I have often said that this is a thankless process and wait.
But that is not entirely true. I am grateful, for example, for some things that are not necessarily justified by IVF — my peaceful resort life, our ability to focus on our own activities and futures, that I live and work in the enabling places I do, and for the support and understanding of many strong, resourceful and impressive women friends that I have met through IVF groups.
However, the process of IVF also does make me grateful for some fundamental things in my life, and I don't dwell on those things for long enough.
The 8th of September is Mid-Autumn Festival, a celebration in China and across the Chinese diaspora in Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. This year, we decided to go to the Chinese-Japanese gardens and walk amid what was a really beautiful cool night, watching the strings of multi-hued lanterns light up the pagodas and bridges over quiet lakes.
This was traditionally a harvest festival, its purpose to celebrate harvest bounty, thanksgiving and family reunion. People would gather to eat sweet cakes, play riddle games and to reflect and wish on the full moon for babies, marriage, beauty and longevity.
For starters, IVF makes me grateful for… / my parents
I received an email from my Dad today. It read "I know it is frozen. Just hope and pray for everything to turn out the way you hope and life goes on. Whatever the outcome, you have given it a shot and are lucky enough to be able to do that. Look at the positives. Mum is very hopeful more for you, than us as grandparents. We will be your back-up always".
The subject of families and IVF always intrigues me, because there are so few happy, satisfied stories. More often than not, it is the touchstone of friction, if not outright conflict.
I guess there is always the tension between how much emotion you are going through — you know, furtively shooting up in the backseats of cars, feeling under-appreciated at work and all that bad stuff — and how much you really want to disclose to the people who probably love you the most but often not in a way that helps. Sometimes, you feel like such a Bad Luck Betty that you just want to shield them from having to go through the ups and downs.
My parents are not the most comforting parents. They are not patient, earthy, gentle types. They have never been. I don't know if this is a product of their own harsh upbringing from largely single-parent families, their own over-arching baby-boomer ambition, or the fact that they were working parents for the entirety of time that I was growing up, but deftly-applied comfort is not really their strong point. Indeed, I don't even think they believe that it is the way one should parent.
"Life goes on", "You are lucky", "Look at the positives" and calling themselves my back-up (back-up for what — childless living and vacations?) are pretty much the maximum 'gentle' touch that they have. As my parents age, I find that I am called on to comfort them, more often than the other way around.
They were not always supportive of IVF. To this day, for example — and this is after three years of trying to conceive — my mother could not tell you the process of IVF. She was surprised to know, for example, that there are multiple eggs, not one. She wanted to know why I couldn't get an egg from a friend who has healthy, clever children. She didn't know till recently that the retrieval process involved general anaesthetic.
I suppose what annoyed me most about this was more that even with so much interim time and repeated procedures, she has never bothered to find out.
However, to a degree, I understand why it is a very painful process to watch. If I had a child, would I find it difficult to deal with my child harming themselves to get pregnant? Most probably yes. It would pain and grieve me to watch them taking unnecessary medicines and injections. I would be disbelieving that this was the only way it could be possible. Indeed, I too would probably always be in denial that there's anything wrong with my babies to begin with.
My mother veers between nonsensical, emotional reactions — like the time she tried to force me to go to my godmother's 90-year-old father's funeral (after I had already attended the wake of this poor man whom I'd met thrice in my life) the day before our transfer — and irrational hope and prayer entreaties. Of course, she has never done anything actually concrete, like attend a single doctor's appointment or drive me to an acupuncture.
My dad, being a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist, has a far more blasé and realistic attitude toward medical intervention and, having married late in life, he frequently confided in me that objectively, he never saw, and still does not see, children as necessary. As a result, I suppose I've always been confident that my dad only loves me for who I am and not my context, or baby-producing potential.
His training has enabled him to be concretely helpful with delivering and administering medication, and he is a dab hand at injections, for which I am truly grateful. I have had many, many nurses, and I am being honest when I say that my dad somehow manages to cause the least pain.
In their own way, both my parents are extremely, 150% supportive, and I know that both mentally and financially, while they cannot always comprehend our behaviour and choices, they have never wavered in that support, acceptance, generosity, honesty and love. For that I am, and should be, deeply grateful.
This process and they, from their reaction to it and their support of it, have given me a new appreciation for family and what it means to grow as a family.
IVF makes me grateful for… / my in laws
Yup, you heard that right. Not because they understand and know me well. Truth be told, my in-laws don't understand me at all. I know they would be happily and intimately involved with grandchildren because they don't have the best relationship with my sister-in-law, but I similarly postulate that they would have little relationship with the grandchildren if they should be adopted or not related to my husband by blood.
But they don't pry and, at least since the initial year of our marriage, have not put pressure on us with regard to children. I am not grateful for them because they are great, but because for what it is, the situation is kind of great, and I am aware that it could be much, much worse.
My in-laws conform to an entirely different paradigm of parenting, one that really respects the independence — one would say, the indifference — of the child. In my view, this is exaggerated because they are an all-boy family.
The part that I find liberating is that you can meet them only when it suits you (so not kosher in my family), and the part that I find weird is, for example, when we sent them a copy of my husband's poor, in fact, failed cholesterol report, they didn't even reply.
When I brought up the topic of IVF — only because I became irritated at their constant, unvarying, opening line of "are you travelling soon?" — the father-in-law left the room, because apparently, this is a woman's topic. His standard of embarrassment is obviously way below mine.
