IVF and wherever it takes me.

[primrose]

I might not write much on this thread, but will see what happens with it.

I enjoyed the support group tonight. I noticed a few things. I was very touched by how close the couples were. I suppose that if IVF doesn't split people up, then it brings them together. That's my experience with my husband, and I saw that the other couples were very loving and gentle with each other. That was a lovely thing.

It made me wonder if my husband and I had gone to a support group when he had cancer if things would have turned out differently. Groups are very powerful things.

I noticed how different the group was to a meeting or a therapy group. It was uncontained really and I'm not used to that. I love the structure of a HOW meeting. I love the serenity in a room from that kind of meeting, how held and safe that kind of meeting feels to me. Therapy groups are crazy sometimes, but the rules are still all there and people are self-aware. Tonight I was in a room with very unhappy people who weren't really very self-aware at all.

I found that quite difficult to deal with. There was a lot of complaining about treatments not being available, resentment about different clinics, bad treatment. The main thing that people seemed to be struggling with is the inability to control getting pregnant. That was interesting as thanks to recovery, that isn't my main issue with IVF. Feeling powerless isn't a horrible thing for me thanks to my programme. I realise I'm very lucky to have recovery entering into IVF. It's like a huge step one, and because of my addiction, I know how to take step one. I'm grateful for that.

Before the meeting my husband and I went out for dinner and he asked me what the worst thing about IVF was, and I said "other people" and that is the truth for me. The process is very hard and painful, but sadly it has been people who have been the real struggle for me.

The reason for that is my childhood issues with my mother. I couldn't trust her and I was devestated by not being able to trust her. That fear and hatred and despair about her is triggered very deeply by the IVF. That is what I want to talk about when I discuss IVF. My own very early childhood and why I go crazy about women and how much I withdraw from them when I go through the process.

But that wasn't something that I could discuss at the meeting tonight, no way. I doubt anyone would have understood that. the agony about being childless, yes, they all get that and were expressing it and that was helpful. So now I find myself looking for something even MORE specific. Can I have someone please who has gone through ivf and has early abandonment issues with her mother which she's now resolved? Thank you. HA! No wonder I can never ever feel understood by women. The wound I have about my mother never understanding me is very deep indeed.

When I saw my therapist today I raged and wept about feeling that I must be the one who understands, makes allowances for, detaches, is mature, steps back. All of that stuff, and I said I was completely fed up of accepting that I couldn't get my needs met as all I wanted was some support instead of having to learn to protect myself and be the sodding grown up all the time. It was very helpful to let all of that out.

And tonight at that group I had that feeling again of knowing that here were just people who were in pain and really not people who could help me as such, actually, probably people who had done no therapy and were needy and had a lot of unprocessed stuff, and my heart sank a bit because it would just be nice once in a while to feel that I could open my heart and be with people who were able to deal with that.

I guess my mother using me as her ear meant I learnt so early on to hold back, to be emotionally self reliant and to give. I am still searching for the women who can hear me and make it better about my mother not hearing me, but no one can fill that wound. Of course I know that blah blah, but really letting go of it is hard. Harder than letting go of my POA I think. He was just one man I projected a lot of stuff onto and it was about my father so it was later and less primal. This pain about my mother is from the very beginning and I replicate it in so many relationships.

I get people in meetings who tell me they like my recovery, and I think what recovery has given me probably shows in a group like the one tonight. It's nice to have some sense of myself, but if people are attracted to me because of what I can give, that doesn't really help me right now! I want to be supported and learn to really support myself, I don't want to be doing any more service of any kind at the moment.

I have a friend who is a recovering love addict and her big thing in relationships is she wants men to give to her. It's never ever enough. She always wants more. Her therapist has told her that she must reparent herself around wanting more. That is all she can do. She can't ask for more, she must reparent herself instead.

I must do this about trying to be understood. I don't think I have a choice really. But it feels so incredibly unfair, all I want is some support, that's all. I just want women to get it right and be loving, listen, not tell me what to do because they want to fix me, not analyse me, not be stupidly insensitive. I just want them to be adult and loving. Is that too much? It doesn't seem so, but I know I am seeking perfection. The perfect mother who can take all my pain away, and that is because I didn't have one and never can. I have to be my own good-enough mother.

And now I also know that the first AF I have after an IVF attempt completely floors me. I hope it doesn't happen again (I hope I get pregnant!) but if it does, I know that it brings everything up and I feel completely broken and furious.

The bigger picture for me is that I am glad I'm processing these feelings about my mother, they are very important feelings for me to release, and if I can work through them, a lot of my avoidance will be healed and a lot of my fear of intimacy with women will be healed. So roll on the awful feelings! I am glad of them though. If I do have a child and I have a daughter, I will have done some of the necessary work already thanks to the IVF, so that is an amazing thing. Hopefully this way i won't have to cope with post natal depression and hopefully I will be able to bond fully with a daughter if I have one. This stuff is what prevented my mother from bonding with me and she just passed it all on.

