The Neverending Journey

If you are reading this, I wish you weren't.

Hang on, don't go!

 What I mean is, if you've found yourself here it's likely that you are (or someone close to you is) part of an exclusive members club, although I'm not talking about some swanky low-lit London establishment. 

This club is one I was rather less eager to become an honorary member of myself. It's the Non-Mother's Club. As a long-standing member, I feel your pain. Truly. Having been to hell and back due to the agony of infertility, I'd like to give you a virtual hug, pour you a large cold Sauvignon, chink wine glasses and say "Hang in there, Sister! It does get better." 

Undergoing IVF is often described as a journey, well if that's the case it's the loneliest, most depressing journey I'VE ever been on (and I regularly take public transport, so that's saying something). 

Let me make something clear here - I LOVE to travel. The thrill of closing the bulging suitcase, knowing that the next time it's opened I'll be somewhere new - preferably hot, exotic, exciting. Checking the details on the tickets for the umpteenth time, counting down the days on the calendar until the Great Escape from the mundane routine of the nine to five. 

Only the "journey" I was about to embark on in 2007 was to be of a completely different variety. It would be the most agonising journey of my life, and, in some ways, it's one that will never end. There will be no "Great Escape." Not entirely. 

You see, to call undergoing the investigations, consultations and then ultimately the IVF procedures a "journey" implies that there is a destination, that you actually arrive somewhere at the end of it. Which in many cases couples do, to be fair. On average one in four attempts results in a live birth. Of the women that I've known or met throughout my infertility struggle, all of them went on to become mothers, eventually. I found this at first heart-warming, reassuring, and then ultimately even more isolating as it became apparent that my husband and I would not be joining them in welcoming a child of our own. 

You read stories in womens' magazines about the infertility diagnosis, the IVF....and then the "miracle" at the end of it, which takes the form of a bonny pink or blue-wrapped bundle lying serenely in it's grateful mother's arms, her palpable joy leaping off the glossy page. 

Well I'm here to talk about the darker side of infertility, the taboo subject which is often ignored due to it's uncomfortable nature: what happens to the women for whom IVF, often the last-ditch desperate attempt to produce that longed-for child, fails? What happens when you simply run out of road on your "journey" like on some cheap film set? Like the Wile E Coyote character on the Roadrunner cartoons who accidentally runs over the edge of a cliff, stopping momentarily in mid-air as he looks down and realises he's about to plunge into the abyss. 

Then what?