Reflections on Infertility

I guess a lot of people begin their adoption journey having tried, and failed, to have children via natural means. That's where our story begins. Never having been particularly coo-ey over babies, I didn't really expect to be the kind of person who needed to avoid looking in the windows of toy shops or who would suddenly find being around young children so poignantly painful.

Andy (my beloved husband of 10 years) and I started thinking about adoption back in November 2007. About a month after we discovered that his sperm are mostly dead or swimming in circles. Natural pregnancy is not impossible, just not very likely.

We had been trying for a family since 2003 and in 2004 I was briefly pregnant and then had a miscarriage whilst we were on holiday in the Dominican Republic (not a good location in which to require medical attention, believe me!). I had been more delighted than I had thought possible, to be pregnant, and more devastated than I could have imagined when I miscarried.

We thought as it had happened once, it could happen again. Andy's health hadn't been great (he was recovering from a brain tumour when I got pregnant) and there was plenty else to think about. Not, I felt, a particularly convenient time to be worrying about childlessness.

One of the most difficult things about being a woman and wanting children is that however much you might think you're not going to think about it, there is, every month, a time which is allegedly auspicious for sex (not always convenient or romantic) and then an involuntary pregnancy test, in the form of a period, at the end of the month.

Eventually I realised I needed to know if there was anything else we could do about our failure to get me pregnant and we sought medical advice. Andy was pretty devastated by his navigationally challenged sperm. I was both gutted and relieved. To be honest, whether there is a good reason for us not having kids yet or not, doesn't make that much practical difference. Most infertility is, I believe, unexplained. Knowing there's a reason for it not happening has let us relax.

The next question is "What now?" Neither of us liked the idea of IVF. Andy wasn't keen on spending the money (it's not provided on the NHS at all in our area) on something so likely not to work. I wasn't keen on the invasiveness of it. And the prospect of all that desparate hoping and probable disappointment. I'm delighted for anyone who has had success in IVF, and slightly awed by the courage of anyone prepared to go through the whole thing. Knowing that it so often doesn't work. On the other hand, knowing that I was longing for a child, of my own, there were a couple of weeks when I felt horribly trapped between the desperation of infertility and the horrible prospect of IVF. After all, it's what infertile couples do. Could I live with the prospect of not giving it a try?