I have found that in the mess
of infertility I have had some good days and weeks where blissfully untroubled
by our infertility I bob along much like a “normal” person. But sometimes in the normality of life I have
found the trickiest of obstacles that bring the rocks rearing up close. Take today for example…
A good weekend, the best for months
in fact, a walk by the river, my first surf this year (things must have been
bad), no discussion about treatments, Dr appointments or what-to-do-next, just
ralxing with my wife. Given the
unseasonally good weather we are experiencing I decided to get my hair
cut! As it turns out the hairdresser who
was booked to sort out my unkempt mane used to regularly cut my hair until one
day she seemed to have left,or so I thought (remember I’m a guy and don’t pick
up on sublte signals), it turns out she had been on maternity leave and had had a little boy “Archie” 15 months
ago.
In the course of the conversation
it dawned on me how very normal it is to have a baby take maternity leave and
come back to work, all in the space of 15 months. I also realised how unnatural it was for us
to have not moved on even an inch in our attempts to tobecome parents.
Conversation moved on to, of
course, holidays. I was in the hairdressers
after all. In her 15 months she and her
baby boy had been abroad four times (maternity pay sounds good!).
To my surprise this knocked me sideways the
most. My DW and I have felt so ground
down by infertility, we have retreated so far in to our shells that even a trip
to the coast for a surf had felt impossible all year and a trip abroad just too
much to get our ever-so-slightly-depressed heads around. Instead I had spent my Monday )the beauty of
being your own boss) looking at holiday cottages for two.
Of course many parents and single
friends would love a quiet week away romantically snuggled up with your other
half and of course I will enjoy this
too, but when I acknowledge I would have so liked a cottage for “two or more” it
just makes me sad. It is the simplicity
and normality of wanting to become a parent, to raise a child, that the sadness
becomes burdensome.
Walking away from the hairdresser
I realised too that like her if all had gone to plan our baby would have been
15 months (and 20 days) old.
I realised walking home that a
lot can happen in 15 months and in that moment entirely without choosing I was reminded
of our intransigent, stubborn infertility.
