How to deal with “the two week wait” and negative results at its end?
“The measure of a life has to do with this subletting ability — with how well we are able to settle into this borrowed, imperfect abode and how much beauty we can bring into existence with however little control over its design we may have”. Maria Popova , author of Brain Pickings
Infertility—whether due to difficulty getting pregnant or due to repeated miscarriages — carries a huge amount of grief. The difference with the usual grief process is that with grief there is normally a single loss, which is followed by months or years of non-linear, but steady, progression on the part of the griever’s ability to cope. This is not the case for infertility, where losses are cyclical: “The unique part of the infertility process is that the losses are compounding. Month after month, cycle after cycle, treatment after treatment, the losses compound and the grief can expand.” explains Beth Jaeger-Skigen, psychotherapist.
First, there is the anticipation of loss, and yet the remnant of hope. During the period between ovulation / treatment procedure e.g. IUI, IVF (usually around day 14 of your cycle) and before the results (day 28), “the two-week wait” as it is sometimes called, I found that my mouth would vary enormously. During those two weeks, everything forced me to lie to those unaware of our infertility journey. Why I was not drinking alcohol, why I couldn’t do exercise. Doctors in Kenya were pretty conservative and were adamant I should not give way to the temptation of attending my Zumba dance class. I tried to detect every weird signal in my body. Whether my boobs were heavier. Whether the awkward taste in my mouth could be due to nausea or if it was only the remains of the spinach I had for lunch.
I’d invested so much money, energy and time into the process, the wait was unbearable — as if I was taking university entrance exams every month. As the date of the results drew closer, I started to not be able to look in my underwear and was anticipating the trauma each time I went to the bathroom that I might see blood. I’d look at the date and start to think: “What if by next week I found out I was pregnant?”, and alternatively: “Will I be able to cope with one more disappointment next week?”. Imagining two possible futures, one ecstasy, one despair. Sometimes, hope would come alive and suddenly I could see the world in brighter colors than ordinary. I might read positive signs in tiny events — like finding an orange “baby” seed in my orange as I peeled it (“Coincidence is just God’s way of remaining anonymous”, Donna Tart wrote). Hours later, I felt the weight of impeding negative results instead.
Whether it was through detecting blood in my hotel room in Addis or because of the “It’s negative” response of the hospital lab receptionist after an IUI, the pain of yet another lost cycle never got easier. This is common. To quote from Resolve, the American Infertility patient organization: “Being in treatment can feel like an open wound, or perhaps be more like the scab stage, with the hope of new skin growing underneath. But when the pregnancy test again comes back negative, it is like the scab is ripped off too soon and the healing must start all over again.”
So what can be done to reduce the sting of negative results?
- I found that the best way to deal with it depends on your personality type. If you are an “E” on the MBTI test (an extrovert), then probably you can source new energy by being with other people. I always found the nights following negative results were less painful if I was having dinner with friends, playing a game, or otherwise doing something I considered valuable. This required having the courage to plan the evening before I knew what the results would be, but actually helped as it prevented me from rambling negative thoughts. Richard is more of an “I” (introvert) and for him recuperating would be more about having some quiet time: exercising, reading a book, watching a movie.
- Avoid playing “if” games with yourself. There’s a natural tendency when the results come back negative to think back on anything you’ve done during the last month and blame that. What if I hadn’t been camping? What if I had worked less hard? That is just not constructive. Kill those thoughts immediately.
- Don’t blame yourself for experiencing extreme pain, and say no to the “gentrification of emotions”:
“There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings — depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage — are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the native texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz memorably put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.” — Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
· Think that, no matter what, you are now one cycle closer to the day that you will eventually resolve this infertility crisis, even if you don’t know how far that day might be.
· Identify other exciting projects you can pour yourself into, even as you go through this infertility journey. “You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love,” said the artist Louise Bourgeois.