[primrose]

I feel exhausted this morning. My AF is very heavy and I feel like I had a drugged sleep. Not that I've ever had one of those, but that's how I feel. Have a terrible headache and am all trembly.

Think the group brought up a lot for me. It isn't like recovery where if you work it you'll get better. It isn't that kind of group. There is no guarantee with this that everyone will get well if they do certain things. It is a group where people go because they might have to accept that their dreams will never happen.

It's a huge thing to have to deal with. In the group last night my husband spoke about neither of us being optimal. Afterwards I made a joke about it because it sounded so formal, but it bothered me and I asked him what he meant. He meant that he's had cancer and I'm nearly 40. I'm angry about all of that. Angry that he got ill when he did when he was so young really. Of course I'm grateful that he's alive, I'm so happy he's here, but a brain tumour in your 30s just when you're getting married? It's horrendous. I'm so angry that here I am at the age I am and there's nothing wrong with me.

Last night one of the women said that she thought unexplained infertility might have something to do with the brain so she was going for hypnotherapy. It's unfair of me to judge, but I did internally roll me eyes. It's so emotional for me this whole process. How can I relate to people who think only in terms of diet and clinics and drugs. I remeber Alice Miller writing about old people clutching bags of drugs in the pharmacy to help them feel better about death. That is what that group is like for me in a way. One woman said she felt better having the injections because she was doing something.

What if there is nothing to be done but accept "this might not work". That is what is so awful really. It might not work. It might be that my husband and I aren't going to have children.

Now I just feel all the people in that group are crap too! Wow, my child is really not coping at all with this situation. EVERYONE is crap because this pain is just too unbearable.

I think I must be in tandem feeling the despair about the IVF alongside childhood fury about my mother being useless. No one can help. No one can make it better. No one. And actually, that is how it is. The doctors can do the best that they can, but life is a miracle still and it isn't something that they can guarantee.

This is a huge process of learning to cope with pain on a very deep level for me and coming to terms with not being in control.

Really, who am I to judge if people in that group are addicted to buying supplements and obsess constantly about the process. I am as deeply in pain as they are, when I wasn't in recovery I was totally unable to process my feelings about my husband's cancer.

So I can have compassion, but it does leave me wanting some recovered support and I don't think that will be an easy thing to find. Perhaps I could set a group up myself in recovery. I will think about that.

[moonlight]

Hi Prim
You weren't clogging anything up in my opinion, but good idea to start this thread anyway.
I just wanted to say that's it's not fair that your mother wasn't there for you and that you had to repress yourself in order to survive at such a young age.
I had a similar experience. Of course there are (big) differences as well, but in the core I get your story. It took me years of therapy and also anti-depressants to give this trauma a place in my life. I was diagnosed as a BPD some 13 years ago and was on benefit for a few years, unable to function.
I feel much better nowadays. I don't write whole diaries cursing my mother anymore And no more lying on the ground crying and screaming for my mummy. But they were very necessary at the time. It may come back, I don't really believe in "cured" or "healed" in this respect. It's such deep brain stuff. Hormones, connections, neurotransmitters, what do you know? But I have come out of it for today.

All the best and keep posting, it's inspiring.

[primrose]

Oh yes M I too have those old diaries! Pages and pages and incredible drawings and paintings of my mother as a puppet master and her children as little unhappy puppets. I think that's very necessary too if it's a deep wound. I think I'm back in touch so strongly with that wound because of the IVF. My therapist said to me it would come up again around having a child myself, and that's the case now, even though I'm not pregnant. I'm hoping it coming up now will help ease it if I'm lucky eough to have a child. My fear was post-natal depression because I have so much grief about my mother not loving me enough as a small baby. I hope the intensity now will shift as much of it as possible.

Last night I went to a slaa meeting and said I wanted to start a slaa meeting for women with the focus on fertility issues. I got some great feedback! So I looked for a venue this morning. When I first joined the "s" fellowships in the 90s all the meetings I went to were women only meetings and in some ways I miss that. Okay, I don't miss the "oh what a git he is blah blah". Glad I don't have to listen to that, but I do miss the gentleness of those meetings.

So I'm happy I mentioned it last night. I can only ask and see what happens. And I think setting something up will help me feel more connected and not so lost and unsupported.

