What are you going to ask for for Christmas? Me, a little peace. No more thinking about anything. No longer think that this Christmas 2020 will be the third when I am expecting a child.
This text was sent to us by an Internet user who wished to remain anonymous. Thank you to her for this poignant sharing which will undoubtedly speak to those who have lived or are currently living through a journey of assisted reproduction.
"Not a child who would be pushing in my womb, like those elephant moms who keep their 22 month old babies in them, so that they are strong enough to face the world. I am expecting a child who does not come, who is not there, and that may never happen.
My husband and I tried to have a baby naturally from the summer of 2018. I remember the first times we had sex with this goal in mind, eye to eye, feverish, thinking, “This is it, there we are. We are going to become parents ”. But the months have passed. Then a first year. Doubt started to settle in my head: what if we had a problem? One evening in May 2019, at a party, I finally dared to ask a pregnant friend, "It took you a little while to get there, right?" I see her lovingly caressing her round belly: “We had to do a assisted reproduction. It took us four years ”. Four years ! Unthinkable. How does a couple survive such an expectation? Like a person whose whole being is screaming “I want to be a parent” stand still?
I'll tell you, she has no choice.
In the months that followed, I went out of my way to get my husband to accept the reality: we needed medical help. Arguments were frequent then, he did not share my suffering, or he did not express it the same way. I was unhappy and it was known, kept everything inside. A psychological follow-up, with a specialist in assisted reproduction, was recommended to us. “It helps to communicate, to face this ordeal”. The test had only just begun: that of the doctors' waltz. Orders. Exams. Needles, blood pellets, specula, liquid injected into the tubes that make you feel like you are being beaten up with a baseball bat. In all elegance, the doctor who performed my hysterosalpingogram told me: "It was not me who hurt you, it was you: inside it was the Berlin Wall." A clot in my organs? Actually not at all. My uterus “was perfect”. My tubes were “working fine”. I was ovulating "with the regularity of a clock."
It made me a nice leg. The waltz continued. The queues at the analysis lab, the nurses who finally recognize us despite the continuous flow of patients, my husband who has to ejaculate in a vial, once, twice, ten times. The doctors had still not found anything: we were part of the 7 to 10% of couples whose infertility has no identified cause. “It will work,” he said, “we just don't know when”. I cried every time I had my period (counted: 28 times since I decided to be a mother).
PMA makes you nasty: when you thought you were a good friend, you could easily tear out this little seed that grows and plant it in your own belly.
Finally, we were invited to get to the heart of the matter: a hormonal treatment for me, necessary before starting an insemination cycle – the “soft version” assisted reproduction, which foresees that the sperm of Mr. is centrifuged, then that the “champions” are injected into Madame's uterus, whose ovulation has been boosted by the famous treatment. Stings in the stomach five nights in a row, sometimes more, to do myself in the fat of the stomach. Overnight I gained five pounds of water retention, that's more flesh to sting. This summer, the insemination attempts continued over three months. Chess too.
At this stage of loneliness and pain, we decided to share our situation with those around us, inspired by a couple of friends who affirm that “taboos are as heavy as infertility”. The majority of our loved ones have listened, with empathy. Some have been disappointing beyond imagining, with their big hooves and their own parenting neuroses. An assisted reproduction is the mourning of certain ideals: that of the child we have one summer evening in a bed full of love, and that of friendship that we thought will last for eternity. There were the awkward ones, too. This friend who asks, "And have you thought about adoption?", As if talking about meditating or moving to a bigger place. This other, pregnant with her fiancé, but now wondering about it and telling you over the phone that she "made three dates to have an abortion", before canceling each time. The one who "understands" because "she's been trying with her boyfriend for a month", and this morning, "she found herself very sad to have her period". And then there are all the ones who got pregnant, one after the other, each new announcement tearing a little piece of my heart. PMA makes you nasty: when you thought you were a good friend, you could easily tear out this little seed that grows and plant it in your own belly.
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Testimonial: "6 inseminations, 4 IVF, I went all the way to have a baby"
The body of a pregnant woman, but a hopelessly empty stomach.
The little seed, we had to talk to him, on the advice of our shrink, in the wake of each attempt at IVF. Because last September, after the failed inseminations of the summer, we went to heavy artillery: dose of hormones increased tenfold and therefore, exploding breasts, swelling belly, nausea, acid perspiration, drowsiness, because of the bites estrogen and progesterone ova you are being fed. All the signs that you are expecting a baby, without knowing if you will one day … Here it is, the greatest pain: a pregnant woman's body, but a hopelessly empty belly.
I responded so well to the IVF treatment that I produced about twenty eggs, collected in a clinic with so benevolent medical staff that I had tears in my eyes, wedged in my stirrups and a catheter in my arm . Unless it was the pain of the giant needle, which took my eggs one by one as if tearing little bits of flesh from my insides. We obtained, after culturing our ova and sperm, two blastocysts – fertilized ova which held 5 days in culture, the must according to the doctors. Two was less than the expected quantity, but still: two seeds to welcome one after the other, to pamper while remaining calm 48 hours after implantation, to whom to speak to better accept this journey of the fighter, then be able, in a few years, to tell our child how he was conceived.
But there was no child
No seed took. This morning I had my period, and I didn't even have any tears to cry.
No seed took. This morning I had my period, and I didn't even have any tears to cry. I poured it all in last month, when we got the results of the pregnancy blood test: a poor email from the analytical lab, full of lines of numbers that we had to decode with the help of medical forums. Of the 50% chance of success announced by the doctors, nothing was left except me screaming in pain, curled up at the foot of the bed, and my husband by my side, with no more strength than to repeat "I am sorry".
Because of the pandemic, the total stoppage of assisted reproduction programs during the first confinement, and therefore their postponement, but also health rules that reduce the number of patients in fertility services, we must now wait for January , maybe February, to resume the treatment of hell and do another oocyte puncture. I can't even wait any longer. I'm not even angry with this injustice anymore. I'm just empty.
I just have the energy to think of all the people who are expecting a child, who is not pushing in their womb but who does not come, who is not there, and who does not. may never happen. I also think of lesbians, single women and trans people who are not even entitled, like me, to this five-star course, so painful but at least authorized by the State and reimbursed by the Social Security. I finally think of the one who lost a baby, then still coiled in a belly. I obviously cannot compare my grief to their drama. But some nights I feel like a mother without children. "
See also: "My son is independent, he is a baker, he manages very well on his own" the rant of a deputy to defend the PMA