shit things about ttc......

[carriedababi]

1, being unable to book next years holidays, as we don't know if i'll be pg or even have a baby by then

2, not being able to fully commit to starting out on certain things in case you can't cary on

3, waiting for your period

Buy the clothes, book the holiday, drink a bit and certainly keep exercising. Oh and don't POAS - it won't change the result!! Life really is too short to stop everything when 2 years later your life may still be on hold.

Err... 21 months now and IVF starts next month. Not even a wiff of anything approximating a pregnancy! And amazingly - I am more chilled and making sure I enjoy everything I can in the here and now. Me and my DH are closer than ever.

Was on a work course over the weekend, and chatting to someone (after a few too many drinks!) and he was asking about when we were going to have kids. After deflecting a bit and he kept pushing, so said we were about to have IVF. Like "nerr...bet you feel guilty for pushing me now". And he told me both his children were by IVF. And it was such a relief to meet someone else who had been through it. We are not alone!!

if i thought i would enjoy the holiday if i was pg, i'd book it, but if i was as sick as i was last time, only place id want to be is at home.
although maybe i wouldnt be so ill if theres a nest time

although suppose i could treat myself to a few new clothes, i mean its a hot day and ive got bugger all to wear really.

nice to chat to others feeling the same way

even if we all got pg today, based on last time you'd still have up to 6 months to wear non maternity clothes, well some of them anyway. So that justifies a whole new winter wardrobe . Oh and shoes and handbags fit even if pg.

hmmm, that's the thing about second pregnancies. You're in maternity clothes about ten minutes after that second blue line has appeared. It's shocking how quickly your bump appears compared to the first.

Buy the clothes... just pretend you're doing your bit for the economy by spending some money :o

i already look like ive got a mini bump!

Can I just repeat some of what Lucy said upthread. If you've been TTCing for 12 months and are in despair, please don't think that your despair will get worse and worse until you get pregnant, however long that takes.

I'm on month 22 now, and nothing to show for it. At 10 months in, I was in misery, and spent my life on these boards, and flung myself into rather ill-advised friendships based on little more than shared failure to conceive.

I have now realised how daft all that was. I no longer talk about it all the time, or beat myself up about strong coffee or alcohol (though I have massively cut down on smoking ). I just share it all with my DH, and we bonk loads, and daydream a bit, and if one of us gets sad, we buck each other up. I don't talk to others about it - when you do, you risk unkindness and censure when someone spots you drinking a beer, and heartbreak when your TTCing friends get their babies and (of course, entirely naturally) cannot remember all your times of shared sadness and have little time for your continued and by now slightly embarrassing failure to conceive.

The TTC boards offer the most wonderful support when you need it but there is a danger of sort of collectively winding each other up into heights of misery. If you'd've told me nearly 2 years in I would still not be pregnant and would be waiting for my IVF referral I would have expected to be depressed to immobility, but it has't happened. I have a great sex life now (because we have no choice!) and we are so close, and I have learned the hard way not to make TTC the focus of my life and friendships.

I do hope this doesn't sound patronising. I understand all the shit things about TTC and have felt them a thousand times over. But please believe me that even if it really is a long hard slog, with moments of absolute despondency, it need not rule everything.

Good luck to everyone (including me - currently enjoying an absolutely calamitous period! ).

Here, have some !

Slightly different, but I hate that I am so so So ready to ttc but have to wait for DP to decide that we can
I also hate that we have been using the withdrawal method (despite DP not wanting to ttc) for the last five years and it has resulted in one miscarriage and that's it. Yet friends can be on the pill and still get pregnant. Or people that didn't want children a year and a half ago are now pregnant.

I also hate the overwhelming excitement when AF is late and you spend every other minute revelling in this hot little secret of possibility and then when it appears just feeling absolutely fucking drenched in misery.

Not that I'm bitter or obsessed.

I agree with Jucy and Jodie. We've been TTC for 21 months too and I feel exactly the same as Jodie.

I used to get far more worked up and emotional but you really can't put your life on hold while you wait. At first I thought I'd waste money if I bought new clothes or that I better not book things just in case but I'd have missed out on loads. Since TTC we've been on holiday in Africa, I've been zorbing, we've moved house and are now in the middle of a major building project and I've got very pissed and had lots of fun!

Don't get me wrong there are plenty of things I hate about TTC but please try not to let it completely take over your life and do book things or you might regret it

Hi,

So we've not been trying that long in the great scheme of things, but it feels like too long.

So, I hate...

1, Not being able to talk about it cos I told everyone we weren't going to have kids but I'm too scared to tell them I've changed my mind.

2, Not wanting to go running during the 2ww in case I 'shake the baby out'.

3, Giving myself recurring cystitis cos the precautious I would usually take are incompatable with TTC

4, Thinking recurring cystitis might be a sign of early pregnancy.

5, Being really excited when I read on a thread that cystitis WAS actually a sign of pregnancy for someone!

6, Thinking in initials. TTC, 2WW, POAS

7, Not telling hub quite how mental I am about it all in case he thinks I'm mental and won't do me.

8, Looking at future events and wondering if I'll be pregnant by then. Wondering if I'll be pregnant ever.

9, Regretting beyond belief the termination I had 10 years ago. If I knew then....

10, Only being able to talk about how shit it all is anonymously to people I don't know on the internet and hoping I don't out myself.

Thanks Guys (and Jodie especially, lovely post)

The holiday thing is an interesting one because for me I don't care about being pregnant on holiday, I don't fancy miscarrying in a strange country, that is the problem!

For me the worst thing about TTC is that getting the BFP is the beginning of my worries not the end of them.

uuum - ttc in general has become just a shitty experience.

Lucy and Jodie - what upbeat posts. I'm 18months in and I am hoping by 22 months I will be feeling as positive and as well grounded as you both and hopefully i will have shrugged off this misery!

