IVF two has failed - a backdated post

This post is backdated from Monday. Like I said I kept a diary even though I couldn't post the entries. Writing is such a natural form of therapy in infertility. It really helps clear the heart and mind.

Know that I feel a lot better than I did when this first happened. It is very bad and then it gets slightly better. I know the pattern now. At the end of two days the total darkness lifts and there is small shaft of light. At the end of two weeks it's still blurry but images start coming into focus. At the end of two months you feel like a slightly altered version of your old self.

Monday, November 20th

I guess I had need to worry about the weekend. Call it foresight, I mean if you believe in that sort of stuff. We women are so tense and turned inward during all this cycling that it would come as no surprise that there would be some inner female voice whispering the outcome. And so to make a long story well, even longer, the weekend played out very much like I hoped it wouldn't and feared it would. Somehow it still caught me completely off guard.

It's Sunday night and I run for a quick last pee before tucking myself into bed. I sit there, hurrying due to the cold, and when I glance down I am suddenly stung by fear. I feel the familiar pang of suffocation as the walls of the toilet close in tightly around me. The sight of pink. Pink spotting is not good. Pink is never good as anyone will tell you. Brown blood is okay, it's old blood probably from an earlier implantation, but pink dear ones is the kiss of death in many a well documented failing IVF or pregnancy. Still the optimistic hope villain wears on and I coax myself out of the toilet with a story. "Maybe it's just some really new implantation spotting." I try telling myself. But another part knows too well that the guillotine is about to fall. I am doomed to seek refuge for the next few days in that place I've gotten to know a little too well this year. The very awful brainstorm is about to blow back in.

I climb into bed and Seb must have seen the look on my face, white and ashen I suppose or maybe wide eyed and resigned. I don't know which it was but it prompted him to ask if I was okay. I look away from his eyes because I know I am about to lie and say flippantly, "oh I'm just having some low back pain you know and it has me worried." lie. lie. lie. His reaction is a stunned silence, followed by an exasperated sigh. I suddenly feel relieved that I didn't tell him the truth about the blood. Besides there was that whole possibility of implantation spotting and why get him worried for nothing, right?

I lie there in the bed staring up at the ceiling unable to sleep. It is pouring rain outside and the winds were blowing hard making the timbers in the old attic creak. I study the sounds, mind on hyper speed. What am I going to do? Oh my god what am I going to do?

On Monday morning the bleeding is worse, a bright shiny red and frighteningly glaring from such a dizzying altitude of hope. The crash. The plunge. A floodgate of tears that will not stop. An overwhelming feeling that any contact with the outside world would burn like the touch of an open flame. I stay inside all day. Invisible razor blades continue to slash at bits of my soul each time I am forced to go in the toilet. The grief process is neatly turned on. Almost with a click of a dial and the buzz of a power current ground zero of a long and intricate healing process starts all by itself. I don't control it. It controls me, leading me through the steps.

For at least now it is truly as if someone has died in this house. Little S doesn't understand. He doesn't talk but he looks confused. Why is mommy crying? Why is mommy sitting under the table so long? Is this a game? The day wears on and each task seems insurmountable. Loading the dishwasher and washing the laundry are beyond comprehension. Making the bed seems futile and the bed and covers offer a comforting alternative to coping with the task of standing up and dealing with living. I can cover my head. I can disappear.

The day ends with a power outage. How fitting the outage of the telephone and internet is. The lights flicker off and on and it is as though the shortage of electricity ebbs and flows with my own inner tide of emotions. The internet and phone stay out of service and I have to admit that I am pleased to have an excuse not to answer the phone and act the part of someone mildly disappointed but coping just the same. I am not mildly disappointed. I am devastated. It's impossible to hide.

Later in the evening I call Seb and tell him finally, "It's over. I'm bleeding." Silence. He is so overwhelmed with shock that he says nothing for what seems a whole minute. "Are you still there...honey?" He does not answer. Can not. Finally a peep of a voice filters through. "Why were we able to have one baby and now this?" the angry words tumbling off his lips before he has time to think of the implication to my fragile well being. It seems he too has invested far too much hope in the cycle. He too was blindsided. He didn't see the negative results coming any more than I did. To him it was just a question of would it be twins? Maybe it would just be one child and we'd be a little disappointed. We always wanted twins. What infertile couple doesn't dream of that? The delicious bounty of two perfect children. It wasn't twins. It wasn't anything. He would have to accept that it was in fact nothing at all.