So here it is, my first blog post. I’m feeling anxious just writing this and the thought of sharing my fertility and infertility journey with you makes me feel nauseous and apprehensive.  I’ve considered writing a blog for over a year and had this first blog sitting on my laptop staring at me for over a week.  Even tonight, I was second-guessing whether I should share such a personal story.  Then, whilst browsing through Facebook, a friend of mine wrote a long post about her feelings of anxiety and depression surrounding her challenges with getting pregnant.  Everything she mentioned in her post, were things I had and am still going through. She was asking whether she was crazy, or whether anyone else had gone through the same thing and I wanted to scream…YES ME!!!!

I had another moment a few days ago when I was out for a run.  I felt that every woman who I ran past was either pregnant or pushing a pram.  I started crying whilst I was running!  It was a nightmare.  I couldn’t stop as it would have affected my time. I was already struggling to breathe whilst running, then you add-in crying and I thought I was dying.  I also was not wearing sunnies and crying in a public place which was another disaster.  It was then that I felt like the character Charlotte from the TV show ‘Sex and The City’.  The character Charlotte had fertility issues and when asked why she was crying in one episode, she responded with; ‘I’m trying to get pregnant and it’s just not going very well’.  This was me, that day.  I finally admitted to myself how I was really feeling.

I’m tired of hiding my feelings behind a smile, tired of pretending that everything is OK, almost tired of trying to get pregnant and I know that so many other women feel the same way. So, rather than hiding away, I’ve decided to put it all out there, how I’m feeling, how I’m (not) coping and everything that I’m going through.  My hope is that it helps just one other person to know that they are not alone. That they are not crazy.  That it’s completely normal to feel anxious, sad, heartbroken and even sometimes jealous all those pregnant women and women pushing prams. 

Perhaps I also thought this process would be cathartic, perhaps I thought I may feel supported by a community going through the same fertility challenges as myself?  Primarily though, my main reason is to let you know that if you are reading this, you are most definitely not alone.

So, a little about me.  I’m 38, an Emergency Medicine Doctor and suffering from secondary infertility.  My stats are G3P1.  I never thought I’d be a G3P1 but there it is.  For those of you who don’t know, the ‘G’ stands for ‘Gravidity’ which is the number of times you have been pregnant and ‘P’ stands for ‘Parity’ which is the number of births you’ve had.  Yes, I’ve had two miscarriages, one before and one after the birth of my beautiful son.  I’ll be honest, I was actually very lucky and became pregnant very quickly on each of these three occasions.  However, my story now is that I’ve been trying solidly to get pregnant for 18 months without any success at all.  My periods arrive bang on the bloody dot every single month.  So, my husband and I have been diagnosed with secondary infertility and are about to start our IVF journey together.  This was another impetus for writing this blog as IVF fills me with anxiety and I felt that documenting my experience would help me through the process.

So what will I be writing about?  I will discuss the two-week wait which honestly feels like a millennia-wait no matter whether you are going through it for the first time or the hundredth time. Those two weeks between ovulation and potential pregnancy where your mind goes into overdrive and you go crazy. I will discuss miscarriage, strained relationships both with friends and partners, financial matters surrounding infertility and of course my IVF journey.  I am also happy to discuss topics which may be suggested by yourself.

I feel that despite miscarriage and fertility issues being extremely common, they are still rarely openly discussed.  Why??  Are we afraid of upsetting others? Are we afraid of the awkwardness? Are we afraid that we look like a failure? Is there a stigma associated with infertility?

Honestly I don’t know the answer. When I had my first miscarriage, I told a few close friends and they all replied with ‘oh I had a miscarriage too’. One friend had experienced multiple miscarriages. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know and that she wasn’t able to share this at the time. Then I realized that people don’t talk about these things.  When I got pregnant the second time, I was so fearful of a miscarriage and upsetting my family who had had a rough year that I didn’t tell them until I was well into my second trimester. My husband questioned why I didn’t tell them straight away. He pointed out that if I did have another miscarriage, I would still tell them even though they were having a shit time themselves.  This was very true.

All of this was another push to write this blog. To take down the veil, to attempt to break some of those conversational barriers and make it more easy to talk about.

As I mentioned above, I am an Emergency Medicine Doctor but I am not writing this blog with any medical expertise in the field of fertility medicine.  I am writing purely from the perspective of my own personal experiences as a patient and a woman. I have absolutely no intention to hurt or offend anyone and I apologize if you find the issues I discuss confronting or challenging.  I am only writing to share my personal experiences and hopefully provide some solidarity to many other women out there who are experiencing fertility issues themselves.  

Finally, if you would like to message me or request a topic for discussion, I would love to hear from you.

Lots of love and positive pregnancy wishes,

Laura

xxx