It’s been a while since I last wrote anything on this blog. I felt like I had said all I wanted to say about my journey up to our last transfer. However, I’ve had an urge to write something over the last week or so. As many of you who follow me on Instagram will know, my wife and I are pregnant. Our last embryo, the lowest grade we had stuck and we are in dreamland. I know that this will be difficult for some of you to read and that’s exactly why I wanted to write it! I have been overwhelmed by all of the congratulations and the messages of support from my followers on Instagram, every message has been so appreciated and meant the world to me.

It was a strange feeling announcing that our transfer has worked and we were pregnant. I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of guilt. Especially when I put it on my Instagram page. I remembered all of the feelings that I had felt when I had read pregnancy announcements in the past. I won’t apologise for being over the moon about being pregnant. My wife and I sacrificed so much and worked so hard to get here. However, it does feel strange. Especially now as it is still really early on. I have found myself wondering where I fit now. Am I still part of this community? Or like an animal in the wild am i supposed to leave this family now and fend for myself? The strange thing is, I don’t feel part of the ‘pregnant’ community either, I feel, probably irrationally that I am somewhere in between. I know that this is not the case and that every single person who has been there for me within this community will still be there for me but it is a feeling that I never anticipated and one that I felt like I needed to write down. I don’t want to discuss our pregnancy on my social media because I don’t want to cause pain to those who have not been as lucky as I am but I also don’t feel ready to discuss it with people outside this community because I feel that it is too soon. I realise that to even be thinking these things means that I am in a situation most people pray every day to be in.

I am so incredibly thankful to be where I am now and I am so proud of my wife. I owe her everything. The worrying doesn’t stop though. I blame the infertility for that. In our case it is unexplained and because of that every bit of excitement also has an undertone of worry and anxiety and I don’t think that will go away until we hold our baby in our arms.

I think that that’s ok though. I am so inexperienced at this stage and I want to write this for people who feel the same as me. I don’t know, but I think it’s ok to feel anxiety and worry as long as it doesn’t consume me or ruin this amazing time for me. I think because we tried for so long and so hard that I feel guilty for feeling anything other than happiness when thinking about or speaking of our pregnancy. I wanted to write something to document these feelings because if I am being totally truthful I didn’t think about it when we were trying to conceive, I couldn’t think about it. I didn’t want to think about how somebody felt after becoming pregnant through fertility treatment and I am sorry for that now. I suppose that I just thought that you became pregnant and everything was fantastic! It really is and I am not for one second trying to make out that my life is currently as hard as those who haven’t got their two lines yet because at the moment it isn’t. I am one of the lucky ones. I know that.

I asked myself the question, would I change a thing now that we are pregnant. The answer is yes, of course I would. If I had a magic wand I’d go back and my wife and I would get pregnant first time naturally. None of the sadness, anger, depression. None of the medication or needles that effected my wife so irreparably, none of the late nights crying or arguing or struggling to hold on. Then I asked myself another question, would you do it all again? The answer to that question. YES! A thousand times over to get to this point. Because it is worth it. It may not seem like it to you now if you haven’t had those two lines yet but it really is, I promise you.

It is still early days for us. We are still praying like we did before we became pregnant, we are still nervous and anxious like we were before we became pregnant. This doesn’t let up. It is another way infertility has forced its way into our lives and branded us with its awful mark. Even when announcing our pregnancy, there will always be that fear and anxiety.

But please whatever you take from this scrawl of thoughts that have made it from my brain to this page please take this. It is worth it. Stick together, love each other and keep going. Your ship will come in. And it will be so worth it when it does.

I’ll pick up where I left off. The egg collection. We went into the clinic inexperienced and to be honest a little worried. We had made the decision not to tell any of our family where we were up to with the IVF. In fact, we purposely told them that we were further behind in the process than we actually were. We wanted to be able to still surprise them when we told them we were pregnant. This is another example of how naïve and new to IVF we were. I genuinely believed that we would get pregnant on our first go and I had planned how I wanted to reveal it to my family, all before we even had the collection. We got on our ‘scrubs’ and took the obligatory hospital selfie finding ourselves hilarious while we did. I went into the room with Kate just before the collection and she seemed ok and calm but I know her. I know her more than anyone and I knew that she was not ok and was not calm. But she was brave and strong and I knew she would get through it. I had to leave for the actual collection. I gave her a kiss told her I loved her and left. I held it together until I got back to our room in the hospital. As soon as the door shut behind me I sat on the bed and cried. I was terrified. I had just left the most important person in my life in a room under anaesthetic and no one even knew we were there. Kates mum, her dad, her sisters, no one. This was one of the times it hit me, how alone I was. I was worried about my wife, I was devastated that she had to go through this and I was alone, no one to put their arm around me or re assure me. I started thinking about how I could possibly tell people if something did go wrong when we hadn’t even told them that she was going into the hospital. It was one of the worst times of my life. Eventually it was over. My world was back with me, a little battered and bruised and scared but she was back with me and I was so so grateful. Once she had recovered a little, we spoke to the consultant who gave us the news. They had collected 12 eggs!! It was as good as we had hoped for and we knew how lucky we were.

