Monday Daily

I totally get where you're coming from, and your pain is real and awful. (And for the record, I don't really mind the term "free sex baby", because IVF with PGS was our next step/last resort and I cannot BELIEVE how expensive that shit is)

But you also don't understand the pain of miscarrying time and time again and spending nearly an entire year desperately trying to find the cause, cursing your stupid body for killing off embryo after embryo. I was the best woman at my best friend's wedding the day my second miscarriage started. I stood up there at the alter, clutching my bouquet, and then as soon as we marched back down the aisle, I realized that in the 30 minutes I'd been standing there, I had soaked through a giant pad and blood was running down my leg. I missed the reception because I had to go to the ER. (Undiagnosed clotting disorder + miscarriage = a horrible horrible experience where things don't break up like they're supposed to.) They had to use forceps to remove a giant baseball size clot.

I have pain too. And I am so tired of the pain Olympics and feeling unwelcome here. I get that IVF is hard- my best friend is now going through it and I cannot believe how hard this is for her. But we're all here because we've had pain.

3 years ago, this sub was my LIFELINE. r/infertility was amazing during the uncertainty and fear and, and then here was so supportive and wonderful when I saw that first heartbeat on the monitor and knew for sure that the blood thinners had worked.

And now I come in here and people ghost d-vote me because I had a free sex baby and I didn't suffer enough and this didn't cost me enough money.

But, it is different, costly, emotionally draining for people that needed ART and will always need ART.

I get that! And it is awful and expensive and so so hard for you. My egg and sperm meet and sometimes make a zygote- but then my body kills it off, every single fucking time. And I feel betrayed and angry at my body, I feel like a failure, I feel unnatural and wrong and like my body is failing at it's one biological imperative, I feel like my blood is a murderer, slowing suffocating and starving each little embryo.

I get ultrasounds every other week, and then once a week in the last trimester, because my clotting disorder means blood clots can form in the placenta and give the fetus a stroke. It means blood clots can form outside the placenta and give me a stroke. This pregnancy carries a not insignificant risk to me and the fetus. This is TERRIFYING. I don't get a normal pregnancy. I have to chart every goddamn kick and pay constant attention to fetal movements. Do you know how many times I ended up in the ER my last pregnancy? Not to mention I have to get induced at 38 weeks because around then the risk of blood clots becomes so significant that it's safer to induce before the baby is ready to come out.

I have an entire fucking team of doctors- MFM, ob/gyn, hematologist, and an endocrinologist, all of whom require constant appointments, constant blood tests, and constant medications. My delivery has to take place in a hospital with appropriate facilities- I'll be driving 45 minutes to deliver because that's the hospital that has the facilities I need.

So yes, I am sick of the pain Olympics. This place was my safe zone, where I could find other women (and men) who understood the fear of pregnancy, the uncertainty, who didn't take a healthy beautiful ALIVE baby for granted, and who understand how hard it was to get that outcome.

I am really, really sorry you've suffered. It must be awful, but... your pain and my pain are more similar than they are dissimilar and I wish we could connect on our similarities rather than be distanced by the differences.

/r/InfertilityBabies Thread Parent