My husband spoke quite a lot to me last night about the ivf group. He'd been thinking about it all day. He said to me he thinks I'm doing really well going through the process and still being okay in myself. That was really nice to hear that he thinks I'm doing really well. I know really, that's recovery. Even though I feel I need more than I'm getting at the moment and I feel frustrated, I know I can go to meetings and be content. I can tune into the recovery there and feel part of something healthy. I think that's why I want to be around women in recovery who can identify. Maybe they're not speaking in meetings because it's not the kind of thing they especially want to say in mixed meetings either.

I just spoke to my mother. She's coming down to see me next week. It was a nice conversation. She's had some time to settle down about my brother having a child and me not having one and I think she's thought a few things through. She didn't sound frantic at all. Am glad about that. It went some way to repair how sad I am that no one in my family apart from my aunt has made any comment about it being difficult for me that my brother is having a child and I'm not. Perhaps also because I have started to look properly for some support I am not so angry that I can't get any from her.

[primrose]

Cried a lot yesterday evening about the ivf. Was looking online about problems with implantation. There is just so much information about being my age and how fertility decreases so much. I find it very upsetting and I feel robbed really that I have been so healthy and so far it has come to nothing. Life is just sometimes unfair and that is how it is. Coming to terms with that is hard.

I think going to the support group has brought up stuff in lots of ways. I feel very close to my husband and we've been talking a lot, so that's good, but the reality of infertility is well, more real. And somehow I just don't believe it is my path to not have a child. I think listening to the other women in that group I realised how blessed I've been to not have any physical problems or health issues. I've been fit and well and there is nothing wrong with my body. I think that's what I'm really struggling with now, that I am healthy but it isn't happening.

I guess everyone who goes through ivf goes through this stage of despair and sadness. It may also be because it is january. Last year I felt awful then too.

I am angry with my friend who told me I am old and I should start the adoption process. I found that incredibly painful as I don't want to adopt. I don't think I'm equipped to deal with a child who'd already been abandoned. I know how damaged I've been by my mother not being able to bond with me. I think it needs a securely attached woman to be able to cope properly with an adopted baby and have enough to give to a child with abandonment issues.

I just feel scared and sad really looking at graphs and stats and seeing how unlikely it all is. But hey, I wouldn't be having ivf if the doctors didn't think I stood a good chance. I will have this treatment in the spring and then I will know more about how i feel. It may work, it may not, I have no way of knowing.

[moonlight]

Just want you to know that I read your posts and I sympathize with you. I don't know what else to say really, it's just hard and I'm glad you share about it. Love, ML

[g]

A big hug for you Primrose.
G

[primrose]

Thanks you two! Lovely of you. xx

I cried at work today. I think I'm just really coming out of denial about the whole thing, and that's okay, just very very painful. I spoke to my father today. He isn't able to talk to me at all about my feelings, I don't expect that from him, but he is great at finding things out for me. I'd asked him about circulation and implantation. I have bad circulation, I really hate the cold, and it had occurred to me that there might be some link between problems with implantation and circulation. He researched it for me and it was very helpful to speak to him about all of that. It's his way of showing me he cares about me because feelings are things he can't cope with at all.

I just feel so lost in this at the moment. I spoke to a couple of friends from slaa and they said they thought it was a great idea to start a woman's meeting.

Perhaps this sadness is also to do with my friend dying last year. In january last year I felt so low knowing she would die and that was just the way it was. I don't really know, all I know is that the feelings are what they are. Lots and lots of grief.

One thing that helps me, strangely, is that when I got rosacea I felt that I lost a lot of myself. I really mourned the loss of my looks and it hurt so much to feel instantly unattractive. Later, my skin got better and I looked normal again and I realised all that grief had really helped me come to terms with being ME and I'd learned a lot of self acceptance. So I think coming to terms with anything is helpful. Really accepting that I might not have a child I'm sure will help me either way. It's horrible though.

[primrose]

I met a woman yesterday in the hospital who like me went through a long journey to get pregnant. Since I've been pregnant I haven't reflected really on that long time of trying to conceive, pregnancy is really very absorbing!

It really was such a powerful experience IVF, very tough but also full of insights, and it did ground me completely in knowing that I truly wanted children. The only theraputic writing about it I could find was by Graham Farrant who wrote that IVF was a bad idea because women didn't have to face their ambivalence about becoming a mother, they could side step it by taking drugs and that would be terrible as they wouldn't bond well with their children. I found that such a superficial analysis of IVF.

It was the opposite for me, it opened me up and helped me deal with a lot of my anxieties about becoming a mother. I was very lucky to have 12 step and therapy so I knew how to work through the feelings. It's not just a physical process of taking drugs or a process where you have to learn to detox your body, de-stress, take up hypnosis or reflexology, it's also a spiritual journey where you learn to open your heart to grief and surrender deeply and let yourself face feelings of mortality. I would quite like to write about that at some point, but maybe I'll never write again seeing as it worked for me and I'll have two babies to look after thanks to going through it