Month: October 2020

Let’s Doula This Together

Posted on by Egg Girl

If someone had told me in my mid 20s that at 45 I would be unmarried and trying to have a child alone using donor sperm, I would have laughed at them. Never in a million years did I think that would be me, yet here I am 45, single and about to do this.

It has taken me a while to come to terms with where I am at. For the longest time I kept telling myself ‘I’ll just wait a little bit longer to see if Mr Right shows up, I have got time’…. you tell this to yourself month in month out, year in year out until one day you wake up and are 45! There is never a time or age that you consciously think ‘ok I now have to do it alone’ you still always hold onto the hope (despite it being completely unrealistic) that Mr Right will show up just in time! I mean even last year at aged 44 when I met someone I thought….. ‘maybe we could do it together’ but the reality is, that is just too much pressure for any person or relationship. I am however now at peace with trying to be a single mum by choice, in fact I think it might be slightly easier in some regards. Through this process I have learnt to care less what people think of my decision, It isn’t their life and of course doing it this way wasn’t my first choice, but sometimes we have to change our plan and make a new one if we are going to reach our dreams and that is exactly what I am doing.

Alone, however i am not…. Obviously I always thought I would be trying to have a baby with the love of my life, but things change and I have had to adapt my story. I am however definitely NOT doing this alone, I have a wonderful network of friends and family supporting me at every turn and I am so thankful for that. One friend in particularly has been my rock and i want to talk about her in this post.

Her mantra is ‘Because no one should have to do it alone’ and those beautiful words are the words of my very best friend (sometimes known as the little sister i never had). I will call her Naomi for the sake of this post, but she knows who she is.

I met Naomi over 10 years ago when we were both volunteering in Africa. She was a fresh graduate taking some time out after uni and I was in my mid 30’s ticking off a bucket list item and probably (although i didn’t realise it at the time) running away from a 7 year relationship that I knew in my heart was not meant to be.

We become friends from the first day we met, her energy was infectious and it was impossible for people not to love being around her. In the past 10 years we have travelled together, worked together, laughed together and cried together. Neither of us is perfect and we both have our ups and downs, but she is most definitely my most treasured friends and always will be no matter where we are in this world.

Through this whole journey she has been there to support, love and cry with me. I remember back to receiving my AMH and FSH blood test results over 5 years ago. For those of you that have read my blog you will remember these were NOT good test results, in fact I was told it was too late for me to even try and freeze my eggs. At that time I went into a state of shock and slight depression. I couldn’t process what I had been told and I didn’t know how to pick myself up again. Naomi, who i am proud to call my best friend got on a plane, flew from where she lived to the UAE, where I was, to be my rock. She picked me up and told me I was NOT giving up and reminded me that nothing good comes easy. She was there for me when I started my first round of egg freezing and had my first injection, in fact I think she may have even given it to me! When she had to leave to fly back home to her life and job, she left me 30 hand written notes, one for each day i was having treatment that month. I was to open one note when I woke up in the morning and these notes would pick me up and keep going in her absence. She was my beacon at sea and she helped me get through one of my most difficult times of my life. I will never forget this and be eternally grateful for her wonderful friendship.

Fast forward to a few months ago and this amazing human who LOVES children (and will be an amazing mum herself one day) didn’t let the fact that she got Furloughed during COVID-19 get her down…. nope, she put her ‘lockdown time’ to good use and trained to be a Doula!

I like to think (slightly selfishly) that it was because she knew I was going to need a birthing partner that she made this decision and that it would of course be her who took that role by my side, so she thought she had better get some ‘training in’, but I know it is because she isn’t just going to be there for me but for hundreds of others out there who need someone by their side when they might feel alone. This is the kind of selfless person she is!

So, whilst i don’t have a partner in the traditional sense of ‘baby making’, i do have a partner in the untraditional sense and someone I know will be my biggest cheerleader, my rock when I need it and the most amazing godmother to my child if I get that far. I am very fortunate!

During this journey some people I have come across have told me that bringing a child into this world with only one parent is a selfish act because this child will only experience the love from one parent, not two. These people don’t know me and they don’t know Naomi! I have so much love in my heart that I am ready to give to a child and I know Naomi has even more! If I am lucky enough to have a child then the love this child will receive from Naomi and I will be way more than some children ever experience from a traditional two parent house hold, so I am confident in knowing that my decision to be a single mum is in fact not in the least bit selfish and whilst it might not be the ‘normal’ way of doing things….. what is normal anymore especially during these unprecedented COVID times…. if what has happened to the world during COVID hasn’t shown people that ‘normal’ isn’t always best, then I don’t know what will. We are in a ‘new normal’ now and its time to embrace this change.