We went home Kate got on the sofa and we watched Mama Mia 2. Now I let Kate choose the film and I could lie here and say I hated it. But, lads if you want brownie points for watching a ‘chick flick’ with your MRS. get onto ‘Mama Mia 2 Here we go again!’ It’s a belter.

We got the phone call; I think it was the next day and It was great news. We had eight eggs fertilised and FIVE to the blastocyst stage. That meant five little embryos that were mine and Kates. It meant five chances to get pregnant and have our baby. We spoke with the clinic and arranged for our transfer a week later. After the transfer we had always planned to go away just for a week somewhere to make the second week of the two week wait a little more bearable. I had bought Kate a zoo keeper experience for Christmas (I know how to treat a lady!) it was an experience which included feeding the penguins at the Zoo but more importantly it was in the Lake District a couple of hours from home and we saw it as a good place to go for the week. We asked the consultant for advice and if we would be ok to be around our penguin mates during our TWW and he gave us the go ahead. So, we were PUPO – Pregnant until proven otherwise we had got through our first week of the TWW and on our way for a lovely week in the lakes. Pep talk number 6 –

DO WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU DURING THE TWW. DON’T FEEL GUILTY IF YOU WANT TO RELAX AND TAKE IT EASY. DON’T FEEL GUILTY IF YOU WANT TO STAY ACTIVE. YOU KNOW YOUR BODY AND YOU KNOW YOUR MIND, LISTEN TO BOTH.

We had read the do’s and don’ts from experts online and people who had been through it before us, but the truth is it was all conflicting information. There is no sure-fire way to live your life during the TWW. There is no action you can take that will guarantee that you will get pregnant. If you are someone that is happy to sit and read book after book or binge watch TV for two weeks, then do that and don’t feel guilty or bad for doing that. If you are someone that needs to be active, that would feel trapped in their own home doing nothing but watching TV or reading books for two weeks then plan something, go somewhere. Whatever you do though ENJOY BEING PUPO! This is what you have stayed so strong for, wanted for so long and put yourself through everything for. I promise you that if you sit worrying at home and don’t allow yourself to be happy or excited during the TWW for fear of it hurting more if you don’t get that positive test then you are robbing yourself of the joy you’ve earned. It hurts just the same as if you let yourself be excited and happy but at least you have had that two weeks of joy that no one can ever take away.

Our TWW was obviously naturally nerve-racking it was like being a child again in the lead up to Christmas. When you’ve flicked through the Argos catalogue and sent your list off to Santa with that one big gift on and all you can do is wait. Wait and see if the big fella brings it for you! But it was also amazing. We spent a week in the Lake District together talking about our ‘maybe’ baby, wondering if it would have my eyes and hoping that it didn’t have my nose.  

Our TWW was nearly over we had come back home on the Sunday and our test day was the Tuesday. It got to the Monday, the day before our official test day and it finally got too much for us. Kate said that she wanted to test and I was glad because I couldn’t wait any longer. She did a couple of tests and all came back NEGATIVE. Kate knew I could see it in her eyes and there was a sadness on her face. I naively thought that because it wasn’t our ‘official’ test day that we still had a day to go and that it might show up positive on tomorrows test but Kate knew that she wasn’t pregnant. The official test day came and we tested and it was negative just as my wife had said it would be. We rang the hospital and they said that they would document it and that was it. Our dream was over. I do not think for one second that I am intelligent enough or poetic enough to be able to put into words how we felt at the time. We cried a lot. Both of us. There were days when we couldn’t get out of bed. So we didn’t. We told our families and friends what had happened and most of them were amazing and supportive. It is a strange thing to grieve a baby you have never met, that you have never held or sang to or rocked to sleep. But I did. I grieved for all of those things that I would never get to do with this baby. I grieved for my wife and I. For the people that we used to be. Those people were gone now, and we weren’t going to get them back. Not how they used to be anyway. Too much had happened, we had felt so much sadness and been touched by so much grief to ever be the same people. Something good did happen though, we grew closer. We grew stronger as a couple because we changed as people together. I’m not good at remembering dates or times but Kate is. I never have been, but I would argue to my last breath with anyone who does not see losing an embryo as losing a baby. I know that my wife could tell you the due date of our first embryo. She would be able to tell you when we should have had our first scan. I could tell you how many nights I lay awake crying at our sadness and how many nights I could hear my wife crying herself to sleep.

