You win some, you lose some

Bite This: A woman under 35 years of age undergoing IVF has a 39.6% chance of having a baby. That’s it – 39.6%.

You know that feeling when you wake up from a bad dream and there’s a moment of panic and despair? And then the sense of relief floods over as soon as reality hits? It feels like that first moment, waiting for that sense of relief that is not going to come.

This past year was measured in intervals of time – when we will find out the results of this, maybe by this time we will know this, when we will be able to do that…it was pretty much a blur. I don’t remember a whole lot of the in between. And living like that will drive a person insane.  Life is too short to be constantly looking forward to something and forgetting to live in the present.

We grieved for a night over a bottle of wine and a cup of frozen yogurt, and then have gone on like nothing’s changed, because what's the point in sitting around crying? In just an instant, our shred of hope that we had left had disappeared.  It's easy to see how people can get addicted to this, addicted to hope. Even when things are not going well, there’s still hope, still a chance that keeps you going, keeps you moving forward in this long drawn out process. When you lose that hope, you want to do whatever you can to get it back, instead of just sitting around doing nothing about it. The down side is that insurance companies and reproductive clinics take advantage of this vulnerable population by not paying for a thing. They know that people will be back for one more round, for that last bit of hope. But that’s another topic for another day.

I know that we are only one in thousands of couples who have gone through this, and luckily we have not been through anything worse than this like many other couples.  I know that there are hundreds of couples who have gone through multiple IVF cycles with the same poor outcome each time. I know that we’re not alone, but every person, every couple has his/her own story. And no two are alike.

We have talked about a million different scenarios in which life can and will take us from here. We just need to choose one direction and try to live life in the present. You just never know what’s around the next corner.  After all, this feeling, this situation, is only temporary.