Leaning into the Fear

Posted on by Egg Girl

Covid Caos

COVID-19 hit the world by storm early this year and I think when it did everyone thought ‘lock everything down, give it a few months and we will be able to move on with our lives’. This has most certainly NOT been the case. We are definitely NOT back to the life we once thought was normal and I don’t think we ever will be.

The question for many is do we actually want to be? I know for me I like my new normal. Don’t get me wrong there are certainly challenges to it (not being able to travel freely, see friends and family easily etc) but what these ‘Covid times’ have given me is the chance to slow down, take a breath and find a sense of balance and what is really important in life.

Pre-Covid the next step for me on my ‘trying to become a mum’ journey was to try and travel to Cyprus (where my chosen clinic, frozen eggs and donor sperm are located) this summer with an aim to be pregnant by September this year. Obviously with everything be locked down and travel being virtually impossible this hasn’t happened. The downtime I have spent during lockdown has however given me time to reflect on just how much I want this next step or at least to give it my all in trying and hope that having a biological child is in the cards for me.

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Making a Plan

I have been in regular comms with my clinic to understand the parameters around travel in and out of the country and it seems that the UAE is still on the restricted list, however they are allowing people to travel there for a maximum of three days IF it is for medical reasons and thankfully IVF is deemed medical, so I am now able to get to Cyprus albeit with some logistics and challenges whilst getting in and out. So what am I waiting for you are probably asking…. if i know 100% i want to give this a go, i have accepted it is going to be with donor sperm (not with a partner i had hoped to find by this time in my life) why aren’t i there right now giving it a go!?

I wish it was as easy as that and maybe i am just making up excuses to delay further but I am worried about the logistics. I mean what if they defrost my eggs and sperm and then for some reason lockdown happens again and i can’t get into Cyprus OR what happens if i get there for my three days and then test positive? All real possibilities so do i wait longer an hope the Covid situation will improve or have i waited long enough and just go for it and pray everything falls into place? I think i am verging on the latter, especially not knowing when Covid will be under control. I mean it could be another year or so before a vaccine and i don’t have another year. Each month i am getting older is going to make it harder for this to work because despite my eggs not ageing (because they are frozen) my body is and I don’t want to be a mum who is too old to do all the things mum’s do with their kids, so i really do need to get going pronto!

That being the case I am just waiting for my next period to come. Then I will take the medication i have been prescribed by my clinic for the month prior to treatment and hopefully by the end of November/early December I will be on my way to give this thing a go.

Feel the Fear and do it anyway

If i am being brutally honest I am petrified, not of the treatment or the travel or of getting COVID, but of it NOT working. While I have my eggs frozen and safe i have hope and once I have tried, if it doesn’t work then that hope is gone and if that happens i don’t know how I will deal with that emotionally.

I know I have to give it a go but I am really scared of the outcome. I have had so much disappointment in the past on this journey and at times it has taken strength i didn’t think i had to dig deep and keep going and when I look back i know how far i have come especially after being told over six years ago (at the beginning of my egg freezing journey) that there was no hope at all.

There is a little part of me that thinks about what an amazing tale i will have to tell if and when I hold my biological child in my arms and I want that so very badly, more than anything. I couldn’t imaging my life feeling complete without it, so i think for now i need to hold on to that. Visualising that moment isn’t going to make the devastation any less painful if it doesn’t work so I need to hold on to it right now and not worry about the outcome. I will just deal with the devastation of it not working if and when that happens. There is no point worrying about something that that I can’t control and hasn’t actually happened yet – right!

I read something the other day that said the majority of anxiety that people experience is either from worrying about past or present things it is never from living in the present. I keep thinking about this statement and keep coming back to just how true it really is. When i think about me here and now I have no worry, no uncertainty it is only when i think about what ‘might’ happen that I become anxious, so I just need to trust in the universe, keep breathing and lean into my fear, something I have become quite good at especially over the past six months.

Lets hope by Christmas I will be in a position to look back on 2020 as the year that definitely didn’t go to plan, but it was the year that I got what I really wanted for Christmas……. the feeling of being pregnant!