“I HATE MY BODY !” I screamed .
This was all being said in a quiet voice with loud thoughts in my head . Negative after negative test whilst trying so hard to do everything right took me right to the edge.
You see this was the issue, notice that I said ‘doing everything right’ - life as we know it has a way of prescribing how things should look , how ‘this’ should be done etc , and what we don’t realise is actually the journey or process to what looks like something so easy is linear and if every single person could draw their own line depicting this personal journey it would make a wonderful array of patterns that don’t quite add up to how we expect the journey of trying to conceive to look for all couples , or even singles.
The other day I watched a clear blue digital video during a very short ad break on YouTube, and on that note that random yet annoying interruption whilst I tried to just take in all the wisdom and gems Gabrielle Union and Dwayne were dropping in their Oprah interview confirmed two of my curiosities and opinion;
(1) the internet is stalking us, every other annoying advert was about something pregnancy / baby focused.
(2) I think those glamourised adverts have a fairly immaculate depiction , where the lady has just taken a pregnancy test and then shows her husband the ‘2-3 weeks’ digital message that suddenly stops the over obsessed woman buying any more sticks to reaffirm the positive result... I rest my case and if you see where I going with this, back to the point I made earlier - this wasn’t
my experience .
Let’s rewind...
“ I HATE MY BODY”
I literally threw this pregnancy test at the mirror as I watched myself cry in the body that I despised.
This would have had to have been my eighth pregnancy test after officially missing four periods . Truth is , at this point I should have known that the absence of Aunty flo
wasn’t a result of a newly created life ready to rent my womb space (lol) for the next 9 months but rather a reality check that something wasn’t quite right.
In my earlier teenage days , not having a period was so ideal. As weird as it sounds I wasn’t having sex to assume the obvious, but neither did this trigger any thought as to whether this would need further investigation for my impending future when I would finally decide to start a family.
After all, first comes love , then comes marriage then comes a baby. Well if we have to go with that logical order , I was no where near love let alone a baby.
What I didn’t know was infertility would soon come knocking on my door above all else...
Now fast forward to when I stopped pressing snooze on my biological alarm clock. I suddenly addressed that alarm and my GP confirmed that my lack of periods was due to annovulation (lack of ovulation) I technically wasn’t releasing an egg.
I was put on the clomiphene for months which didn’t help in the slightest but definitely made me pile on the pounds to another level , raised my anxiety and disturbed my moods, gave me intense hot flush episodes and drove me completely insane. The catch 22 is, some of these were obvious things people started to notice , but subsequently assumed I was pregnant . ..Typical !
And so the journey of self hate begun. I hated my body because as far as I was concerned if a baby girl in the womb at some point already has a developing reserve of something near to a million of eggs , waiting to be used at some point in life,
why were my eggs broken?
Why couldn’t I ( what I believe defined me at the time ), promote my loved one statuses to daddy, Grandpa, grandma , Aunty etc.
To add salt to that deep inner wound , I was at least two stone heavier after a few rounds /cycles, years of fertility treatment, but still without a positive pregnancy test.
And that’s why me and digital pregnancy tests have a love hate relationship:
On one hand I didn’t want to accept that I’m ‘not pregnant’ as the screen would bluntly, but also quite rightly display to clarify my suspicions , which in my respect were actually my dreams/ heart desires.
My preference was to continue lying to myself about the 2nd invisible line in the test window.
And so on the other hand I loved clear blue again when after my 2nd and successful round of IVF, I was surprised with a ‘pregnant’ and also ‘3 weeks’ indicator. This stick reassured me that my body was capable of making and also baking a very healthy baby.
This stick I didn’t throw away, I held it in my hand with disbelief but yet a next level of excitement I couldn’t even contain.
My bruised stomach and thighs from all my injections, the greasy Tzone and spotty face, and my bloated-belly that was about to be a legit bigger belly , were not a worry anymore .
I was still dealing with the complexes of not perceiving my self as a real woman as I needed a lot of help to get where I was to that day, but then also this is the day that I made a vow to slowly but surely start loving myself again.
My marks , bruised and weight gain suddenly became the scars that defined the mental and physical battle I was slowly overcoming.
I beat infertility and that being said if it comes
knocking on our door the second time round when we decide we are ready to extend our family , we will beat it again , this time hopefully with better headspace and being in a better place.
For now as I holiday , please refrain from the comments or thoughts about the possibility of making another baby on this ‘baecation’- that may not happen , as to put it frankly I‘m back to the place of very irregular periods (more to discuss soon on the blog) . There’s no offence taken , I’m just reminding you all that everyone’s circumstances are different so such statements my not apply to some.
*sips on a pina colada*
Bye for now
Xxx
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