the hinterlands

when an IVF cycle take us nowhere - where do we go?

It has been exactly a decade since I began my first IVF cycle.

Here are the things I remember. Here are the things I want to say. I haven’t said some of them before. But ten years on feels a good time to do that.

It is November 30th, 2013.

I am eighteen months past a medical trauma that I’ve rarely spoken about (but I will).

I’m twenty four hours past a negative pregnancy test that drew a pink line under our first cycle of IVF. It’s here that I discovered I really was the ‘poor responder’ my consultant suspected I would be. I’m also at a Christmas Fair with my parents in Brockholes nature reserve. They know we’d had our treatment but I’d been vague about the timings.

After some fake smiling and mooching around home made soap stalls, we drink hot chocolate outside and I tell them it hasn’t worked. We are sad and now they are sad. My Mum asks if I’m sure. Her little fragments of hope shatter me a fraction more.