Time on my hands in The ugly truth about making babies

Aah night shifts. When it’s quiet like it is tonight, it’s way too much idle time to just sit and think. I feel like some kind of role reversal has happened between Joey and me. Last night he said he was thinking negatively about everything, like it won’t work, so he won’t be disappointed. I told him I thought that was crap, and whatever you tell yourself, it doesn’t matter and it will be only natural to be upset if it doesn’t work. He must have considered this as today he’s been telling me how excited he is that we actually have a date set in stone.

I, on the other hand, feel wildly anxious every time I think about starting. Obviously I want this, it’s my choice, and I want badly for it to work. But it almost feels like I’m just being swept along. We go to these appointments and come out having progressed further down the path and I almost feel like I’m a passive participant, like this isn’t really happening to us.

I can’t even explain it, it sounds so stupid. It almost feels like playing a game. I feel like I’m about 15 when I sit in our doctor’s office, it seems so surreal that we’re talking about ovarian reserve and chromosomal abnormalities and planning a date to start meds to help us have a baby when I had always considered that for the most part any child I ended up with would be the result of a happy accident more than anything. I never imagined planning a baby in any way shape or form, just that I’d probably meet someone, we’d probably have a drunken conversation about having the implant removed and we’d just ‘end up’ pregnant. This is all just very grown up and serious.

We literally sat there last night and hypothesised. It will actually be 8 weeks yesterday that we start meds, given our doctor’s vague notion of starting on day 21 or day 23. I’m assuming day 23 because it ties in better with his hours so he would be able to do our egg retrieval before he fucks off to Japan for two weeks and can’t do our embryo transfer. That would however mean he’s back the day we would be doing the pregnancy test. We allowed ourselves to imagine ‘what if’, what if it works first time and all goes according to plan, we would be 12 weeks around Christmas time, and our baby would be born this time next year.

Then I freaked out that I’m too invested and need to err on the side of caution. But I also feel like I need to be positive cos I wouldn’t want me eggs or our embryos being affected by me carrying any negativity. And let’s face it, everyone is invested in this working for us. Obviously we want it more than we dare admit. Our families, friends, colleagues. Everyone has nothing but good will towards us and our journey to parenthood.

I’ve basically been freaking out since yesterday. Now the date is set in stone, I’m even more aware of the endless list of things that could go wrong. Essentially the things that could go right are: it works, we have a baby. The list of things that could go wrong, is way longer and more complicated and if I allow myself a fatalistic moment, ends with no baby, and Joey and I destroying one another so we also have no relationship. You hear all the time about the strain this places on couples. If it doesn’t work, I know that I won’t resent him, that I won’t be the one to say ‘this is your fault, it’s your crappy sperm’. I also know that he will entirely blame himself and that will drive a wedge and that’s what I hope and pray doesn’t happen.

The way this process warps your head and messes with your mind is unbelievable. The questions we’ve had to answer are things most couples hope they’ll never have to contemplate, like what do you do if one of you dies during treatment. Real thought provoking, head scratchers that you’d be glad to never think about.

The hoops you have to jump through with no guarantee of a baby at the end of it. It would be so much easier to do all this if we knew we would have a positive outcome but there is literally no guarantee. We’re doing this with blind faith and hope. The pills, the needles, the poking and prodding by who knows how many people. The hormones, the price of the drugs. It’s all just a means to an end, but there’s no guarantee that once you get there you’ll achieve that end goal. If it was anything else, any other circumstance or situation, most people would run screaming in the opposite direction, the odds are so stacked against us.

But it is a means to an end. The success is in no way guaranteed but I have to believe that I’ll hold my baby in my arms. As much as the list of things that could go wrong is endless, that outcome is the only thing I’m focusing on, and how amazing it will be if things go right. Watching Joey hold our baby. watching my Mum get to be a Nana. I want it so badly for myself, but also i know how much Joey wants it too and it’s all down to me now.

It’s me taking the drugs, hoping they work. Hoping they stimulate enough but not too much so that we can have a fresh transfer and don’t have to delay to a frozen one. Hoping I grow us a good number of eggs so we stand a good chance of more fertilized embryos so we have some to freeze in case we need them. Hoping that the little embryo that’s placed back inside me beds in and makes my uterus its home. What if our embryo hates my uterus? I know that sounds like a ridiculous question, I am aware of how unhinged I sound, but seriously, what if problems arise with my health that we weren’t aware of?

This whole process has me questioning everything.

xx