Mind Games

You would be forgiven for thinking that after 6 failed IVFs, I would have got the balance of hope and/or resignation completely figured out by now and I would just know which one was best. After all, as the Arabic saying goes, even a donkey will learn with enough repetition. Dear reader, I am sorry to tell you that, at least for this particular donkey, it doesn't work that way. As each cycle nears, I play this little game in my head, trying to decide which strategy to take. Shall I go for absolute certainty it's going to work, a.k.a the Secret, the law of attraction or whatever you like to call it? Or, since that didn't work last time, shall I just wrap myself in an emotional cocoon, knowing fine well it's not going to work so I may as well just protect myself from the inevitable? Or, my favorite, but by far the hardest - detachment, just shoving it under the carpet, not dealing with it and trying ever-so-hard not to even feel any feelings whatsoever.

I am blessed, as an IVF patient, with a fairly zen disposition. I mean, I'm no monk, but I'm also not a drama queen, and I have found that whichever strategy I choose, the resulting emotion after a BFN is more or less the same. I have maybe 30 seconds of tears, a couple of down days, and then pull myself together and count my blessings (the only major difference is that each time we are a little poorer, which weighs on us both). I have to point out that I am incredibly lucky that my husband want to have children just as much as I do. I know a lot of women struggle with this on top of the medical issue, and it definitely makes it harder for them. We have our differences about the process - I was absolutely ready to try donor embryos after our last failure, but Mic just isn't in that place yet - but I am constantly grateful that we are on exactly the same page in terms of our absolute determination to carry on. We even have a little hand signal we give to each other when there are just no more words, which loosely translated means "we'll go on and on and on and on".

At least I have learned one thing from our 6 IVF attempts. I do NOT analyze symptoms in the 2 week wait! I have literally had every early pregnancy symptom known to man, and not so much as a hint of a BFP, so nowadays I just silently curse the progesterone and try to think of something else.

As for my emotional strategy for IVF#7, I'm still working on it. But for now, I am super-confident about just one thing: we will be parents one day. Maybe this time, maybe not. Maybe with our own DNA, maybe not. Maybe through pregnancy, maybe not. But it will happen.