Oh, so much luck to you all. Cally, my only bit of advice is to avoid the self-perpetuation of the thing. Before TTCing I knew full well that healthy women with healthy partners often take 2, 3 maybe even 4 years to concieve their first, and that soon after they conceive in quick succession - it's all rather random, very often.

Then I began TTC and started pouring heart and soul into MN boards, and suddenly it because like a kind of hectic race that I was permanently losing, and a race that became harder and harder as my fellow-runners dropped out, and no-one cheered any more, and some even began to say, well of course you lost the race - you're not even running.

The best thing I ever did was shut the fuck up about it to everyone but DH and one or two very close, very old and trusted friends. Since then it has become so much easier. Of course I am desperately unhappy when my period comes, and I am scared of IVF and all that comes with it, but I am guarding myself a bit.

Different things work for different people though, so I guess we all need to do whatever makes it easier. Withdrawing to a place of greater safety was mine!

because became Sorry!

Thanks Jodie. I came in to this thinking it could take a year...but naively thought it would be much shorter as everyone I know have got pregnant within 4 months of trying. I've finally stopped seeing it as a race - a treadmill I 'm pleased to have got off. I've stopped talking about it as much too so perhaps there is progress. I'm trying to accept this is going to a be a long journey. Ivf is a scary proposition - it's looming for me too. Best of luck with the referrel and lots and lots of luck too.

Good thread!

Lots of the things that have been said here:

• staying in a job I don't like because it would be crap to get pg when just into a new job
• feeling like I have to have sex even when I don't feel in the mood
• not being able to book hols
• not feeling able to buy non-maternity clothes
• avoiding, or feeling guilty about drinking alcohol/eating soft cheese etc during the 2WW - only for it to turn out to have been pointless
• feeling resentful about other people's pregnancies/babies
• having to have the "So, when are you having children" conversation, and not knowing what to say
• not knowing whether it might happen this month, or in several years, or never
• not knowing whether there is actually some reason that I/DH can't conceive

and generally, the total and utter lack of control I have over something so important. Gah.

Apart from the obvious not being pg yet, the worst two things are:

1. people asking you if you have any "personal plans" or whatever god awful euphemism they've come up with, 2)wishing you hadn't let on that you were ttc to the friend that asks you EVERY SINGLE TIME you see her if you've "any news?!?!?!"

I'm in the same boat as slight .
For years ive been the woman how would never speak to a child, let alone want one. Now I'm ready for a child, but my DP does not one because of the state of the world.

Lw

slight and little water, i think that must be the toughest situation, what do you think you will do?

Hang in there littlewater. My DH was completely against the idea of kids too, everything from thinking he was too selfish, to overpopulation and the sad state of world affairs. So against the idea infact that in the first few months of our relationship I fell pregnant whilst on the pill but had a termination (biggest regret of my life, but who knows if the relationship would have lasted if I hadn't). Fast forward 8 years and at 39 I thought there was no way he'd ever change his mind. Last night he completely shocked me by saying he wasn't against the idea anymore. Honestly, if someone as certain and stubborn as him can change his mind there's hope for you yet.

i think mine has just been sobbing into a negative pregnancy test after being told 30 minutes beforehand a friend of the family is having an unplanned summer baby. the summer baby i so desperately yearn for.
i sat and i cried like a child. why is it always the way.

AhsataN. I know how you feel. I am surrounded by pregnant women. I seem to be an island of infertility in a sea of bumps ... BFN this morning for me, again.

A lot of people have posted that everyone around them is so fertile. The shame about this is, is that people in RL LIE!!!! I met with a good friend today, who I know for a fact was ttc#2 for a year who says to everyone "me and hubbie just have to look at each other and I'm pregnant". (She seems to forget I know she was ttc for nearly a year). I don't know why she says this, several of her friends are undergoing IVF and surely she knows that by saying this she is rubbing their faces in it. It really angers me. She's not the only person that I know that pretends that she got pg very easily. I don't know why people do it, it just makes other women who are struggling to ttc feel worse. So, when you see all these people on FB who have got pg by 'accident' remember it may not be true.

I'm very honest with people about the tests I had during ttc DS and the problems I had (haemoraging cyst and endometriosis), I want to give people hope if they've been ttc or have similar problems.

we are trying to conceive baby number2 and i know we are extremely lucky to have our ds. i was born with 2 wombs and only one fallopian tube so conceiving can take longer. fertility problems run in our family, my Nan had cervical cancer, my mum had a son who died a few days after birth, she had numerous miscarriages, me and sister were born at 30 weeks and 32 weeks.
my sister has polycystic ovaries, my cousin has polycystic ovaries and both aunts have ovarian cysts and one had cervical cancer. so every female on my mums side of the family is knackered.

I think the worst thing about ttc for me was the obsession, I was fine with my first two, then had an early miscarriage trying for my third. After that a big fat nothing, for 12 months. Because I was so fixated on my periods they seemed to go haywire with random long and short cycles even though they had always been like clock work.

I did so many pg tests and imagined so many lines , really I would sit and study the most resolutely negative tests for any hint of lineage. I didn't actually believe it when it was bfp.

I will always feel so bad for my sister, she must have been trying for a very long time, but didn't share it with me (we aren't that close, she is a lot older than me). She had pcos I think and large cysts and an operation to remove them. Eventually she had IVF and thankfully conceived first time, although she did have a big scare with bleeding at around 14 weeks.

She also had hyperemesis poor love, unfortunately I fell pg by accident 3 months into her pregnancy. Being the youngest and still at home, I feel I did steal her thunder somewhat(she lived 200 miles away). But there wasn't anything I could do about that, she has a lovely boy anyway, he is brilliant.