Life after a failed IVF

I don’t know where to start really.

I feel empty. Hopeless. Broken. Lost.

My heart is aching and hurting in a way that it has never felt before.

Life after a failed IVF is a messy and confusing place, and not the kind of experience I would wish on anyway.

I am struggling to focus and to think. It is Christmas in a few weeks and I still can’t decide what I want to do for it; do I see my family who’ve been unable to physically comfort me during this trauma, or do we stay at home and let our hearts rest, or do we go on holiday somewhere?

All I am doing is fighting to survive. I am fighting to keep my head above the waters and to not fall apart.

There have been a few moments where I’ve sat on the closed toilet seat at work and just cried because something has reminded me of whats happened, or where something simple has triggered me at home and I’ve ended up crumpled in a heap on the floor in tears.

There have been times that I’ve going onto social media and, no word of a lie, the first 5 posts are baby announcements, pregnancy announcements or parents showing off their beautiful babes. There is nothing wrong with this and its truly wonderful. But words can’t express the deep pain this is bringing me. The desperation, jealousy and longing. It hurts like nothing I’ve experienced.

My heart is yearning for something more than what I’ve got and having been the closest I ever got to it, it feels more painful to still not have it.

I miss my babies; my beautiful embryo that tried to make my uterus its home (for how long, we will never know) and my other 6 fertilised eggs that had our DNA and were part of Pete and I. I miss them being a part of this world and the grief of losing something so small and insignificant to many is hard to bear. Hard because we may never get any closer to having our own biological baby.

For the 10 days we wondered if the embryo was still there, snuggling up inside me, are now the 10 most precious days of my life. I had to be treated as ‘pregnant’ and we had to behave as though I was ‘pregnant’. And for some of that time, I really truly was pregnant and my heart aches knowing that we will never meet that sweet, precious baby.

I am angry. I am so angry. The injustice of it all. Why are Pete and I having to suffer in this way just to make a baby when other people ‘accidentally’ get pregnant? Why are we having to look into ways that we will be able to afford up to £20,000 for just the chance of having just 1 baby? Why does my heart hurt so much and long for and desire to start our own family but we can’t, when other people give their children up because they were “a mistake”?

I am so angry at it all. I’m angry at our clinic for not giving us our baby. I am angry at my body for not accepting our embryo. I am angry at my heart for believing that it could have been.

But most of all, I am just completely broken. I am trying my hardest to keep it all together; to keep smiling at work, to keep socialising (at a distance of course!), to stay positive and to look forward. But I am afraid my heart is hurting too much right now. I can’t hold it together all the time and sometimes it all feels just a bit much.

I don’t know where this leaves us except empty. Empty hearts and empty arms. I don’t know which clinic we will choose to go with, or which package to pay for. I don’t know where the money will come from and how we will ever pay it back.

I don’t know if we will ever have our baby in our arms.

And the worst part? Sometimes, there are moments where I don’t know if this heartache will ever be worth it.