Welcome back! Or if this is the first time you’ve viewed my blog, just welcome I suppose. I am so happy that so many of you have wanted to read my story so I want to start by thanking you. I haven’t held a captive audience since I was 10 years old and took my mate’s up on a dare to try to clear a ditch on my Mongoose BMX. I didn’t make it and was lucky I didn’t end up in hospital, so I’m hoping this blog goes better than my short and sour stint as an Evil Knievel wannabe.
So a few weeks passed and it was time for our first appointment. Neither of us knew what to expect but I really didn’t know what to expect. In situations like this my wife and I are almost polar opposites. She decided to research and plan ahead, I suppose to try to second guess what might happen at the appointment and what questions she might want to ask. I on the other hand did not do any research. I was still struggling to understand what was going on. I was happy to tag along for the ride and see what happened at the appointment when we got there. Pep talk number 4 –
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, BE INVESTED IN YOUR JOURNEY.
Looking back now I realise that it wasn’t fair for me to put all of the pressure on my wife to understand what was going on or to decide what questions we were going to ask in our appointment. To just decide that I couldn’t understand the medical jargon without trying to research the medical jargon was a cop out of the highest order. The truth is for probably the first round of IVF or fertility treatment you aren’t going to be an expert. However, you can decide if you are going to take control of your treatment, if you are going to share the burden of trying to figure out what’s best for you both or if you are going to coast along blissfully unaware of what is going to come. Your life is about to change, I’d suggest arming yourself with as much knowledge as you can so that you can deal with it as best as you can when it does.
We attended the hospital and spoke to a young consultant, he can’t have been much older than us. I weirdly found myself drifting between listening to what he was saying and wondering if he was married, if HE had kids, if he had any idea what it was like to be in this situation. One thing I heard clearly and I’ll never forget is when he said the words. “UNEXPLAINED INFERTILITY.” It felt at the time like he was shrugging his shoulders and saying “FUCK KNOWS MATE.”
He explained the process and we left knowing that Kate would need to have more tests and I’d have to revisit Maud the friendly nurse at the masturbation station, we left knowing that our most likely route to having our own baby would be IVF and most confusing of all we left knowing that we had been diagnosed with unexplained infertility.
I’ve never compared my journey with anyone else’s, and I’ve never compared our diagnosis but one thing I learned very quickly is that when you tell people you have unexplained infertility it is usually followed by comments from them, such as;
“So they haven’t found anything wrong then?”
“That’s good at least, you know that there isn’t anything actually wrong with you.”
As the weeks and months passed before what would be our first round of IVF I didn’t really speak to anyone about what was going on. Pep talk number five –
DO NOT DO THIS. TALK TO SOMEONE, TALK TO ANYONE.
It didn’t help me keeping everything inside and it didn’t help my wife either. I realise now that I’d swallowed the pill. I’d become brainwashed by years and years of this macho bollocks of men having to hide their emotions, of having to be the strong one. Listen lads, if there’s one thing that fertility treatment, in our case IVF and seeing your partner have numerous needles a day, bloating and hormones raging like motherfuckers and still managing to keep it together teaches you its that even if you think you are, you are definitely not the toughest one in your relationship and that’s ok. Sometimes putting your feelings and thoughts out there is the bravest and strongest thing you can do.
After months of getting our heads around things, denial, believing that we would still get pregnant in-between and eventually accepting the path we would have to take we got the appointment through and Kate began the injections and pessaries and tablets in preparation for our first egg retrieval. I didn’t realise that I could love my wife any more than I already did, but watching what she put her body and mind through to give us the best chance at the retrieval showed me that I most definitely could. I was and still am in awe of her. I can’t believe that another person would put themselves through that to give me the chance of being a dad. We decided that I would give Kate the injections and even though it was hard because even though she tried to hide it I could tell that she found them painful, and I hated causing her pain I would definitely recommend doing the injections for your Mrs. It helped me to feel important, like I was needed and that I wasn’t just a spare part. It helped me to feel each and every one of those injections with her and I honestly think it brought us closer together.
And so. In April 2019 we had our first egg collection. We had been through some testing and relationship shaking times to get to this point, but in truth this was really only the beginning….
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Infertilitybloke's 'Bollocks to infertility.' 