What helped me through IVF

When I was going through the ART treatments – oh yes, the seven IUIs and one IVF! As if you could forget that – I was in desperate need of emotional support.

Throughout most of my IUI treatments, nobody knew about our journey except for a couple of close girlfriends and even then, I found that it was hard for them to truly understand what I was going through. Outside, I was cool and collected but inside I was a hot mess.

And even when I came out in the open during our IVF process, I felt that our friends still didn’t, couldn’t grasp the enormity of what we were going through. I don’t want to exaggerate but really, the emotional upheaval was sometimes too tiring and painful to bear. And that’s not forgetting the physical impact that the hormonal jabs have on your body.

(Sidenote: when Mr Thick’s friend asked him for advice regarding IVF, he told his friend to be aware of the side effects that the drugs could have on his wife. When I asked him why he said that, Mr Thick’s answer was that he never could have imagined just how much I had to go through and it hurt him greatly to see me like that. Love.)

This was when I decided to turn to the Internet. If I wasn’t going to find it here in the real world, then damnit, I was going to have one virtually. It really helps to just read someone else’s experience and to know that what you are going through is not confined to you and you alone.

One of the best sites that I found was Tertia Albertyn’s blog. If you are feeling sorry about yourself for having to go through IVF and all that “oh why me?” thoughts are haunting you, her story will straighten you out in a jiffy. She has three beautiful children today but she didn’t conceive her twins till nine IVFs and a few losses later. Amazing strength, wit and a seriously hilarious (oxymoron, much?) sense of humour. I spent many an afternoon going through her archives and shedding a few tears.

I loved her site so much, I decided to contribute to her retirement and bought her book “So Close“, which recently won the RESOLVE Hope Award 2011 for Best Book. Her book is the sort that I wished I had the talent and ability to pen. She chronicles her journey to conceiving her twins Adam and Kate, as well as the tragic losses in her life. I laughed and I cried and then I nodded my head and said, Yes that’s exactly it.

Closer to home, I realised that while there are plenty of Singaporeans who are undergoing fertility treatments, nobody was talking about it openly, for whatever reasons (and I completely respect that). Well, nobody except for Yi Lin and Dannie. Writing over at Maybe Baby, they have allowed everyone a glimpse into every step of their entire IVF journey. It was truly a godsend reading their blogs because it made me realise that we weren’t alone.

Now, Yi Lin is a friend (thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web) and we have our own little support network on Whataspp. She and Dannie have been blessed with Coco, their feisty bunny girl who braved the embryo thawing process and hung on inside Camp Womb to grow into the cute tamagotchi with a healthy set of lungs. I like to think that they bring hope to many couples out there battling infertility.

And lastly, there’s Girlfriend X (as she would like to be known). She found me on the Internetz just when we were both gearing up for the IVF. It helped a great deal to have someone going through the process within the same time frame. She’s recently undergone her frozen embryo transfer so all our fingers are crossed for her!