Noah and I have been working on our documentary, and we hope to be in a good place with it but the end of the year. It's with an editor now who has been putting together the different acts, and last night Noah and I watched Act 1 and Act 2. Going through infertility and a "journey" to parenthood is insanity. But being able to watch back every moment of it-- every decision, every heartbreak, every moment of hope and excitement, is its own kind of insanity. In a good way. I think.
Noah just said, "I have a sense of calm about it all, watching the footage. It's because I know how it ends." I thought that hits the nail on the head. We found our ending, we found our baby, but for many years everything was up in the air and crashing down on our heads simultaneously. What stood out to me, watching the early days of IVF, was how convinced I was that it would just work. Why wouldn't it? If you do the meds and spend the money and have a good doc, it should work, right? Wrong. If you farm out eggs and then do it all over again, it should work, right? Wrong. Each time, each procedure I was so hopeful, and I don't regret that. What choice did I have? At times when things didn't work out as hoped, I know I felt...embarrassed or maybe stupid for feeling hopeful. But I shouldn't have. Noah and I gave the whole process everything we had, every time and the shock and sadness of coming up empty handed hurt in the exact same way, every time.
And then something worked. It was suuuppper iffy for a while, but it worked. And now we can look back and see the timeline clearly. We can watch the ups and downs and reflect on the worst (hopefully) time in our lives as something we survived. But it was really hard to see it in this light while we were in it.
We started interviewing other people who came out the other end of infertility with beautiful families, so we knew there would be an end, but it was nearly impossible to really believe when the onslaught of bad news felt constant.
In a million years I couldn't have imagined the baby we got. I couldn't imagine how we both feel about her and how worth it she is. We don't have to imagine it, because we get to live in, and our time on IF Island is the constant reminder of how lucky we are, and our documentary is not just about infertility and making modern families and IVF, but it's about her.
While I was in grad school, there was a saying that the professors often told us. "Trust the process." Many a time I wanted to say F the process, because often times being in a process means being unsettled or being not yet where you want to be. Trusting the process of finding your family is one of the hardest things to figure out how to do. But if you're open to different options (and have the means to pay for said options-- this is a topic for another post I'm working on) you will find your baby.
Sending luck and love.
It is so hard that you can't have any control over whether the process of IVF will work or not. My husband and I have been trying (with IVF) now for almost three years(with longs breaks) and no kids yet. I have suggested to the fertility doctor that a donor embryo may be the answer. He says it is not easily accessible and it may not be an option for us. This is so frustrating to us. I definitely feel like saying
"F the process!" sometimes.
Posted by: Melanie B. | November 14, 2015 at 02:02 PM
Love this! Even saying "F the process!" is part of the process, lol! It's that constant push and pull of wanting things to be a certain way and the Universe having other plans. And, of course, happy endings make the struggle that much more meaningful and worth it. :)
Posted by: Maria | November 11, 2015 at 12:23 PM