Just saying Helo.

[Jes72]

7 years ago we started on our IVF journey and had 7 IVF treatments all self funded. In the first 13 m I had 4 attempts. The first was text book positive until it ended in a miscarriage at 10 weeks. Our little boy would be 5years 4 months, his little ghost is constantly by my side.

We kept on going some failed and I had two more miscarriages. Three years ago we had our final go. I took a few months off work to gather myself back together, but I'm still broken. There's a thin coat of paint on the outside but inside I'm crumbling.

[MinMin]

Hi Jes72, you must be a tough person and have a good relationship to get through all that? We only managed one round a year ago and are still massively suffering the fall out. You need to be kind to yourself because this grief takes a long time to heal. I don't know how long because I'm still in deep myself. It's good you've taken a couple of months off but just keep looking after yourself and each other. I probably fool most people when they do see me that I'm ok, but when I see my counsellor I just cry for a while hour!

Have you got any counselling?

Xx

[Jes72 in reply to MinMin]

Thanks for your reply. I fee I need to connect with real people who actually u derstand even though we are each coping in our own way.

I tried councelling after the 6th round with was meant to be our final, as I was having panic attacks. I don't think I got on very well with her and it just felt like more money wasted, and we never got on to the real dab stuff in my head. She was even the one who suggested we have one more go so that I could say goodbye to the process but that last round was full of false starts so got dragged out.

I think my grief will always be there, it gets worse when I'm not busy, as I'm a teacher term time I'm on the go but too much time alone on summer holidays is becoming increasingly hard.

[MinMin in reply to Jes72]

Defo worse without distraction! I'm on a zero hours contract and haven't worked for over a month. It's been terrible, as like you, i suddenly had too much time to think. It's also a time when kids are everywhere I go and Facebook is full of pictures of happy families on their holidays.

Luckily you will be back teaching before too long so really focus on doing some nice things for yourself in the meantime perhaps? (And keep messging us!

I've had 2 councellers now and both good although different. It can take quite a while to get through all the muddle in your head and start to feel progress. My private sessions were good, swapped to nhs due to funds now but I only get 7 slots. I might need to see about a fertility specialised person at some point but not sure.

Keep in touch xx

[Duchy82]

Hi and welcome,

Your 6th round sounds a lost like my second round of ivf, I was a mess, anxiety and panic attacks. Looking at it now that was most likely due to it being the last round so much hangs on it at the end of the day as it success or failure defines whether you will be a mom or not. I had some councelling during that round and she was good she very much helped to calm me and had some good techniques. I the end though I was so ill during the the period of egg retrieval and embryo transfer as well as the 2ww as I had to have extra oestrogen, my lining wasn't thick enough by retrieval time, the side effects were awful, that I couldn't have put my body through that again. Not that we could have afforded another round.

It is hard but you will come out of it at the end. Does the pain go away? I would be lying if it does, most of the time I'm fine but sometimes it just catches you unawares.

I would say it may be worth finding another councellor, personalities play a role in whether they are helpful or not.

Another thing that helped me is looking around the Internet for blogs, I should warn you some can be very bitter but they helped me too in the way that I decided I didn't want to become bitter about it and got me to work on looking at the positives in life.

Silent sorority is a good book to read too, although I have read it again recently and realised I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be, a lot of it rang very true in the beginning now I realise I got to an acceptance stage much sooner and a lot less dramatically than the author.

Also this forum, everyone on here understands what you are going through and the support and understanding is great.

Look after yourself and your hubby. x