Its finally here, I am on my way.  The last six year journey has led to this very point, I have resigned from my job, I am in the final few months of my notice period and I am sitting at the airport in Istanbul, a little scared and a little excited, heading to my where my frozen eggs are at a clinic in Northern Cyprus. I feel like I am playing a game of poker and I am ‘all in’.  Having absolutely no ability to know or control the outcome, knowing that I could be left in a few months time with no job, no pregnancy and feeling very lost, scared and searching for purpose or I could have my heart filled with joy and be heading closer to motherhood, there is just no knowing at this point. The only thing I do know is that I couldn’t do this next step half in… it had to be all in with the intent of leaving my job, starting a new chapter and in order to do that I had to learn harder into my fear than I have ever had to before, I had to say goodbye to a life that was safe and comfortable and jump with both feet into a new one of twist and turns that may bring me immense pain but may also bring me unimaginable joy. Either way I’m in…. and there is no turning back now.  

As I sit here at the airport waiting for my final flight, there are so many things I thought would be different, I could never have predicted I would be here in a million years.  I would never have thought I would have frozen my eggs, I never would have thought I would have sent them to a clinic in Cyprus, I never would have thought I would be trying to use them with an unknown sperm donor that I purchased for 250 Euro. I never would have thought I would be travelling to a country to use these sperm during a pandemic. There are SO many ‘I never would have thoughts’.  I think that in itself is teaching me something.  It is telling me that no matter how prepared I might want to be, how much control I might want to have about all the possible outcomes, we just can’t predict what will happen in our lives.  The universe has surprise after surprise for us and we can choose to live in fear or embrace that unknown, lean in to it, thrive off it, let it actually fuel us and ride a wave that is surely going to have many ups and downs but I’m starting to see that the ups are worth the downs, the highs are worth the lows and that I would rather live that way than a way of never knowing, a life of mediocrity because I was just too scared to try anything else. 

I find it slightly funny because I am a complete control freak, I make a plan for a plan, I prepare so far in advance that by the time the plan comes into play it needs to be updated because so many variables have changed, but for this part of the journey when I have thought about it over the past few years I thought I would be freaking out, scared, full of anxiety because I didn’t have complete oversight of what the outcome was going to be (I mean how could I), I thought I was really going to struggle with that aspect more than anything else……..but here I am about to get on my last 1 hour flight from Istanbul to Ercan (Northern Cyprus) and I feel a complete sense of calm.  Even as I was packing and a few friends and family members left me messages wishing me luck and telling me how proud they were of me it felt like they were more nervous and had more anxiety about the situation than I did.  I wasn’t phased about going alone, in fact I actually feel that this is something I needed to do alone and I seem to be totally detached with the outcome (at least right now) which is SO unlike me.  Normally I would be playing all the different scenario’s over in my head trying to predict what will happen, trying to say prayers and having anxiety about what will happen if this doesn’t work…. I mean maybe those feelings will come, but right now I feel complete calm. I think I have realized that there are just SO many possible permutations of what might/might not happen.  I might arrive in Cyprus have a scan and blood test and my body might not be ‘good to go’.  They might defrost my eggs or some of them and they might all die, my eggs and donor sperm might make embryos but then after a day or two they may not develop, they might put some embryo’s in me and they might not embed in my uterus and thus no pregnancy, an embryo might attach to my uterus but be chromosomally abnormal thus miscarrying or it might all go well and I might get pregnant…. Just SO many possible possibilities.   I try and not go to any of these outcomes for too long in my head for whilst I want to keep positive, I also want to prepare myself for the worst and just trust in the outcome.  All this being the case, funnily enough I feel that I am exactly where I am supposed to be and that I have done everything I could possibly have done to get to this point.  If things don’t go the way I want them to then I have to trust that having a child this way is/was just not on the cards for me and the universe has a bigger plan.  These are words that are helping me now and god knows I likely may need them to help me over the next few weeks and months, but right now I feel a state of calm knowing that I have tried, I have really tried and done all I can physically, mentally, emotionally to give this the best possible chance of a positive outcome even when doctors told me there was NO chance of a positive outcome.  Other than having a child in my 20s, there really is nothing else I could have done and if I had had a child in my 20s then I wouldn’t be who I am today with all the life changing experiences I have had and crossing paths with all the amazing people I have been so fortunate enough to come across, so I have to have zero regrets about that.  

So as I board my final flight to try and bring this next step of my journey to life and become pregnant using my own eggs and donor sperm, I do so with an open heart doing all I can to not be attached to whatever the outcome of this ‘possible last part of my journey’ to becoming a mum could be.  I’m trusting in the universe and I’m seeing what life has in store….this is all I can do at this point and it strangely feels not as scary as I had imagined it would!