Hello everyone,
I read often, but rarely post on here. However, I've got to the point where I would like very much to know about others' experiences, and get some advice and feedback. I'm struggling to come to terms with my three losses, with a future without children, with the difficult things that people say to me that leave me reeling for days, trying to cope. Yesterday a woman at work, an older, spinster type, started telling me out of the blue that once I hit 40 I'll resign myself to having no kids, like she did, and get on with life. It has left me weeping today, completely devastated by her words. Sometimes I feel like I'm going mad.
I'm 38 and my husband (sorry, can't remember if this is DH!) is 35. We met and married late and started trying immediately for a family. I had two consecutive miscarriages last year, one at 12 weeks, one at eight weeks, and then we lost the third pregnancy at 16 weeks. She was a little girl. She had triploidy, and although her heart beat strongly throughout (perhaps the saddest thing of all), she was 'incompatible with life', as the doctors put it.
In the last seven months I've really struggled to keep sane. I was definitely depressed for a while, and although I feel better now, small things still upset me greatly. I find all the pregnant women at work difficult, and I have to quietly leave the office when they later their babies in to be admired. Most of my peers have several children and more on the way. I've had to cut myself off from a few people, as I just can't cope with it all. I feel like an outcast, and I keep wondered what on earth I have done to deserve all this.
We got referred to a fertility clinic, but I had to fight for this, as they did not class the third loss as a miscarriage but a second trimester loss, and therefore in the midst of grieving, desperate for help, I found myself being told that I did not yet qualify for a specialist. Finally, a kindly doctor gave in and referred me - but only because I broke down in her office. As I say, it has been a desperate time.
We waited for six precious months to have the tests, without trying again as we (I - husband said we shouldn't wait, and he was right!) were too afraid to try before we had some answers. Now I regret waiting like this, wasting time, as all the genetic tests came back clear, as did the other tests. The specialist could tell us nothing.
Now I don't know what to do. We are trying again now, but we are not conceiving. I don't know how we would be considered for IVF anytime soon as we have conceived in the past - it's just that I don't keep the pregnancies. If we try for the time stipulated that you have to try before being offered IVF, I will reach 40 and therefore not qualify. This is what I don't understand about the whole process and how you, for example, qualify for treatments where they test the egg on conception and all that amazing scientific stuff!
So my question is (as well as being keen to hear others' experiences), does anyone know what options are available for cases like us? I just hit a brick wall with it every time, and I am desperate for answers before we start looking at the adoption route. If anyone has any words of wisdom, it would really help. Part of this whole process is, I think, trying to take control. At the moment I just feel so helpless.