No news isn’t always good news

I haven’t posted an update on our fertility journey for a while, mainly because nothing has been happening…

Literally nothing! We tried to conceive again following our last miscarriage, but nothing happened.

Then, as we were just about to start on a fertility drug, services temporarily closed due to Covid-19 and delayed us being able to access that help for about 4 months.

Then finally, at the end of summer, more than a year after our third miscarriage, we finally got prescribed with clomiphene (clomid) for three months. One last chance to get one last shot at a healthy pregnancy...

But still, nothing changed at all. We continued to see the same negative line on the pregnancy tests, month after month, after month.

Not what we were hoping for

A few weeks ago we were finally able to catch up with our consultant, who advised us that even though everything seems to be working okay, our best bet now was probably IVF.

It wouldn’t necessarily fix the recurrent miscarriage aspect, but it would at least give us one last attempt at a pregnancy… maybe… perhaps.

Right now, we are still awaiting the results of some further fertility tests/screenings just to rule out anything else that might be complicating our ability to get pregnant again, before we make our final decision. But it’s unlikely that they will uncover any new ‘game-changing’ information now. Most likely our inability to get pregnant again is simply down to age-related decline in egg quality.

Which leaves us wondering, do we really want to pursue IVF over 40? Not only are the outcomes at 40+ very poor (between just 5-10% chance of success, which is why the NHS doesn’t fund older women), but even if we did get pregnant again, we would still face a 50/50 chance that it would just turn into a very expensive miscarriage a few weeks later.

After 3 years of loss and grieving, of waiting and worrying, of getting out hopes up and then being disappointed, we’re just not sure we can take another knock like that.

We always said that we would give it until the end of this year to see if we could conceive again naturally, because this continuous state of limbo we’ve been living in for the past few years isn’t an emotionally healthy place to be, and it can’t just drag on forever.

Even so, right up until this final month of 2020, a small part of me has still been quietly hoping for a last minute miracle. I mean, you hear about things like this happening to people all the time! They stop trying, and then it just happens…

But alas, the third anniversary of our first Christmas miscarriage came and went last week, without our Christmas miracle anywhere in sight.

And so it is, with sad and heavy hearts, that we have decided to stop pursuing another pregnancy as this year closes out.

What happens now?

This is not at all the outcome that we wanted, and we feel the disappointment of that quite acutely. It’s really hard to let go of something that you’ve held out hope for over a long period of time, even if its a long-shot kind of hope.

But even so, a point comes in every infertility journey, where you have to choose to accept what is, rather than continuing to look backwards at what could have been, or off ahead into some distant alternative reality.

In many ways, the grief I currently feel in letting go of the possibility family feels even heavier than the grief I felt over each of our pregnancy losses. Perhaps that’s because it’s just so final.

I know that there are still other ways that we could consider growing our family too, and we are open to exploring all of those possibilities in time.

But this Christmas, we are just trying to take some time to rest, to heal and to process where we find ourselves right now, before we consider any longer term decisions.

On reflection

To be honest, I have found the past few weeks one of the hardest parts on this entire fertility journey we have been on.

But as I’ve been reading ‘The Greatest Gift’ by Ann Voskamp over this season, I’ve been reminded that miracles so often don’t appear as we want or expect them to.

Most of us want answers in flashing lights, signs written in the sky from God, and outcomes so clear that there is no room for any doubt or questioning at all.

Even when you reflect on the Christmas story, it’s easy to forget amongst all those angel appearances, virgin births, and wondrous stars, that Jesus still didn’t appear amidst a great fanfare that announced him as saviour of all, which everyone instantly recognised as a miracle either.

Instead, He came as a miracle hiding in the mundane - as an ordinary baby, born to an ordinary family, living in ordinary circumstances, in an ordinary town,

Were you hoping for some kind of Christmas miracle this year too? Well if like me, you have found that it’s not forthcoming, perhaps the Christmas story is our best reassurance that the greatest miracles of all are often those ones hiding in plain sight.

In the love of a family.

In the kindness of a friend.

In the hospitality of a neighbour.

In the generosity of a stranger.

This Christmas may not offer the kind of miracle we were hoping for this year - there may be no healing, no breakthrough, no pregnancy, but may we not miss the everyday miracles happening all around us.

And in our longing, may we also not forget the greatest miracle of all; the gift of Emmanuel, God with us, our quiet but constant assurance that even when life hurts like hell, there is always hope ahead.

May that be enough.

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