Infertility: it is what it is
At 28, I was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure (POF, but let’s just call it menopause for reasons of speed and also because when I google POF, everything is about how Plenty of Fish helps you get laid. Unfortunately that is not what this post is about, although it might be more interesting if it were…).
Now clearly, at the time, this was pretty shit news, and I will attempt to uncover some of how I felt in the weeks after finding out, but I also want to share how the diagnosis has shaped how I view life. My innate Britishness requires me to clarify that I’m not doing this to showcase how wise and f**king badass I am (although I really am, we ALL are), but hopefully to offer a different perspective to women (and their partners) who are in a similar position.
Firstly, however, maybe it would help to give a bit of background on some of the key character traits of our story’s protagonist (that’s me, in case anyone is thinking ‘what the devil is she on about now?’), to add context to my reaction to POF:
- I am a huge drama queen: I really do enjoy nothing more than a mildly catastrophic event (by this, I do NOT include genuinely tragic life or death situations where we as a global community can do nothing but come together and use love to beat the f**k out of hate) that I can then lament over and share with my extended, long-suffering network of friends and family. Not to mention my husband, who by this point has removed his own eardrums.
- I like attention: I do, I love it. And I like to make people laugh. I actually don’t think this is a terrible thing, as long as one uses one’s ‘LOOK AT ME!!!’ to say or do something positive, as opposed to just being a massive knob (mentioning no names).
- I am emotional: there’s no middle ground. I’m either giddy with joy, or sobbing at the John Lewis Christmas ad (this year’s. That penguin didn’t do it for me I’m afraid). I also excel at extreme annoyance, and extreme over-excitement.
- I’m pragmatic: this might sound contradictory to the emotion point, but so be it. As a wise man once said, ‘I am huge, I contain multitudes’ (or something like that. I don’t think he meant he was fat). I tend to react to most situations with an outpouring of drama, and then shrug my shoulders and utter ‘it is what it is’. Well, it is, isn’t it?
- I have a strong faith in God: this is not to say I am highly religious (I’m increasingly disillusioned with that, if I’m honest), but I am convinced that a higher power is in charge, and is gently guiding us through life, shaking its head and chuckling gently as we bumble around screwing it all up.
Hopefully that’s useful. If not, I apologise. Please don’t judge me and think I’m a self-centred douchebag. So, as I was saying, discovering at 28 that my ovaries had slipped into a food coma (possibly in part my fault…) and just stopped functioning, and furthermore that there seemed to be no eggs left in them bad boys, and therefore ‘a 0% medical chance of conceiving a child that is genetically yours’ (it really can’t be an easy job, telling people this stuff) was not exactly a picnic. I’ve tried to summarise my main reactions below (I LOVE a bullet point), roughly in the order they arose:
- Devastated: I cried. I cried A LOT. Then I cried some more. Two particularly memorable examples of said crying.
o In the bathrooms of the endocrinologist who finally confirmed that the hormone results weren’t a mistake, my ovaries had stopped working, and the internal scans showed not a single solitary follicle bobbing around with a flare torch waiting to be rescued. Until then, I’d assumed there would be a possible, albeit annoying, procedure that could maintain my chances of conceiving in the future. The tears were an acceptance that this was my new reality.
o In the bathrooms (always the first place to look if you’re in the mood to comfort someone) at work, when a colleague my age brought in her new baby, a couple of weeks after diagnosis. The tears were at how unfair this all was. Growing up, I was always the one who was certain they wanted babies, and exclaimed dramatically (quelle surprise) that infertility would be the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me.
- Ashamed and embarrassed: I felt it was my fault somehow. I drank (quite a bit…), I smoked (NOT ANY MORE MUM), I had fun. Maybe I’d damaged myself? Maybe I’d completely misunderstood GCSE Biology (entirely likely), and alcohol damaged the ovaries instead of the liver? I felt less of a woman (until someone helpfully pointed out that unfeminine women do not have hips and an ass the size of mine. Profuse thanks). I felt OLD (exacerbated by the bone density scan showing issues with my spine. Great, so now I shall be a childless cripple. Let’s have a party, a post-ironic baby shower perhaps).
- Angry: one of my driving values in life is fairness. When things are not fair, it sends me into a tailspin, to the point where I have stood in Euston station for 20 minutes arguing against the criminal injustice of not being able to buy an open return at the ticket machines during peak hours. I mean, it’s right up there with the equal pay debate. Finding out I was infertile (there, I said it), was, in my eyes, grossly unfair. When my fairness value is crossed, I get ANGRY. And then I get rude. It’s not a nice quality, and I try to control it, but it comes out. The main recipients of my anger during those first months were my GP (and given he diagnosed me over the phone in Waterloo station, I am largely over this) and friends who treated me with kid gloves if they told me they were pregnant / their baby had done a poo / they had period pains etc. I apologise unreservedly now to all those who tried to be sensitive and loving when giving me news, to be met with a snarl and a ‘fuck off, I’m fine’ (probably, I have a terrible potty mouth).
