What I Want You to Know About IVF…

There’s a reason why women (and men) don’t talk about IVF when we are going through it.  It’s the most emotional and unpredictable thing you can ever do in your life. You are managing a lot of emotions of your own every day (…anticipation, excitement, fear…), so it feels overwhelming to take on anyone else’s emotions or hear the disappointment in their tone when we share bad news. So we stay silent….maybe forever…or maybe until that little baby is finally born. 

I was fortunate to know someone who went through IVF before me and was able to talk to her several times before I started IVF for the 1st time. I remember how I was back then…so naïve. I truly thought this would be the solution to my infertility problems. I thought it would be so simple. I would go through IVF and then become pregnant- TADA! Oh sure, you have to get stuck by needles and all that. And deal with hormones. No biggie. I can handle it if that’s all it takes to get pregnant.

WRONG!

Thankfully the person I talked to gave me a reality check right from the start. I remember it very clearly. She told me to prepare myself for the IVF process to break down or stop at any step. I heard what she said, but I still thought in my head “Ok, that’s your story, but I bet that won’t happen to me.”

And then I started my 1st protocol. (*See below for protocol definition.) After I got my blood taken to see how my body was responding to the drugs, I got a call from my doctor who told me that my body wasn’t progressing and I had to stop my protocol completely. It was over…all within the matter of two weeks. And then just like that, my hopes of becoming pregnant with a child in a couple of months were crushed.  She was right. The process broke down the 1st time I tried.

That was in August of 2020. I wasn’t even able to begin my 2nd protocol until November 2020.

I’m writing this post to help people understand (the ones who are fortunate to never have to go through IVF) why people don’t talk about it. It’s hard enough to try to break everything down in Layman’s terms for those who don’t understand the IVF terminology, but then on top of it having to manage other people’s emotions about it too…it’s overwhelming…especially when you are working through your own fears and disappointment. 

I bet each and every one of you reading this knows AT LEAST one person who has gone through infertility treatments. And I bet they never told you. It’s not because they don’t trust you or want to confide in you, it’s because it’s so hard to bring others along on this journey. I’ve heard from countless women after I started my blog and I didn’t know the majority of them went through IVF/infertility. It’s a very lonely process. And we yearn for someone to be there for us who understands.

The reason I felt compelled to share this with you is probably more for selfish reasons, to be honest. I am planning on opening up and sharing this journey with you, which as you read above, is not an easy thing to do. I could go to my doctor’s appointment tomorrow, they could test my levels and they could turn me down for IVF right then and there if my body is not ready to go through it. Or I could start my protocol and then I could not progress, just like my 1st time. 

The point is there are so many opportunities for heartbreak, which is why I want you to know where I am at mentally for this round of IVF before I even begin. 

Most likely this will be our last round. (I will never say never though. I learned that lesson a long time ago!) And I am planning that it won’t work. (Yes, you read that right.) Why would I expect any different when it hasn’t work the other 3 times? You can call this pessimistic or negative, but you also have not walked in my shoes so we can respectfully disagree.  I, personally, think it’s toxic to be unrealistically optimistic because it can literally break your heart. Which it has…3 times before to be exact. So again, I am planning on it not working. 

So why are you putting yourself through all of this again, you might ask? The answer is because when I am 50 years old, I never want to look back and think I didn’t do everything in my power to try to have children for my husband and me. And if it’s not successful, I will know that it’s not in God’s plan for my life and He must have other (greater) plans for me. 

So if you are someone who believes in the power of prayer, these are my prayer requests from you as I begin this emotional journey…

1)  Pray for my inner peace and comfort as I go through such an emotional time of reliving my past grief.

2)  Pray for my husband. I (hopefully) will be getting a ridiculous amount of hormones pumped into my body in a short amount of time. He needs all the prayers he can get. 😉

3)  Pray that God’s will be done in our lives. I don’t want prayers for us to have children….I only want God’s will to be done. That’s all. 

I do want to thank my family and friends for all the love and support you have given me these last couple of years. I am very blessed to have people I can speak so freely with and love me no matter what.

Above all, I want to thank my husband and best friend. He is the one who walks this journey with me everyday, gives me every single one of my IVF shots, holds me when I cry, makes me laugh when I get too serious and kisses my head each time as I am waking up from my IVF procedure. He is truly the greatest gift I have ever been given and with him I have everything I need.

Round 4, here we go….

(*Protocol definition: The drug type and schedule that my doctor comes up with for injecting hormones into my body in preparation for the egg retrieval. The goal of this is to make my body produce a decent amount of eggs so they can be retrieved all at once.)

(**I will try to define IVF terminology for you in my blog posts. Keep in mind, this will be in Steph terms…not official medical terminology.)