View as: GRID
LIST 
Limbo dancing
Post birth and mid thirties – I certainly couldn’t…
But thinking about it you could say I am currently doing a metaphorical limbo dance with my life.
The pain and dark days of negotiating myself from my premature ovarian failure diagnosis through three donor egg cycles are gone and gloriously and against all odds I’m a mother to a wonderful little lady who has enriched our lives.
Her birth was like stepping into the light, she mended my
Holding her in my arms when she was just days old, I knew somehow that I wouldn’t be ready to part with her when my 12 month maternity was up.
I had an ardent and innate need to focus on bonding with my daughter. I’d carried her for nine months, my blood and body nourishing her as she grew.
Now she was here the fact that we’re not genetically related was looming large in my mind and I wanted to do everything I could to build the strongest
This was in large part down to the fact that I’ll be having a lifelong conversation with my daughter about how she came into being using a generous and compassionate gift from an egg donor.
I felt forging the strongest and most open and honest mother/daughter bond would make that ongoing narrative as trouble free and seamless as possible.
Projecting ahead to her school days I am all to aware that the fact a donor egg helped create her and make us her parents could make her feel different to her peers, so
With the ecstatic glow of being a new mum when I never thought it possible, I also completely erased the physical, emotional and psychological difficulties of the IVF process from my mind. I also completely overlooked the fact that as I really did know – all too well – IVF does NOT guarantee you a baby and told myself ’I’d go again tomorrow and have another…’
It was a blissful time bonding and revelling in being her mummy but I was fearful – terrified about
I also had some fairly deep rooted reasons for wanting – in an ideal world – to give her a sibling.
I’m an only child and grew up believing that when I had my ’children’ I’d definitely have more than one. I wanted my future child to have what I didn’t have.
In addition and in hindsight, knowing about the need for the lifelong conversation, I felt it’d be easier and somehow fairer to give our longed for child a sibling in the same boat – so she wouldn’t feel alone with the story of her unusual conception.
So my daughter was
I’d been dreading telling him that the thought of returning to work and tearing me apart from my daughter made me feel physically sick. I believed he’d insist upon my return and question my motives presuming them lazy.
Amazingly, when I tearfully blurted it all out – he calmly agreed it’d work for us. Both our mothers had cared for us at home in our
We agreed this wasn’t me retiring and that maybe ’when she’s two’ I’d look at returning to the world of work.
We also agreed we’d ’go again’ with the donor egg IVF in that time after we’d established that our wonderful donor was prepared to donate again.
From the start of the nightmare of finding out I couldn’t have my own genetic children,
The only way I could begin to cope was to go a day at a time and not think beyond that. That coping mechanism also got me through my pregnancy, when I constantly thought something was bound to go wrong, my body had failed me, so how could it successfully grow another?
And today, as my daughter – that I did manage to sustain – approaches two, we have had two unsuccessful attempts with the same amazing donor to give her a sibling.
From the last failed attempt in April we have four embryos or four attempts at a
I don’t hold out too much hope.. They weren’t the best of the bunch, on the last cycle the best two embryos on day three were put inside me only for the pregnancy test to reveal a failed cycle two weeks later.
While we’re still in the limbo of trying I’m dancing around at home with my toddler as a stay at home mum coping in the way I’ve learnt, going a day at a time.
The one issue with this is, I’m blissfully
My future (like anyone else’s, I guess) is one great question mark.
What if the ones in the freezer don’t work? How many times can I put myself through month long cycles of taking high doses of hormones, injecting myself with blood thinners and putting myself through the mental torture of IVF?
We’ve decided we’ll try what we have. Beyond that – will I have it in me to try with a different donor? A donor who herself would be prepared to
I don’t know. A day at a time and all that.
Except all through my life, through school, college, university and my working life, I knew who I was and where I was heading next.
With my diagnosis, everything changed and I didn’t know anymore. Now with an amazing toddler, blogging has given me back a sense of self beyond being a mummy.
I ache to rediscover some of myself – I look forward to working again, earning my own
I just don’t know when or where or whether I’ll be a mum of one, two or three.
Achieving the sibling we desire for our little lady hangs in the balance, and with four unsuccessful IVF attempts behind us, I believe it is beginning to look increasingly unlikely.
If that’s the case I’m incredibly lucky to be a mummy to my little girl.
But for now, there’s still a chance of giving her a sibling.
I’m creeping towards a frightening
For now, I’m limbo dancing.