Everyone will react differently to life-changing news, and with fertility I think it might also depend what stage of life you are in. I was single, thinking of going off travelling the world, and a million miles from making babies. Further than I thought, as it happened… If you are actively trying for children, I imagine it might be an even more difficult adjustment. But, to be fair, I haven’t spoken to many other women with the same condition — a wonderful charity, The Daisy Network, exists to support those with POF, but I chose to deal with it within my immediate support network.
So, onto my great Life Learnings. The silver lining in the cloud. The yummy chocolate cream that you can only get to by eating a carboard-y Bourbon biscuit. Etc. Let’s break this up a bit — instead of bullet points, I shall divide learnings into different PARAGRAPHS. Thus contributing as much to expression in the English language, as a certain William Shakespeare.
Being out of control can be a good thing. That is a very, very hard thing to write. By nature, I am type A, red energy, ENTJ, whatever expression of ‘get the bejeesus out of my way or I shall simply run you down’ you wish to use. I decided I was turning vegetarian at age 9 (and still am to this day). I announced I was applying for a scholarship to a private school at 12 (as it turned out, this whim lasted roughly until I hit 15 and discovered boys, at which point I promptly ditched single-sex education…). I’ve quit more than one ‘good job’ to do something that looks more interesting — move to Paris, go travelling, move to New York, sit in a café writing this. The point is, I have always made my own decisions, based on what I want to do and believe is right for me. But then nature decided something fairly important for me — ‘you can’t have your own babies. It doesn’t matter how much you scream and shout, you cannot regrow your eggs.’
So why was this a good thing? Because wonderful things happen when life doesn’t go how you think it will. You might end up taking some time off work to go travel and get your head together, meet your soulmate who happens to be at one particular Cambodian hostel at exactly the same time as you, fall head over heels in love, move to New York and marry him. You might realise that every decision has a large element of chance, leading you to more easily follow your instinct and chase what you love, rather than what is safe or sensible. You might learn that you’re not ultimately in control, and become a better, more spiritual person for accepting the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
People are good. They are all that matters, in fact. It overwhelms me to think of the love and compassion that my family, friends and colleagues showed me as I was coming to terms with infertility. I never attended a single consultant’s appointment on my own — there was Emma, there was Nicola, there was Gemma, there was Dina. And no one has done more than my sister, who got in her car the second I called her when I found out, never tried to solve anything, just listened. She donated her own eggs so my husband and I will have a chance of having a baby who is as close a genetic match to me as possible (although, given I am ginger, there WAS discussion of trying to screen certain genes out first…), putting herself through the invasive IVF process and didn’t complain once (although she was extremely demanding about her meals during the whole thing). If nothing else came out of this experience than my appreciation of the people who love me, that would be more than enough for me.
Everything is funny, it’s just a matter of perspective. Now, this might not be for everyone, but I can’t imagine anything worse (there’s that drama again) than taking irrevocable situations too seriously. Yes, when infertility is new, it’s raw, and it’s very difficult to see it as anything but sadness, loss, injustice. But this passes — it has to, unless you genuinely want to live a life of grieving and lamenting your misfortune. Doesn’t sound much fun to me. What DOES sound amusing is….my mum happily commending my sister on inheriting ‘the fertile side of the family’ in front of me when she lays 29 eggs during the donation process…my husband and sister having to have a ‘pre-procedure’ dinner date to discuss the ins and outs of combining their gene pool…my nan thinking that the frozen embryos are kept in OUR freezer, and fretting about how we would clean it (for the record, I have never cleaned my freezer)…my friend wondering out loud how we’ll tell any offspring that ‘your mum’s your aunt’. I mean, it’s frickin’ hilarious.
It is not the end of the world. Nothing is (except the ACTUAL end of the world, and the gods only knows what that will be like, so I see little point worrying ourselves about it). It is a shit thing to happen, and it isn’t fair, but there you go. This is not to say that I advocate resigning yourself to a life of childlessness, unless that is what you what (and looking at the whole thing objectively, it does seem like the more appealing life option. All that time. All that peace and quiet. Noone ruining all your stuff and eating all your food….). If you don’t want kids, and you can’t have kids, well done fate. If you DO want kids, and you can’t have kids, we live in an age with more options than ever before. Clearly, none of the varied routes of IVF, donor egg IVF, adoption, acupuncture, herbs and potions etc are a walk in the park, neither are they guaranteed and neither are they cheap (which is an entirely different blog, and one where my fairness value will erupt). But they exist. And let’s face it, nothing is guaranteed for anyone. I have friends with ‘unexplained infertility’ who have had to wait 3 years before doctors will even listen to them. I don’t know about you, but in a funny way I prefer knowing what I’m dealing with.
So that’s it really. I hope some / any of this strikes a chord with some / anyone else. There are many other aspects to this that need to be considered — the impact on partners, the reality of dealing with POF if you DON’T have a support network, acknowledging this as a real medical possibility of the lifestyle choices we women make today. But we have to start talking about infertility more openly, and premature ovarian failure in particular.
Next time — I shall share the ups and downs of trying to get the British medical system to stump up money for treatment (hint: we failed).