We managed to drag ourselves out of the horrible dark hole that we were in. I like to think by standing on each other’s shoulders. When I couldn’t climb anymore Kate gave me her shoulders to climb on and I gave her mine.

We booked a holiday away to be together, just the two of us. To reconnect and decide where we wanted our journey to go next. We had lost our first embaby and we were hurting beyond comprehension, but we knew that while there was still the smallest chance that we couldn’t give up.

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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Between the first doctor’s appointment and the referral to the fertility clinic I was required to provide a sample of semen for analysis. Roughly translated to; I was required to have the strangest wank of my life, into a plastic cup in a weird masturbation dungeon.

I arrived for my appointment, plastic cup in hand feeling, and no doubt looking like I was on my way along the green mile to old sparky to be executed. I was met at the reception by a woman old enough to be my mum, for some reason it’s just so much more embarrassing when it’s a mature lady. She told me to take a seat as both rooms where occupied. So, I did I sat in my seat still clutching on to my ‘love cup’ thinking to myself.

“I’m sure they give it a good wipe down after another blokes been in there, I’m sure they do.”

Well, if they did it can’t have been a thorough wipe down because no sooner had I thought about leaving I was met again by the nurse. “Follow me.” she said as we walked to the masturbation station. She led me into a dimly lit room. In it was an arm chair a tv and a sink. She explained the process to me.

“This is where you will give your sample, there are headphones available on the wall if you need them just open the packaging and take them out. The tv is available to watch with films if you need them. Once you have finished pop your sample into this unit and pull the chord, this will let us know and we will take the sample from the room on other side of the wall.”

Then she uttered the final immortal words.

“If you spill any of your sample let us know.”

Then poof she vanished in a cloudy haze. I was left alone to have the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had with myself. This is how it went;

Q – Shall I sit in the chair?

A – You are not sitting in that chair; do you know how many naked arses have sat in the armchair of shame!

Q – Did she say that they are in a room on the other side of this wall.

A – Yes she did, they’re in there timing you, probably having bets on how long you’ll last or if you’ll be able to get it up at all. This better be the quietest wank you’ve ever had mate.

Q – Am I going to watch the porn?

A – Of course you are, you’re not leaving here without seeing what the NHS porn stash is like! Just don’t unpack the headphones and they will never know.

Q – Did she say “if you spill any let us know?” will I spill it? How will I spill it? Will I even produce enough to spill?

A – God knows pal, lets just get on with it and get out of here.

I’m glad to say that I managed it and left with any dignity I still had. The truth is, it was awkward and it wasn’t a nice experience. I felt embarrassed and even ashamed throughout. When I got home though and Kate asked how it had gone I lied. I said that it was fine. It wasn’t fine at all but I knew that she had gone through so much more already and would have to go through much more invasive and awkward procedures. So, I played it down and pretended that it didn’t bother me because I’d heard people say, ‘all the man has to do is have a wank.’ Pep talk number three;

DON’T PLAY DOWN YOUR OWN FEELINGS, DON’T BELITTLE YOUR EXPERIENCES AND EMOTIONS.

Just because your wife or your partner is having a difficult time that doesn’t mean that you are not allowed to let people know that you are too. You wouldn’t say to someone who had just had their leg cut off, “come on mate cheer up there are people out there who have had both their legs cut off.” You can’t compare your experiences with your partners, or anyone else’s for that matter. You are allowed to be sad, embarrassed, anxious and any other emotion that you are feeling. Don’t look to anyone else for validation.

So that was it. My first sample provided and it all went swimmingly (pun intended.)

My next blog entry will pick up from our first appointment, this time at the right clinic. I hope you’ll come back!