My mother-in-law had this response — she said "don't believe the doctors. Just believe your mother-in-law's prayers" (possibly one of the weirder responses I have ever encountered to date, and one that makes me fear that if we should ever be successful, she is going to claim all the credit!).
I even sent them both an update email one time and the link to this blog, which, wouldn't you say, is pretty ballsy? Also pretty irrelevant, because they quickly said it doesn't matter and never, ever read the blog, nor possibly even the email.
And for that, I am grateful.
IVF makes me grateful for… / my husband
IVF is stressful. It is painful, it is costly, it is emotional. It is one of the more painful, costly and emotional repetitive events that a couple will go through together. It lays bare your priorities, your capacity to sacrifice, to love and to support. One would say parenthood does the same, but at least parenthood comes with moments of sweetness and success that are so very rare in IVF.
There have been too many meltdown moments to count, too many times that we have railed against each other for something that the person had done, or often, had failed to do. I still feel like I carry an overwhelming share of the burden, often to alleviate his stress or effort.
I believe this tension can't really be helped, even in the most loving marriages. A guy just wants to be a guy, and watch YouTube videos for three hours. But when you've just spent at least triple that amount of time in injections, waiting aimlessly in doctors' rooms, stressing out till you're sick in the stomach about results, crying your eyes out as cycles go downhill, scheduling and rescheduling trips and tickets, you just run out of patience, or feel like you're on different pages — you get so angry when you still have to do laundry or pay the bills and he is, God forbid, out having a wine or on YouTube!
I often feel like I'm the only obsessed one — just last week, for example, he shared with me a country music video in which a man escapes prison by introducing a pretty female bitch to the prison guard dog. I sat unmoving and unimpressed, till the final scenes of two dog shadows fading in the tall grass, and then said "do they have puppies? Are they infertile dogs? If they are, they should join my support group".
My mum does this very odd thing. She tells me from time to time, ominously, that I must remember to make time for my husband and not to put the children first (you can understand why this seems a bit irrational to me at this time).
Her point, which she has been making my whole life, is that if you look around, men are simply less mature than women, even the men who are fathers, are less tied to their children, to families and ultimately, to their marriages. It is not enough that you want children, as much as it is important that he is willing and sure to put himself aside, to make these commitments.
Her point isn't a bad one — it reminds me that in reality, the marriage relationship is always one that is in dynamic flux and which requires constant effort, but so far, I feel that this process has made us better at talking through some pretty complex stuff. It has improved our communication and our expression of feelings and needs.
I do believe that we are better at controlling our tempers, emotions and retaliation, we are better at planning and keeping up our end of the bargain, and we are more considerate, loving and loyal to each other than before we began this process.
The whole process of growing a family can strain and pull apart a marriage, but it can also make you know yourself and each other better. When trying to conceive doesn't come easy, it can make for a kinder and more compassionate relationship.
It also makes me realize where we are complementary. While I was waking up from my last retrieval, my husband told me that he had a good feeling about this round, because when he was walking back after my retrieval, a bird had shat on his face and that is considered by many to be a good omen (my macho husband has one deep-seated fear and that is of birds).
As I stared at him silently, I thought to myself that only my husband could be capable of the pithy, excited "a bird pang sai on my face, it was damn gross!" And even though we were where we were at, I laughed and felt happy that I'd married him. If the two of us is how it will always be, it's very comforting to know that it is enough.
IVF makes me grateful for… / friends.
This process will give you an unfortunate clarity about which people mean something to you and whom you mean something to. Although it might not be the way I would choose to divine this, the divisions are inescapable.
It will drive home the message, particularly if you are a generous sort of person, that most people are acquaintances and really not worth spending very much time or effort over. It has taken awhile for me to see this as a good thing. It has taken a long time for me to accept responsibility for self-reliance.
There are many people I call shadow friends. I call them this because I only really see their shadows, their awkward phone message-driven acknowledgements, their uncomfortable silences and approaches, their thoughtless and generally patronising questions — "how are things?" "so what's new in life?"
There are also people who surprise you when they step up. Friends who may not have been close, or who did not hear directly from you, but then bravely take on the mantle of probing, considered and consistent questions. Friends who keep plying their support in realistic but encouraging positivity, who keep sending you clumsy but kind thoughts, and who despite their own growing commitments, just keep giving you that most precious gift of time. I know now that these are not to be taken for granted.
Then there is the third category. While walking with a friend the other day, I updated her about my concerns about our upcoming transfers. I told her about a big miscommunication with the clinic, that had stressed me for days and shook my trust. I walked her through the risks embedded in the testing and timing of donor cycles and eggs.
This friend is happily married and happily without children, this was all not information that she would have ever chosen to know.
She started to cry, which took me aback. I doubt I'd ever seen her even tear up before. While wiping away tears, she explained that she feels so incredibly sad to see me going through this and she doesn't want me to risk my health. Since we've started this process, she knows I have been sleeping badly, and she's thinking, how can she help us to get to wherever that threshold of sustainability invariably awaits?
I wasn't sure how to respond. It made me feel doubly horrible that I had produced hurt in another person through our circumstances, choices and actions, but it also made me feel deeply grateful to have such good friends. I guess when the chips are down is sometimes also when you know where you are lucky.
