Such an odd situation as I guess I'm not a normal infertile. From the tests run last year, I have no weird shaped uterus, no polycystic ovaries, no endometriosis and I ovulate like clockwork on day 16 of each month. So I'm not really infertile at all just a bit genetically buggered really. Neither have I had any dickishness from friends and family about infertility (probably because they know I would slap 'em down like a bitch!)- in fact, lots of people have come forward about their experiences of losses and problems. To offer their love and support at a point, let's be frank, is a bitch of a time!
As for my sort of infertility, there were no big surprises. I've known since I was tiny that I had wonky chromosomes. I know that there are some people who find out they have issues in their teens but I've known since a small child. Obviously, I didn't know all of the implications until I was 16 in that dreadful room on the seventh floor of Guys Tower but I've known a bloody long time. Also, I've got something that doesn't really affect my health much (as far as they know!) My wonky genes don't cause pain or discomfort, neither are they leading to some dreadful death (that we know of...!) My translocation is not an issue really until you start trying for a baby and it is recognised as being a "thing", although I have had to explain it to doctors who are non-fertility based.
As for the IVF, that's where I feel like the biggest bitch twat idiot on this planet. There's not a day that goes by where I don't thank my lucky stars that I was born post Aneurin Bevan. That I can ring my GP, drag my sorry arse to a hospital or go to a walk in centre, be treated for free and walk away with only a prescription charge of under £10 per item? I call that really bloody lucky. To make it worse, they then go and offer me not only IVF but PGD. Instead of it being £8-12000, you may have to pay for some drugs but other than that *F*R*E*E*. I have a particular friend in the US who has started a crowdfunder to get her an IVF cycle- read more about her here. She also makes some pretty jewellery which is also going towards her baby goal-and there's 50% off at the moment!Oh and where is that form that will get me free goes at having a baby with better chances of walking away with one to cuddle? Yep, still under my coffee table. Throughout my life, I've been accused of pissing my chances up the wall. At school, work and uni, not working to my full potential and messing around. I feel like that form is one of these opportunities.
It sits there bloody taunting me. Calling me a wuss. Every now and then, it shouts- telling me I'm a selffish cow when others can't afford treatment. Sometimes, it's kinder and asks why I haven't posted it yet but generally whenever I walk into the frontroom, I feel it rolling its eyes at me.
The thing is I am infertile. I'm an infertile not because I have issues with getting pregnant. I have issues staying pregnant as you well know. I'm an infertile because even when I find that I'm pregnant, I will never feel any peace or joy in seeing those two lines. Two lines to me means loss. Another failure. It has now gotten to the stage that I don't think I would want to tell anyone except extremely close family (or my twitter buds) that we were expecting a baby until it was born. I'm bloody good at hiding in my house and I'm enough of a manipulative Scorpio that I would be able to spin a yarn about still drinking and smoking it up to make people believe that nothing had changed.
PGD offers some kind of hope that there would be a decent enough embryo that would implant and lead to a healthy baby but it isn't a given and how many times can you toss your heart out there to have it mown down by some freaking huge articulated lorry (something I am really scared of. I hate articulated trucks. Oh and bridges.)?
For a while, I felt a bit of an outsider with the IF community on Twitter- especially when you think that I haven't been through IVF or had problems with getting pregnant but when it clicked that actually, I'm a wonky infertile and we have been trying to have a baby for 21months- almost two freaking years! I truly started to feel like I belonged and not in a "I'll favourite your tweets" or a "Here's a funny anecdote" way. We're all going through similarly different shit. We cry together. Understand the anger and confusion. We all "get" the lack of naivety that it brings.
We also laugh together. I am now at the point that I walk down the street and think, "Shit, it was so and so's appointment today, I wonder how that went?" Or I'm in a department store and I see towels with foxes on and think of a particular member of the community. I was even on the underground the other day and saw a poster for an Orang-Utan exhibition and made a note to let one of the girls know. It is an obsession, keeping up with everyone's news and our little chats but I know one day, I won't get to be a part of it. I'll be pushed to one side where the pregnancies go as it is hard talking to people about something you have and they don't. Or I'll break away because it'll be time to move on. Time to leave the ovulation kits, the vitamins and the endless doctors appointments. Time to walk away from having a baby.
Right now, they're my lifeline. Whilst I feel trapped in the Stevie Smith poem, Not Waving But Drowning, they are the pod of dolphins keeping my chin above the water.
So National Infertility Awareness Week, here's my UK offering to you. I am going to send that fucking form tomorrow as a thank you to all the love from the twitterati. My women and men in America especially as I have the opportunity to have something that you have to fight for.
Not for the necklace, Lauren ;)
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