Thoughts on stopping

Firstly, I’m really sorry about my silence over the last few months. WordPress tells me that I haven’t posted since July (gasp)!!! I’ve been mulling over a few things and have several posts in mind but today I want to engage with the concept of stopping trying… something that has been very much on my mind recently.

We have decided that our next transfer will be our last. We’ve been trying with my body for four years now… our entire married life. Thankfully we were together for 6 years prior to getting married so we did have a lot of pre-infertility time together, but it is rather sad that married life has been such a struggle. Anyway, I am tired. So very tired. What am I tired of?

Although I have continued to work through this whole time, my work has definitely suffered. I haven’t gone to any training workshops, I haven’t done much reading, I haven’t engaged in proper supervision… it’s as though my mind has been in an infertility fog. So consumed with the whole process of infertility that there hasn’t been room for anything else. I would like to get back on track professionally – go to some workshops, gain some new ideas for therapy, find a great supervisor and start reading again.

Travel. Although we have still managed to go away on one or two holidays over this time, we have spent SOOOO much money on infertility that there hasn’t been money left for any great adventures. Ironically, over the last four years we have both done pretty well financially, better than we ever had done before. Had we not been spending all our savings on infertility, we would have been able to go on several awesome holidays. I don’t begrudge the money we spent as I could never go through life knowing that we didn’t try everything we could – but still, limbo. I’d like to stop spending money on infertility and start spending money on one or two great adventures as I’ve always loved travelling.

Hmmm, what else… our sex life. I won’t even go there but suffice to say it’s taken a major dive.

Relationships – I’ve withdrawn from a lot of my friendships. Over the course of the journey it has been for several reasons. Sometimes because I didn’t have the energy to put in the effort, other times because my infertility gave me a new perspective on certain friendships (realizing that they weren’t the friendships I thought they were), and still other times because my friends were blessed and I wasn’t and the ensuing emotions were too difficult to handle. But I’m tired of this – I want to live again and to enjoy my friends.

Family. My family don’t live locally and so in order to see them, they have to come to me or I have to go to them (obviously). Due to infertility treatments…time and money, I haven’t been to see them as much as I would like to. This saddens me and is another thing that I am tired of. Although we are all in touch daily, I want to go and visit my family more and feel more a part of their lives.

My body. I’ve put on 14kg over the course of my treatment and have gone from being pretty fit (I was with a personal trainer prior to my wedding and was fit and strong for the first time in a long time), to being very unfit and weak. My back is really playing up and I know I need to shift some weight and get my core strength back. But I find infertility treatments so consuming – time, money, energy – that I have little motivation to exercise. I would like to get my body back and to feel fit and strong again.

Those are some of the reasons that I can think of right now, but I know there are others. I’m not entirely sure what we will do if our next transfer does not work. My husband is not open to adoption and I had an epiphany about this yesterday. For the longest time I’ve tried to persuade (read beg) him to figure out what the block is and to do something about it. I’ve raged and got mad and sad and desperate. It may pass but my current feeling on it is that if he is not open to it, I will not do anything more to try and change his mind because it will always feel like second best, like settling… and I couldn’t bear that. I have no idea what the implications of this are and they scare me so much that I am not even going to engage with them right now. I’m going to be an ostrich and assume it never comes to that. Because I would love to adopt – would have done so four years ago and can definitely see myself adopting in the future… but not with my husband. So yes, scary stuff.

A lovely friend out of the blue offered to be a surrogate. This is an absolutely amazing offer – the kindness and selflessness just blows me away and we may very well take her up on her offer. The dilemma is that it means many of the above points become null and void and I’m not sure yet how I feel about that. So much uncertainty guys! But isn’t that one of the defining features of infertility… uncertainty and waiting… and my tolerance for both is almost done.

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