The Unexpected Side Effects of IVF

"Mother nature doesn't want you to have children, and we need to make sure there isn't a reason why." 

I remember those words, delivered matter-factly in the warm room of the Ottawa Fertility Clinic almost 9 years ago. It was not a shock. Having spent countless hours lost to the power of google, I knew the situation we were in was precarious and just waiting to spill over from the possible to the impossible. That was a place I didn't fully allow my mind to go; the dark chance that we would never be able to make a baby together. It was hard enough to swallow the situation we found ourselves in. We were in our mid 20s, eager to start making babies, and being told that it simply wasn't going to happen on our own.

One of the things I learned quickly back then was it was less about what we couldn't do on our own and more about whether we could do it at all. Ever. The thought that I might never carry Andrew's biological child was terrifying. Friends would suggest we could just adopt. While I believe there are many ways of building a family, I was after a certain kind of way. Every time I looked at Andrew, I wanted his baby. I longed to be pregnant, to carry what was part of both myself and my husband.

IVF with ICSI, we were told, was our only path to pregnancy. At first I worried about the needles, I stressed about all of the drugs I would be introducing into my body and I feared the procedures involved in the process. But I was also angry. Not because it was anyones fault, because infertility is as much a disease as any other, but what I couldn't get past was that there were no answers. When it comes to male infertility, it seems the research just isn't there. On Instagram there seems to be a flood of female fertility aides - monitors, devices and support. Apparently in NYC there's a fertility clinic on wheels, just for women... And I'm not here to be angry, but I do wonder why more isn't said about male factor infertility when the facts say that infertility is split 1/3 female, 1/3 male and 1/3 unexplained. But anger isn't the side effect I am here to discuss. No, what I want to talk about is the gaping void inside of me that aches at the thought of ever being done, ever carrying our last baby, ever birthing our last child.

And I wonder if this ache is here because we simply can't have a baby by just having sex. Although dammit if I don't cross my fingers and toes, and will mother nature to do us another miracle every month. 

Last month I went for a routine physical and of course she asked me the question...

"Are you on the pill?' Her one hand was hovering above the field that must surely instruct her to push birth control on the monitor.

"No, we can't have children on our own." I say since she's a resident and likely hasn't read my history

"Things can happen," She pushes

"Believe me, every single month I hope that I will be pregnant, I want that to happen." I answer

"Okay." She types away furiously and drops it

And right now, as I type these words, I know my desire to keep procreating does not adhere to reason. We are so very fortunate and blessed while so many still suffer from infertility. IVF twins and then a FET singleton six years later make my heart full. I still feel a wave of emotion hit me whenever I tell their story, our story of how our family came to be. Yet, whenever I do get my period, I feel the sting, the longing and the ugh.

And I think I have it figured out now. The ache is one part pure biology- the need to keep procreating- and the other part is simply wanting what I cannot have.

How can I stop wanting more children, when I know how impossible the road to having any more would be? Is it not human nature to crave what we know to be next to impossible?

I could never do IVF again. A fresh round of IVF could result in extra embryos. I now know that I couldn't not try those embryos. I couldn't leave them frozen with a whole bunch more of what ifs and I couldn't necessarily have all of them. So no, IVF is never in the cards for us again.

So, although this ache isn't a medical side effect of IVF, it is a life one, something that sits on my heart and presses down ever so slightly just when I think we are all okay, that we are full enough. Today I chose to recognize that wanting and to not feel upset by it. I understand why it is there. I know how to navigate these conflicted feelings. But back then, almost a decade ago, when I said we wanted two children, I had no idea that I would keep having them as long as I could, if we could.

Right after having our twin daughters, Alice and Isla, I was an emotional puddle, not because I was exhausted or overwhelmed (because honestly, I was on the biggest euphoric high). No, I was a mess because the thought of not having another baby just killed me. I remember walking around the block, one baby strapped to each of our chests and just being sad about the birth being over, about the idea of never having another. Eventually that sadness eased up and years later I had even convinced myself that we were done having children.

Then Benjamin came. Well first the idea of Benjamin arrived and then it immediately wasn't an idea, it was a desire so strong that I knew it had to be our path. I thought that having our third baby, our only frozen embryo, would exempt me from feeling that same urgent sense of sadness post birth. It didn't. This time I was so caught off guard about how sad I was about Ben's birth being over, about never being able to do it again. At one of my postpartum midwife appointments, I admitted to her how hard it was - this idea that he would be our last baby, my last birth. And her words really stuck with me.

"I still feel that way," she said while she suspended Ben in the little baby hammock scale.

Suddenly I wasn't alone and what I was feeling wasn't strange. And it helped. It took the desperate ache back just a tiny bit and it filled me with an unexpected warmth at community. It is hard for me to distance myself from the infertility and to admit that maybe I would feel this way regardless of how our family came to be. I see the posts about how to know when you are done having children but I always counted myself out from that group. The people that don't require $15K, a team of doctors and a whole shitload of luck to make a baby. But maybe I am just a mother, wanting to always be a mother, like so many others.

So maybe it's not just a side effect of IVF, maybe it's a side effect of carrying a baby for (almost) 9 months, for birthing a baby and for wanting to do it all over again. Maybe parents who conceive without infertility share this longing?

Thank you for reading. I would love if you'd take the time to leave your take - from one uncertain mama heart to another.