IF is such a personal journey June 27, 2007

I recently read a great post by Pamela Jeanne Coming 2 Terms! which also lead me to a great post by Sharah at Outlandish Notions!

Sharah said “My experience of infertility has been a process of letting go. Letting go of the idea that we would get pregnant quickly. Letting go of my self-image of being fertile. Letting go of my resistance to getting treatment. Letting go of my roadmap for the future. Sometimes I feel like just sitting down and crying over all of the things I’ve had to give up. Right now, I feel like adoption would be letting go of my dream of being a parent — a dream that hinges on a biological connection to my future child.“

I relate to these words so much. Her post got me thinking about my journey and how I got here and how different it is for each person. I’m sure every one of us battling this awful thing called IF never expected our lives to be like this. Most of us imagined it would be easier and we’d have a family like everyone else - the old fashion way. We expected we try and we’d have a baby and none of us were prepared for the emotional roller coaster we would be put on and how this would change us and make us question everything about ourself. IF is so- unfair in every sense. Like Sharah said, we have to let go of so many things already by just getting IF. We’ve had to make so many hard choices, whether to start fertility treatments, whether to spend money on IVF, how many to do, what to do next, should we adopt or live a childless life? We have to endure and ask ourselves so much more than your average person who has it much much easier. And until one has walked in our exact shoes, none of us have a right to judge (even us infertiles) and there is no cookie cut formula or answer to each of our IF. What is right for one is not what is right for another. And I believe its a personal journey and not one journey is the exactly the same as the other. Reading through so many blogs and meeting so many amazing women, all our stories are so different in so many ways yet similar at the same time. We all share the same fears, emotions, pain that IF brings but we all come from differerent backgrounds, we all have our own set of struggles with family/friends, we all have our own set of IF issues, different spouses & different issues that arise, we all have a different set of values, different way we see things and we all have a different threshold for how much we can take. One women can endure over 10 IVF’s and for another even one is just too much and there is no right answer. SO how can we expect our answer to IF will be the same and how we get there will be the same? Adoption is a beautiful option for many but its also not for everyone. A childless life maybe not be right for one but maybe the answer that feels most right for another. Ofcourse none of these choices were ever our first choice and how we expcted our lives to be like. We can only take things as it comes and make choices according to our personal situation. These are choices that we never expected we’d have to make since none of us chose IF. And we ourselves can only decide what we are willing to do, when its time for us to give up, when its time to move on and how we choose to life our lives. And ultimately how we determine what are happy ending is.

As for me, having biological children was very important to me and adoption isn’t something I thought about much. I imagined my children to be half of me and half of DH and its how I dreamed of having a family. I too have nothing against adoption but something that just didn’t feel right for me. I know of one friend who adopted and she said in her heart she always knew she would end up adopting even before she had IF. So that decision was easy for her. I figured if it was the way I was meant to have children, I will know it and it will feel right in my heart. What I was willing to do to start a family changed over the course of my IF. When I first started, I never thought in a million years I would do IVF.. and I ended up going through six cycles. And when I reached the end of my journey, adoption is something DH and I did really look at and considered. But adoption didn’t feel right for me at this point in my IF but it may change one day for me. For now.. I know I want to give myself a chance to get pregnant. I wasn’t ready to give up being pregnant and having a baby yet. Even letting go of that biological connection was something extremely hard for me. When I first started fertility treatments, quitting was not an option. I was so determined to have my own children, I thought I would just keep going. I thought I would never give up on having my own children because biology was that important to me and I wanted so much to have my own. I heard of women getting pregnant after 3, 4 and even 6 IVF’s and to me getting pregnant was just a number. The number of IVF’s it will take me to get pregnant. I didn’t even want to accept or face the fact it may never work for me. I think if I didn’t have such an obvious egg issue the last couple of cycles, I may have kept going. But when it didn’t work and I reached the end, it really left me devastated. Even though adoption was in the back of my mind, I didn’t want to even go there and think about it because I wasn’t willing to give up my dream of bearing my own children. But things slowly changed as I went through so many IVF failures and the emotional toll it took on me and my life. When I reached the end, I never expected myself to be where I ended up. I had no idea I’d be so lost and have to make such hard decisions. Never in a million years, did I think I could have an egg issue and have the door close on my own biological children at 32!! It was the hardest thing for me to accept and it put me in a really dark place. So it wasn’t an easy path at all for me and I’m sure some women may have not gone as far as I had and maybe another person would still continue. Only “you” know what is right for you. For me, I had to truly greive the loss of my own biological children. I had to that for myself to even move on and see clearly what our next step is. We looked at every option for us but egg donor always seemed right for us. There was nothing wrong with Dh, I was still relatively young and everything was physicaly fine with me and I wanted to be at least half of DH (and have his wonderful qualities) if it can’t be half of me. And I could at least be pregnant and bear a child. Than my next decision was who we choose to be our egg donor. I had the choice of anonymous, two of my best friends offered and ofcourse my wonderful sister. I think it is such an amazing gift and I’m still in awe of the gift she is providing for me. I wasn’t even thinking of asking anyone to be a donor but people who loved me offered and I was lucky enough to have choices. My sister actually offered it so easily - when I was crying about my egg issue “she’s like I have plenty, you can have mine”.

We all than have to make the most of what we get in life and make the decision that is right for us. In the end, I realized it was more important for me to be a mother than how I became one. My sister was an easy choice because we share the same parents and have many simliar qualities and I wouldn’t be giving up the biological connection entirely. Her and I are extremely close and I love her with all of my heart so it just felt like such a beautiful choice. I feel incredibly grateful I have this option and I don’t know for sure if this is the answer for us. But for now… its a new hope for me. More than anything in the world I would have loved to have my own children.. but that wasn’t an option for me. So I had to let go of what was my first choice always and find peace and happiness with the options I was given. I hope one day I’ll look back and realize this was the path I was meant to take and everything will have been all worth it.

Sorry I haven’t commented or caught up on some of your blogs yet. I’m trying to get to all of them but its challenging after being away because there is so much work to catch up on ..