Thalia's fertility journey

Being married

I haven't been very settled, recently. Work is... frustrating. I don't feel in balance between work and home, yet not sure what to do about it. And I'm not sure if I am happy in my marriage.

It's not a good place to be. I love my husband, but I'm not in love with him. And I haven't been for a long time. I don't know why or where it started, it goes back certainly to the challenges I wrote about here, that he was never the person I had dreamed about, but he was here, he was lovely, he was solid, he looked after me. And he persuaded me, through consistency and support, that he was right for me. And I was 35 and I thought I should stop messing around and marry the man who loved me. Who I loved.

And through infertility I knew I had chosen well. He was there, he supported me, he did what I needed him to do, he was my rock. And I loved him.

He was not a great father originally. Of course he loved Pob from the beginning, but he didn't really know what to do with her, so he focused on supporting me. Then he took voluntary redundancy when she was 6 months old, and his relationship with her developed from there. They are fantastic together now, as he is with Junior. I love his parenting, most of the time. He is, also, too impatient sometimes, a bit too controlling, but none of us are perfect parents, and he is the hands on father I wanted for my children.

But he isn't the man I envisaged for myself, and I think there is a barrier there that I'm not sure is surmountable. I am impatient when he is slow to catch on to things, embarassed when he makes a verbal quip that doesn't work. I compare him with my colleague's spouses, who seem to a man/woman to be accomplished, impressive in their own rights. I want someone who matches me intellectually, and he isn't that, he never pretended he was. I am tired of being the one who keeps us going financially, even while I'm aware that's completely unfair, I have a high paying job I enjoy and he has a less well paid job that he is good at. And he picks up the slack domestically to somewhat compensate for that.

I want to be in love. I admire him in so many ways, his loyalty, his care for me and the children, his passion for what's right. If I was married to someone more high powered we'd either need to have substantially more domestic help, or I'd have to stop working. H makes our life work by picking up a lot of domestic responsibilities - although I do most things associated with the children's activities and schools, he does more of the 'washing machine needs mending' bit.

We don't have sex, much at all, I miss it. He says more would be good, I say so too. Yet we mostly don't make the time for it, and his sexual issues are unresolved.

I don't want to be divorced. I can't envisage how I would parent the children if I was on my own. I like being a couple. And I love him. But I want passion in my partnership, not just the passion I feel for my children. I don't know if I can rekindle that in our partnership, or if in the end it will come from outside. I hate the sense that I'm biding time because it's easier this way. Why don't I invest properly to see if it can work rather than just letting it tick along? It's easier this way, but it's not fun, or fulfilling.

This of course is not the end of this. I don't think I should post this, but it is what it is. It's where I am right now. I started the blog so I could talk about what I really felt. And this is it.

Pob snippets #10

Thalia: What did you have for your snack today, Pob

Pob: I had several raisins, Mummy

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Thalia: The lift's not working, darling, let's take the escalator

Pob: Why isn't the lift working, Mummy?

Thalia: I'm not sure, sweetie, perhaps the buttons are stuck

Pob: Why are the buttons stuck, Mummy?

Thalia: I don't know darling, perhaps someone pushed them too hard

Pob: Why did someone push them too hard, Mummy?

Thalia: I'm not sure, darling, perhaps they were in a bad mood

Pob: Why were they in a bad mood, Mummy?

Thalia: Perhaps they didn't eat their breakfast this morning

Pob: But why wasn't the lift working, Mummy?

Thalia: [losing patience with this conversation] Perhaps it didn't have enough breakfast this morning

Pob: [thinking]

Pob: No, Mummy, perhaps it didn't have enough PETROL this morning.

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Pob is having a bad morning, breakdowns at the smallest things

Thalia: Are you in a bad mood this morning, Pob?

Pob: Yes, I'm very sad

Thalia: Why are you very sad, darling?

Pob: Because I'm scared you'll go away again

Thalia: [immediate working Mummy guilt]

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Pob: I wish Mummy and Daddy were at home all the time

Thalia: [immediate working Mummy guilt]

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Pob: Where's Mummy, Nanny?

Nanny: Mummy's away tonight, Pob, I am staying instead

Pob: Where are you sleeping, Nanny?

Nanny: In the spare room

Pob: I'll get you comfortable, Nanny!

Runs between her room and the spare room, bringing about half her stuffed animals and a blanket. Turns the light on in the spare room.

Pob: You'll need some friends to keep you company, Nanny, and I've turned on the light so you won't be scared. Would you like me to talk to the friends and tell them to look after you?

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After infertility

I can't remember what it felt like. I can remember in a factual way that it was awful. Painful, miserable, soul-suckingly awful. But I can't feel it any more. The extraordinary pain that I felt, the hole that I experienced deep inside isn't there any more.

I don't know when it happened. I don't remember when I stopped remembering how it felt. I do remember that I still felt angry after Pob was born, when I realised that the time to just wait for a second didn't exist for us, we had to get on with it if we had any hope of it happening. I remember being so incredibly sad when our first IVF cycle after Pob didn't work. I also remember having to snap out of it soon after I got home so that I didn't affect her. While that didn't reduce the sadness, it did reduce the focus on the sadness.

Sometime after Junior arrived, the visceral reality of the anger and the sadness went away. Not completely, no. When I yearn for another baby, it's there, that feeling that if only we'd had children sooner we might have been able to have another. But it's a yearning, a nostalgia almost, not a deep, penetrating, dreadful sadness like the absence of any children - or of any sense of possibility of those children, at some points - felt. It's there when I look at one of my colleagues, struggling to hold it all together at a women's event where EVERYONE is talking AGAIN about the challenges of working motherhood. And I know she's feeling jealous and angry and ashamed of herself. But I just know it, I don't feel it.

I don't know what made it go away. I don't know if somehow the intensity of the love I feel for my children filled the gap. I don't know if it seeped away because it's just not what I think about all day any more. It comes up, and it goes away while I think about everything else on the list. I don't know if I'm healed, or just papered over.

I know that this is not true for everyone. I had lunch with a friend last week who adopted her daughter two years ago, after nearly 10 years of dealing with infertility. I shared some of the above feelings with her, and she visibly tensed, shivered, looked a bit sick, and then said: "No. I feel it. I feel those critical moments every day. I remember each period of those first three years, getting more and more angry every time I realised I wasn't pregnant again. The day they told me after the operation I'd never have children without IVF, the first time we had to have a social worker in our house. The moment I realised our daughter would not come from China. I am right back there, every time I remember those moments."

Why? Why has it gone for me and not for her? Is it because she is thinking about a second adoption, while, we, much as I yearn for another, are done? Is it because I've filled the hole not just with love but with working too hard and planning a move? Am I distracting myself from reality with a bunch of displacement activities?

As always, it's probably some combination of the above. I know that the love of my children has changed the way I feel about life in a profound way. I know that I am mostly happy. I know, even so, that there are things that are not right in my life and that currently I am doing a medium good job of covering them up. But the sadness, it has lifted. The pain, is a memory of an ache, no longer agony. I got the future I wanted, not when I wanted, but I got it nonetheless.

The experience of being a parent, of loving my children, hasn't cured me, it's just changed the angle with which I experience the world.