her to breastfeed a lot anyway, to the point that DH commented on how unusual it was when he came in. Little did I know it was to be the last time.
So, after suddenly stopping breastfeeding I was able to start all the IVF hormones a month later along with the blood tests / exams etc. in advance of doing a FET (frozen embryo transfer) – I am skipping over here how awful the hormone crash from stopping breastfeeding was, not to mention my immune system crash, getting food poisoning and a severe case of hand, foot and mouth all within the space of a month! However, looking back, trying to cram in a FET during such stress and upheaval was probably doomed to failure. I probably should have waited a little longer to start again, but I felt that time was really not on my side.
So, in November I travelled to the Spanish clinic, confident that everything looked great for a transfer again. I wasn’t actually quite sure how I felt about doing it in the moment, but hung onto what I had always felt I wanted.
Ten days later it was confirmed that it didn’t work. I wasn’t only surprised that the ‘magic potion’ didn’t work a second time but also slightly relieved to discover I DID actually feel disappointed, so felt that I was making the right decision to try again to have a second.
I started prepping for another round the next month, we had 2 embryos left. Out of the blue (for me) my DH said that actually he didn’t want to try again. He wanted to stop. We’d tried enough already. Just stop. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I didn’t know how to process it. I just couldn’t at the time because we were still living in a holiday park (awaiting the renovations), I was cycling 2 hours a day to take LO to daycare, working on an incredibly stressful project at work, and generally feeling overwhelmed, stressed and sad about everything.
It took me a year to realise that not trying again was for the best. There would be no guarantees I would come out of another pregnancy unscathed (I’d had pre-eclampsia and then a caesarian for the first), nor that any potential child would also be healthy. Once I had rationalised this to myself, and given myself the grace to stop, and know what was probably better for my long-term health I started to reimagine my life in a family of 3. A triangle family. Not the large family I had envisaged, but an entirely different one – like everything else in life!
After another year we had our annual email from the clinic asking for another years storage fees for the remaining 2 embryos (6day blastocysts). This time I was able to see that these are not potential siblings, they really are just a collection of cells. And whilst I will always have a ‘what if’ in the back of my head, putting us through it all again a decade or 2 decades later than most start their families is not the best of ideas. Better to really live our best lives as our solid little triangle family.
So, last week we told the clinic we didn’t want to store the embryos anymore. Its true that my LO will have no full genetic siblings, but there are more and more onlys in the world, and now our job is to give her as many opportunities and experiences as we can, which we might not have been able to do with two.
And now, onwards ever onwards, next milestone is starting school….