Are you having another child? How do I respond I used to think; do I tell them the truth and risk opening the floodgates of my emotions, or do I shrug the question off with a ‘maybe’ and try to change the subject? A question so often asked, but dreaded by so many who are suffering in silence with secondary infertility.
Six years ago we welcomed our first son into the world and as we were finding our way as parents we would comment ‘next time we’ll do this differently’. Little did we know how naive we were and our thoughts of a 2 year age gap between children would turn into 5 with a lot of tears and stress filling the years.
Our hopes for a second began well, conceiving quickly like our first, but I knew it never felt right and unfortunately ended in a miscarriage. We were back to trying and were expecting another positive quickly. But it didn’t come. Month after month there was nothing. After some time I wanted to know why. Why had we conceived easily twice but then nothing? Like many with secondary infertility there is no answer. ‘Everything’s normal, it all looks good’ doctors would say. Great in one sense, but offers no comfort or solution to those so desperate for a child. I was left searching for my own solutions, my own support.
Support groups, like Fertility Network’s secondary infertility group, were great to hear stories to learn more about fertility but also know I wasn’t alone. My thoughts and feelings, although unusual for me, were common and almost expected in people suffering with secondary infertility. I also sought counselling to help process what I was going through and guide our next steps. Do we take control of the situation and try IVF, or keep trying and keeping our fingers crossed something will magically work one month? Although no guarantee we decided we needed to do something different after over 2 years of trying so entered the minefield of IVF.
Appointments filled our diaries, medicines filled our fridge and our knowledge about the complexities of conception grew. Everything was going smoothly and within a couple of months we had 6 embryos ready to hopefully make our family of three a four. A lost embryo at our first transfer was a wake up call that not everything goes to plan and another loop on the emotional rollercoaster of fertility. Anxiety consumed me for each future transfer, as if that bit didn’t work we wouldn’t even have a chance to see if a baby was possible! After a few more twists on the rollercoaster and many more tears we finally had our lucky transfer. Four years after starting to make our family bigger we held our newly delivered second son in our arms hardly believing it had happened.
I now look at my two sons and smile knowing that I’m one of the lucky ones. I just wish someone had mentioned that having one child doesn’t mean you can easily have another.