I had always expected I would have kids. As a child you dress dollies and give them names. Mine were two girls, just like my sister and I. Charlotte and Helena. Then you start dating boyfriends and imagine what your children would look like. Then life happens. Career, divorce, loss of a parent, sadness. Then you meet the love of your life and you really really do want a baby. Except it is probably too late. As you're over 35.
You try and try and wait and wait. Every month is torture. You have miscarriages and other weird things like a 'blighted ovum' but no good news. Then your doc says it's time to have a fertility check up. That's when the penny drops. Before it seemed a probability now a possibility.
Then you enter the dark zone, the gloomy underworld of assisted fertility. You have to have all sorts of hideous tests that no EVER talks about. Hysterography where they flood your tubes with iodine and scans where they poke round. You overanalyse blood levels and lose yourself in the internet trying to decode it all. Meanwhile preg mums sit in the same waiting rooms and baby envy invariably sets in. They probably got pregnant with one blink of an eye, those fertile myrtles!
I have many friends who have gone through all of this. It is not the tests that hurt it is the way they are handled afterwards. There is a biological reality for us all. I never knew women had a finite amount of eggs nor that we might not ovulate every month towards the end of our fertility. We do need to know this stuff. But the way doctors handle us is atrocious. We become oestrogen levels and sperm counts. We stop being human to them and become the equivalent of fertility stocks and shares. Will they back us and invest in us or will they move on to another more procreative option. I believe no doctor has the right to say it is over, we should shut shop and hand up a closed sign on baby making. Well not until we are 101. There are so many anecdotes of women who are told there will never ever be a baby and a few months later they fall pregnant. So put that in your pipe and smoke Mr ASSisted Fertility man.
Once the news has been digested we head into the hardest phase of all where the ultimate decision is made. Insemination, IVF, egg donors or adoption. All of which are tough and relationship testing. Or no baby which is the hardest thing of all to swallow.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I personally do believe that a baby will to come to each and every one of us. It might not be the baby we thought we would get but there will be an offspring. It just means redefining what it is to have a kid. If I look hard at my life it is already filled with children even though I'm technically not a mum.
My husband has three gorgeous children and my sister has two adorable nephews so I have oodles of kiddy cuddles on tap. We also have a kitten that has been the receptacle of so much maternal love. I have also written two books, third one the way, Harry Potter for girls and am about to birth them too. So life has great stuff in store. We will see what happens on the baby front. There are so many options and we will consider carefully each and every one. I am lucky to have a great and positive doctor so I feel nurtured and cared for. I seem to be in the minority and gynae doctors need a wake up call. They should take a spoonful of their own medicine and see how they feel. Negative thinking spreads doom and gloom. Miracles only happen when there is faith and hope. And there is always hope.