Hi FMN,
This is my first message on Mumsnet, but I thought I would reply to yours because I too felt like giving up - or it felt like my body had given up last year. Taking a break is also a very hard thing to do, but it may be a very good thing to do. As always, you never really know what makes a difference, but depending on your age, it might be worth concentrating a little on yourself and your wellbeing instead of the disappointment every month. If taking contraception allows to you take your focus off TTC and onto ways of helping your state of mind or your own health, then it would be a very good thing. Feeling like a failure is the worst possible agony. This may not go away while you take a break, but you may be able to examine your feelings and let them out a bit!
My other half really wanted me to take a break from fertility treatments - 6 months originally. He hated the idea of me injecting myself with drugs and taking hormones over 4 different treatment cycles. I don't think he recognised how it was leaving me emotionally, but neither did I. I had gaily thought that I was able to be detached about the treatments and that I wasn't affected by the drugs etc. What I had managed to paper over was the trauma of a bungled egg collection that we faced during our first IVF, the trauma of a miscarriage at 12 weeks while I was on holiday in the Canaries and the trauma of having got myself a new job that I hated!
I agreed we should take a break from the treatments - it was just before my 40th birthday, so it felt very risky for me to do this. We agreed I would concentrate on being as healthy as possible - maybe lose some weight, but with more emphasis on getting fitter - before trying again. I also chucked the high-earning but awful job with his support, with the aim of going freelance, after a 'few months off'.
It turned out to be very difficult to come off the assisted conception bandwagon. At least when you're doing it you feel like you are 'doing something'. Without it, there is no map to refer to. Sometimes me and DH were pulling in totally different directions and that was distressing. You have to let go of the idea that you are perfectly in unison on this issue and that you both move forward in step. This does not happen! It was a series of pulling away, conflict and coming together and sometimes a total clash of values.
In the end it was almost a year before I tried any more fertility treatment. We didn't use contraception and I went 'alternative' - which was not something he expected and was a definite point of controversy. So we found we disagreed about 'ways to get healthy'. I found a sympathetic 'women's health' acupuncturist and found myself weeping on her for half the session most weeks. I took shed-loads of vitamins according to the Foresight recipe. I also went to see a hypnotherapist who specialised in fertility - wept a lot there as well. Funnily enough I couldn't even start the process of selling myself on a freelance basis because my confidence was so low. Even so, I was almost insulted when the hypnotherapist suggested that I might be, um, depressed!
I lost heart. I lost the will to fight and to keep searching. At the end of that year I went into psychotherapy, which is what I needed from the start - and spent a lot of time being emotional and weeping and doing all the things I had kept rigidly under control for the previous four years. What I found out was that I was grief-stricken, desperately wanting a child, heartbroken that we couldn't make one and hateful at other people's lack of consideration.
God I needed help! I am thankful that I managed to put my hand out for help just as I was getting sucked under. Even if it wasn't quite acupuncture or hypnotherapy that I needed, these practitioners listened to me and cared for me and gently helped me find ways to cope. I know am lucky that I have the money to use the sort of help you have to pay for...and a supportive DH who, despite not having any truck with therapists, managed to accept my need to seek their help.
To sum up, I am now 5 months pregnant after a new course of IVF at a different hospital that treated me a lot better. There is no logic you can apply to it and no telling if it would have worked had I gone there two years ago. I haven't enjoyed not being a high-achiever work-wise, as well as womb-wise, because I was so hard-wired that 'failure is not an option'. Unfortunately failure at getting pregnant is all too real an option, and my brain nearly blew up as a result of having to compute this.
What's my advice? Find a way of giving yourself some space and concentrate on your health - eat nice food, pretty much give up drinking, don't see people that upset you - and take up running or similar exercise (the challenge and the pain involved in achieving small goals i.e. 'next time I will get to reach lampost before collapsing') will give you something else to think about.
I think it is really positive that you understand that you are miserable - something it took me far to long to admit even to myself. It is also good that you are on these boards getting support. Finding 'alternative' help really helped me re-evaluate my life and value myself more. I would recommend it - there is only so much partners can do. It is very easy to lose yourself in this game. My advice is 'Don't give up, re-focus and most importantly TAKE REAL CARE OF YOURSELF'. Hope this helps,
best wishes
Poppy
p.s. I will be 42 when my baby is born.