Infertility.

This is my first post for 3 months. Usually my blog is quiet when life is going well, but unfortunately not this time. It’s been quiet lately because I’ve not had the words to explain what’s going on.

‘It’ started in April. Well, really I don’t know when ‘it’ started, but I suspect January because that’s when I started getting symptoms I couldn’t ignore. Night sweats so bad I needed to sleep on a towel. Hot flushes. No periods since September. Some other sexual stuff which you probably don’t want to hear about. Weight gain despite marathon training (which, if you didn’t already know, has been postponed to 2019). Memory loss to the extent that I could drive to Tesco for a single specific item, arrive with no idea why I was there, do 3 laps of the shop hoping I’d remember, and concede defeat and phone Darryl to ask what we needed. Olive oil, as it happens.

I put off seeing a GP for months as I could plausibly explain each of those symptoms through a combination of hardcore marathon training/stress/a relationship becoming established after we’d settled into living together. Collectively, though, I knew they were a problem and so did my GP. Her first line of inquiry was the one I expected: blood tests to look for lymphoma or leukaemia which, in view of my haematology issues, seemed sensible. She also added on some hormonal tests “just to get a full picture”. 

I was blindsided on 9th April when I had a call from my GP, asking me to see her the next day. I checked results, and they didn’t look good. I had a night shift that night and partially coped with the help of Ben and Easter eggs, but at 2:45 crumbled and went home. I got a few minutes of sleep at a time before I woke myself up questioning if it was 8:00 yet, and was I able to book an appointment? I got one for 9:50, but no more sleep.

The appointment was worse than I’d feared. I had unmeasurably low oestrogen, FSH (the hormone needed to turn ‘eggs’ into a follicle which can be fertilised to become a baby) and LH (the hormone needed to trigger ovulation). Borderline TSH (thyroid stimulation hormone), and high cortisol. The upshot: my pituitary gland isn’t working properly, causing premature ovarian failure and infertility, the most likely cause of this being a pituitary gland tumour. I was sent home clutching prescriptions for diazepam and zopiclone, and a referral letter to endocrinology under the 2 week suspected cancer pathway.

I went home, knocked myself out on zopiclone, and made no attempt to process what I’d been told, instead concentrating on coming up with a way to tell my parents. I decided it wasn’t news to break over FaceTime and Darryl needed space to process it too, so I went to Northamptonshire armed with information sheets, printouts of my results, and diagrams of where the pituitary gland is. 

After a few days I came back up north and survived for a few weeks with the help of benzos, zopiclone, and alcohol. Not healthy, but absolutely necessary at the time. By early May I was driving myself crazy being occupied by my own thoughts (mainly “how can I be an infertile midwife?”, “I feel incredibly guilty about surviving as long as I have done, and surviving a brain tumour would push me over the edge”, and “I can’t cope with any more”) and decided I’d be better off going back to work. I sent an email to my colleagues explaining my diagnosis and they’ve all been sensitive and supportive, but I feel an almost physical pain whenever I’m making small talk with a patient and they ask if I’ve got kids. But that’s it... I feel it, I survive it, and it goes.

Later in the month I had an MRI and an endocrinology appointment: my pituitary gland is mildly enlarged but ultimately normal and tumour-free. There is no explanation for why it’s failing. IVF will be my only option to have a biological child, and given my crap ovarian reserve I was strongly advised to have this by the time I was 30. I turned 28 in the middle of this, and Darryl and I have been together lass than 18 months.

I’m having counselling, but I don’t think I’m close to coming to terms with it yet. In the first month I did laps around baby shops to try to make myself feel something. Work is hard. It’s a mentally draining job anyway: you may be delivering the 3rd baby of your shift, and your mind may be wandering back to the dead baby you delivered the shift before, but part of the skill of being a midwife is making the couple you’re with feel like their baby is the most precious you’ve ever met, and their moment is the only one that matters - try doing that whilst feeling resentful you’ll probably never have your own. 

It’s incredibly difficult being around people who try to be positive about it, but unfortunately they’re most of the people I know, and it’s even more difficult NOT being around them. I’m usually quite an upbeat person, but for now I just want to grieve. Whilst people may be correct in saying “there’s always IVF” (as long as I do it before I’m 30, and accept the 68% failure rate), “why not adopt?” (it’s an option worth considering, but won’t in any way be a comparable parenting experience to raising a birth child), “my friend had XYZ and now she’s got triplets”, or “think of all the travelling you can do without kids!” (yes, but I’d also like someone to pass my travelling stories on to, so they can tell their kids what grandma got up to when she was younger)... for now, I just need to be sad. There’s going to be plenty of time for positivity, but now isn’t it.

“She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.”

―Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower