Resilience

Resilience - that's what the counsellors and experts say you need to do IVF. I feel like I need to rediscover my resilience reserves.

What does it actually mean? According to wikipedia - resilience is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning.

So I guess that's what I'm doing now, and have been doing for the last couple of years - coping with the stress and adversity that is IVF. I can't say I'm bouncing back to a state of normal functioning, but I am at least functioning somehow.

I'm in a state of depression this weekend but I'm slowly coming out of it. I've resolved to carry on and stay the distance with this stuff somehow. Until now, I keep focussing on how time is ticking away on us being able to do another stimulated cycle successfully if our two remaining embryos don't 'take'.

But actually we will just need to do what needs to be done to have baby #2 until we are sure we can do no more. I just need to let go of the time thing. If it turns out we are doing our last stimulated IVF cycle with me at the age of 44, then so be it.

When we started IVF again last year, I had hoped it would all be over, succeed or fail, by about September. Then it changed to the end of the year, then I hoped it would all be over by easter. Now I think we'll be lucky if we've hung up the towel by the end of this year.

But knowing that, at least I can mentally prepare for it and get my 'resilience' going so I can get through it. The other good thing, although mystifying for me, is that LH is honestly unaffected by all these delays and problems. For him, having Zoe is enough and a second baby is just a bonus. Its good he feels that way because he can be more supportive of me, even though he doesn't feel the same.

Its a long way from the dark days of January 2009, when we were both on the floor after the second IVF cycle failed. It may well take 6 months or more to sort out these retained placenta issues, and in fact we may never sort them out. But at least I'm now in a more realistic place and that's so much easier to deal with than having my elevated hopes dashed again.