What to expect when you’re not expecting IV: the waiting game
So it’s been nearly two months since my last post. In that time we haven’t magically discovered a baby growing in the garden; so this isn’t the update where we all go wahey! Success!
Where we left our intrepid infertility explorers, Kim and me, we had just found out that our first attempt at IVF had been a fail. I had come home and written that post a couple of hours after finding out the news because I wanted to capture the rawness of how it felt, to make it real, make it authentic. An artist must suffer for their work. Except I just re-read it and it’s a bit boring, and self-indulgent. What a dick.
Also, about an hour after I wrote that piece a fantail flew into the house. We have these big ranch slider windows that it made a beeline for.
Thwack.
Then our cat saw it. So Kim leaped to her feet to open the windows and free the bird. Except the cat also leaped to her feet to not free the bird. The cat got there first. If you want a metaphor to capture how we felt, this was one in real life.
Our fertility doctor told us that we would have to wait a while before our next round because Kim’s body needed to expel the eggs that had been “stimmed” (to use the vernacular), and then she’d need to do a full menstrual cycle and then we could kick off again. We asked if we could continue to try … naturally. After pausing to cope with the mental image of that, the doctor said that was fine. So we did.
Of course Kim was late. Which just served to get our hopes up. But we don’t know if it was the drugs she’d taken from the IVF round or what, but it was just late. It still showed up. Oh life you fuckle thing (that was supposed to say fickle, but I made a typo, but I like that typo), you are such a tease.
So we made a commitment to try and just live a normal life in the period (ha) of time we had before starting all over again. So we’ve been doing that. Kim went away to work a conference that seems to involve a lot of drinking. I’ve been going to a lot of comedy festival shows to review. We live our lives.
We’ve been touched by all the nice comments that have come in. Also amused at the people who tread on egg-shells now. You don’t have to. You also don’t have to hide your children from us. The sight of a child alone isn’t going to send us into spasms of grief. If we were uncomfortable we sure as hell wouldn’t be writing about it.
We’ve also heard from a number of people we know, and don’t know, that they have done the IVF journey too. Some have succeeded straight away, some haven’t succeeded at all, some in between. It’s a big mix. All you can do is hope.
So that’s where we are, hopesville. Where we hope that something good will happen because I think we’re probably about to kick off again soon.
Wish us luck.
