A friend from my Resolve support group just emailed to say she's heading out of state for another IVF. I wrote and told her I am also leaving in about 4 weeks for another cycle out of state, and she sent back:
My best wishes for you on this new cycle, I admire you so much, you never give up and keep positive all the time.
Keep me posted, I will keep you posted as well.
Best regards and best wishes!!!!
I sat here at my desk and read this message a couple of times, puzzling over her first sentence. It is true that I never give up (8 medicated cycles, one surgery, two painful x-rays/diagnostic procedures, 3 IVFs, and now my first donor egg cycle- all in two years). But "keep positive all the time"?
I do not consider myself a super positive person. In fact, if you asked my husband, he'd say I'm more of a pessimistic, worrying type. I'm not always like that in life, but with my fertility, I've learned that things tend to not go my way. As evidenced by the long string of trials and tribulations I listed above, and the long string of negative pregnancy tests I've chucked in the trash.
Is it necessary to be positive to keep going? I think that's a difficult question. Yes, you have to keep hope in order to put up with all the discomfort, both physical and emotional. I've never given up hope, as my group member wrote. I've given up hope in the short term-like, for a specific procedure or test- but I've always kept my end goal in sight. I have wondered WHY, and I have asked myself over and over, WHAT are you doing, crazy pants??? You love your life the way it is, you have a happy marriage, good friends, love to travel, financial stability for the most part. But something keeps driving me forward. I feel that longing to give love and receive it, in the baby/child department. I am not sure my cat loves me but I think she does, and even when she isn't showing it (she is, after all, a cat), just by the act of me loving her, I get so much enrichment in my life, and my heart and soul feel so good when I can tell she is happy and content.
So, I don't know. I have never taken breaks, which might not be the healthiest thing. I have plunged ahead, from one attempt to the next. I have been careful in researching the best way forward, and checked stats and success rates carefully, but I have always been dead set on finding a way to keep going.
I haven't been positive. I worry, I complain, I question myself and others all the time. But I have been positive, somewhere deep inside me, that this is what I need to do. I mourned my loss of a genetic child, but deep down inside, I've known for awhile that this is where I'd end up. My embryos have never been good, and I've never responded well to medications. In some ways, it's depressing beyond anything else. But in others, if I can have a child via donor egg, I've achieved my end goal: to love and be loved by a little one.
I think my support group friend is a little bit right and a little bit wrong. I'm not positive. I'm realistic. For me, that's helped me to not give up. I keep my end goal as the ultimate goal, even if the actualization of how I'll get there has changed a bit. I've learned a lot about myself through infertility, but I also think it's made me more determined. Not more positive, but more positive about what I want, and that in the end, somehow I'm going to get there.
This post really speaks to me today. I can get a little aggressive with people who put so much stock into positive stock--this is one of the pitfalls of support groups. You urge each other to "think positive thoughts!" "Don't be negative!" and build up the power of positive thinking into something that it just...isn't. I have done cycles both ways and I have been not pregnant both times. I was more devastated when I convinced myself that my positive thinking was going to "think it true." I think it can be downright unhealthy to forbid yourself negative thoughts. I know people who beat themselves up for entertaining a possibility of a negative test while in the 2ww, and I have been one of those people. It is A LOT of pressure. And aren't we under enough pressure with all of this? So, I'm with you--be positive when you can be, and enter into the dark side when you have to, just don't live there. And I am SO with you that breaks can be bad. I did NOT deal well with my break before my DE IVF (which I am now on Lupron for! Wheeee!) because it gave me way too much time to think and to feel even more stagnant than usual. Excellent, excellent post--thank you for exploring this tricky topic!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Jess. I think some of my negativity is from continued disappointments... I am the facilitator for my local RESOLVE support group and I meet so many women who are just doing Clomid or IUI and still have their hopes sky high... and I think, thank goodness I'm over that hopeful stage. Because it really, really hurts when you get yet another negative.
ReplyDeleteBut, in order to keep pushing ourselves forward, we do still envision that happy ending, right?
Things I don't do anymore: use those online due-date calculators. Think about names. Consider which of the guest bedrooms is better for a baby. Wonder whether I'll go to next year's annual conference for work.
What I will do: keep taking my Lupron shots. Not think too much about the details. And hope this is the month for me- and for you!
I get you! I stopped going to actual support groups after a while because there was so much of the "think positive!" because others weren't quite as beaten down as I felt. I felt like a horror story and the group elder, a position I definitely didn't want. I agree--once I'm in a cycle I can think pretty positively because we wouldn't do this to ourselves if we didn't think it was possible. It's just hard not to prepare yourself for the worst when you've been through your version of worst multiple times. But I am a sucker...I still figure out due dates. And we figured out names a while ago and are keeping them in our back of mind until it's real. I have baby stuff in my guest room, but it's still clearly a guest room. I did the same--I tried to figure out when I could stop writing in my plan book for the next year or later that year, and it just hurts too much to then have to eat crow and fill in those dates and realize another year with no maternity leave is in your future. I guess we just live with the lupron and hope for the best! :) Good luck to you!
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