IVF treatments completed...

Not having to pay for a 40 thousand donor egg cycle or a ten thousand dollar IVF cycle and making the decision a few months ago to end any invasive treatments in the future has loosened our pocket books. The financial pressure of infertility treatments put a big strain on hubby (not to mention our relationship). Knowing how much we wanted to be parents and with only so much money to work with, has set us back. But the situation has changed. At this point we are sitting on a 35 thousand dollar debt from treatments. Some of that includes acupuncture that I did throughout all my treatments. That 35 thousand dollar debt has prevented us from building a home, updating our current home, purchasing a new vehicle….. When we got our income tax back last year it took me over a week to convince hubby that we should use the 5 thousand dollars to go on a trip since infertility treatments had not made that possible since our honeymoon. And we deserved it and we went and we loved it.

Although the 35 thousand dollars still hangs above our heads and we continue to peck away at it month by month we are not on such a strict time line now. Our time line consists of two years at this point. Not two months. Our IVF treatments have reached a finish line. There will be no more injections, embryologist phone call updates, 10-15 thousand dollar purchases at a fertility clinic. I will never have to lay on that surgical table while a strange doctor sticks a needle the size of my forearm into my vaginal wall to suck out any eggs that were “artificially” growing in my ovaries. I am done. There still may be pills and there will always be day ones. There will be two week waits and strange rituals that somehow in my mind increase my chances of pregnancy but my IVF treatments are completed.

Last year was a time for healing. I took the year to explore me and Danny’s relationship again, to reach out and explore long lost hobbies, we got a puppy and took an amazing vacation. However I never stopped tracking my period. I seen a natural path (who by the way is amazing) to help me heal my body and soul and to find out what was going on with my screwed up body. And eight months later I was pregnant. Reflecting on this makes me realize that while in the trenches of infertility, in the middle of the fight, life is still going on all around you. While you are trying to breathe and cope and make sense of a destiny you don’t want, people are still living. I potentially lost 3 years with my husband as I screamed, scratched, howled and almost drowned in my own sorrow and pain. My amazing, wonderful, patient husband…..lost just like that. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be the crying, unstable, unreasonable person I was while I tried to make sense of infertility. I want to live. I want a union with my husband that is happy and full of love. And although I knew I loved my husband during those times it was not my focus. This is why I want to stop any future IVF treatments. I want the life I imagined for myself before infertility entered our lives.

I never imagined myself with just one child. If things were “normal” I’d have 3 munchkins….. although anything is possible…I am prepared for one. One miracle. I will never stop trying though. Once this little one enters our lives it won’t be long before I’m tracking again, visiting my natural path and analyzing every nudge and twitch for something that feels different.

It feels good to start thinking about leaving this part of our lives behind us and building a new future together. It feels good to have the pressures of infertility slowly peel off you. And it feels even better to know that despite the hardships of infertility we still got eachother.