I met my now wife Kate in 2011 and I was smitten instantly. She was beautiful, funny, intelligent and well-travelled. I actually couldn’t believe I’d managed to convince her to come out for a drink with me. I had though, because as most of you blokes will know, personality and persistence always wins in the end. Everything and I mean everything was great. As the story so often goes, we met, fell in love, moved in together and in 2016 got married. We enjoyed married life for a little while without thinking about children because we knew that when we were ready, we would do the business, get pregnant and nine months later, hey presto our little angel would be born.

Ha! Wrong. Life was about to give us a harsh lesson that sometimes it just isn’t fair. See our story went like this. Met, fell in love, moved in together, got married, FUCKING INFERTILITY!

We started trying to conceive in 2017. I had heard the old comedic “at least you’ll have fun trying” thrown about before and if I’m honest I thought it would be great. Who doesn’t think loads of sex would be great? At first it was but when we didn’t get pregnant, we began to worry that something was wrong. That’s when sex stopped being about sex and became being solely about getting pregnant. This brings me to pep talk number one;

SEX WILL LOSE ITS APPEAL WHEN TRYING TO CONCEIVE.

Don’t feel guilty about this. This doesn’t mean that you have lost your appeal and it doesn’t mean that your partner has lost their appeal. Tracking ovulation, being told you have to perform ‘right now’, Pre shower, post big meal is not sexy. Coming in from work and having to have sex straight out of your work clothes might be spontaneous and extremely sexy as a one off and in the moment. However, doing it regularly is not sexy. Trying to fit sex in before you go out somewhere and often (let’s not hold back here, if we are sharing let’s go all in) having to use lube to get ‘the job done’ IS NOT SEXY. This does not mean that you are not sexy. Don’t feel guilty, don’t feel too down that sex isn’t the same anymore, sex is the first casualty of trying to conceive.

So, back to my story. We had been trying (and I mean trying) for a while, the whole 9 yards. Tracking ovulation, diet changes, exercising and nothing was happening. It felt like literally everyone we knew was getting pregnant. People who hadn’t planned to get pregnant – pregnant before us. People who had started trying a long time after us – pregnant before us. People who had only known each other a short time – pregnant before us. It was so hard to see and seemed so unfair, we managed a smile though and a congratulations to all of them but as we learned later on in our journey, this would become a lot harder to do. This brings me on to pep talk number two;

YOU CAN BE HAPPY FOR SOMEONE ELSE AND SAD FOR YOURSELF.

This is something that will pop up again a little bit later in the blog but it is something that is so difficult to grasp at first. There is a feeling of guilt that comes with feeling sadness when something like a pregnancy is announced. Don’t feel guilty. The way you’re feeling is natural. Just because you are sad it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person. I will go into more detail on this later on as it becomes harder and harder to deal with other people’s pregnancy announcements.

After two years of trying Kate became concerned enough to make a doctor’s appointment. We attended and he talked us through what would happen, what tests Kate would have, what I was expected to do, If I’m being honest at first I didn’t really understand what the process was and even after the doctor’s visit all I knew was that at some point I would have to have a wank. This is partly because I didn’t really think that there would be an issue and genuinely thought that it was just taking us longer and mostly because I didn’t understand the medical jargon. I didn’t understand my wife’s cycle; I didn’t fully understand ovulation. Up until this point in my life I had been blissfully unaware of what some people have to go through to get pregnant. After the appointment we were booked in to attend the hospital a month or two later. We had prepared ourselves for the appointment as much as we could have and had started to accept that this was going to be the route that we had to take to have our baby. On the day of the appointment I met Kate at the hospital from work. The waiting room was full of pregnant women and women with children. I remember saying to Kate at the time how strange and insensitive it was to share the fertility centre with what clearly seemed like some kind of pre and post pregnancy centre but if I’m being honest, I didn’t really think anything further than that. Our name was called and we went up to the reception desk. It soon became apparent that we had not been referred to the fertility centre. We had been referred to a normal gynaecology unit by mistake. We were given the number for the correct place and told to call them to arrange an appointment.

We were so disappointed and deflated. How could this have happened so early on. We had built ourselves up for nothing. We were both really frustrated and upset. We had to start again and book another appointment with the correct place. We managed to do this and luckily got ‘fast tracked’ but this still meant waiting another few weeks before our first appointment at a fertility centre with an expert.