The clinic is packed when I arrive. It’s only 8am, but the waiting room has three couples and a few other women already seated. I smile politely at the woman in the seat beside the last remaining empty chair as I sit down. She is holding a baby, probably around six months old, with the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
They latch onto my face with their expressive gaze, and I smile and wiggle my eyebrows, making their little face break open into a smile.
The mother also smiles, and we exchange a glance. I glance around at the other seated couples, and realise that no one else is looking our way – they almost seem to be averting their gaze from the child. But of course, that makes sense. We’re all here because we have had some trouble conceiving. Perhaps seeing a baby in this context is triggering.
Or, maybe it’s just early in the morning and people are still waking up, shifting into activity mode.
“Zoya?” the nurse appears from around the corner, and I stand, waving to the baby.
I follow her into the treatment room, and take my seat on the high chair, sleeve already rolled up so she can collect my blood.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, giving me the empathetic smile I’ve started to associate with these appointments.
“Yeah, good,” I say casually.
“This is your pregnancy blood test appointment, is that correct?”
“Yeah, but I’m fairly sure I’m not pregnant,” I say. “I took a urine test yesterday.”
“Ah, okay,” the nurse says and pauses what she’s doing. “Now, there is a chance the test you took is wrong, but we’ll get this sample processed as soon as possible and let you know.”
We’re all here because we have had some trouble conceiving
I shrug and nod, and if I seem unbothered by the news, it’s because I genuinely am. The nurse seems bemused by my lack of concern, and I get it – I’m probably the least invested person to pay to go through an intrauterine insemination cycle she’s come across.
We chat about her tattoos as she draws the blood, and I share my plans for my next one. As we finish up, she checks my details on the blood sample.
“We’ll give you a call to let you know the result, and if it is negative, we can get you booked in for the next cycle,” she says.
“Oh, I think we’re actually going to have a break for a bit,” I say. “Maybe a few months before we try again.”
“Absolutely. That’s a good idea to give your body a rest,” she says. “You’re young, and you have good eggs.”
I smile at that, and when I leave I feel a little lighter.
I know that I am not the typical fertility patient. I could see in the faces of the other patients waiting for their own test results or procedures that there was more tied up in the process for them than for me. You might be wondering why I was even there in the first place.
I know that I would like to have a child. My partner and I have always planned to try, but I’ve also always felt like there is something ‘wrong’ with my body. Call it intuition, even though there was no evidence, I felt certain that there was an issue there. And sure enough, after I went off the pill and didn’t have a period for months and months, it was confirmed that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, meaning I wasn’t ovulating.
I started the process of investigation early, because I wanted to be equipped with as much knowledge as possible about our chances of getting pregnant, so that we could make informed choices.
But having discovered that we will definitely need intervention to get pregnant, both of us realised that we weren’t quite ready to have kids yet. There wasn’t that ache of anticipation, that genuine yearning that I’ve seen in so many of my friends and family.
For me, I needed to know what we were dealing with, but in undergoing three cycles of ovulation induction and a cycle of intrauterine insemination, I found myself barely even disappointed at not being pregnant. Instead, I just felt like there was more data to add to my knowledge bank about our chances.
At first, I felt guilty for this lack of emotional response. Was I too detached? Did it mean I shouldn’t be a mother? How could I be so blasé?
But then it dawned on me that actually, it’s okay to both know that I want to be a mother, and equally know that I don’t want to be one right now. Knowing what the process will be when we want to try again has actually given me a sense of liberation and relief, because I can plan for the next few years without feeling the sense of unrest and stasis in wondering whether I’m ruining my chances of ever getting pregnant.
It’s okay to both know that I want to be a mother, and that I don’t want to be one right now
I have friends and family who have spent years trying to get pregnant, and for some, it never happened. It was heartbreaking, and emotionally draining for them to spend year after year in a sense of limbo, unable to plan for the next steps in their lives, because there was this constant sense of waiting to know if their dream of having a family would ever come true.
Even in the one cycle I did of more aggressive treatment, I felt such a loss of control and anxiety. There was so much to question – should I eat this or that, would drinking coffee ruin my chances, should I stop certain activities? Could I plan for that holiday next year, or would I be pregnant? Should I say yes or no to that career opportunity? Should I stop riding my horses?
In making the decision to wait, and plan our next cycles to work within the parameters of the other things we want to experience and enjoy in our lives, I felt like I finally had some control and certainty through what is otherwise a frustratingly uncertain process.
I know that in a few years from now, there’s a chance we might wish that we’d been more aggressive in pursuing pregnancy. But I also know that life is happening right now, and making decisions for the present is just as important as planning for the future.
