The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Conceive when its just not happening (12m+)

littleme82

Tea - why is he being like that? Does he not understand what a +ve test is and what a m/c is? Sorry to hear he is being difficult x

fluffnutter

tea_lover wrote: »

OH told me last night that he still doesn't actually think I was pg. Despite the many +ve tests, despite the evil m/c, despite the follow-up appts and letters which have discussed said m/c. He doesn't believe me. He also thinks that regardless of whether I was or not there is absolutely no point talking about any of it.

What can you say to that??

What's he actually saying though? He doesn't believe you, i.e. he thinks you're lying? That's simply not rational. He must know you're not lying. Didn't he come to the clinic with you? See the tests? See the FS at the follow-up appt?

Sounds like he just can't cope with the miscarriage because he's too upset. That doesn't help you though, I know. TBH, I don't think there is anything you can say to that. It's pretty obvious that trying to be rational about things isn't going to help - because he's deliberately chosen to be irrational to protect himself. He's doing 'la la la' with his fingers in his ears. I'm normally a talker; good communication, however painful, is key to a healthy relationship and mental well-being. In this case though, I think I'd leave well alone. Any attempt to bring him round will make him even more entrenched. He's got to get there in his own time. Seek some support from elsewhere in the meantime. Don't suffer yourself, but just acknowledge that you can't help each other at the moment. Hopefully that will change in time x.

tea_lover

fluffnutter wrote: »

What's he actually saying though? He doesn't believe you, i.e. he thinks you're lying? That's simply not rational. He must know you're not lying. Didn't he come to the clinic with you? See the tests? See the FS at the follow-up appt? .

He thinks the test at the hospital was wrong. I've explained to him previously that false +ve's are incredibly uncommon and you could only get one if there was something wrong with the test itself but he ignores that. He also ignores all the other +ve tests I did at home during the next week until things went wrong.

I've also said to him that even if the tests were wrong, even if I was never pg, there's still things to talk about! He's absolutely adamant that there is no point even mentioning any of it.

I really don't think it's some sort of protection thing, I think he's just dead inside.

ETA: he was at the FS appt on OTD, he saw the +ve's at home after that, and he went to the follow-up appt where the m/c was discussed.

fluffnutter

He knows you're not lying. He's in his man cave. I'm sending you an enormous cyber-cuddle. Have you got it?

time2deal

Tea, you know - I think my OH would react the same way. He is not very empathetic, and I can see him saying 'it's all over, what is there is talk about? Whether is was a pg or not is irrelevant now isn't it'.

Maybe it's a bloke thing. I don't think it's protection or anything, I just think they can be a bit more black and white about things. Doesn't make it any easier to cope with though, when all you want is a cuddle and some kind of acceptance that it's sad and painful for you. I feel sometimes that DH is just humoring me, although he surprises me from time to time.

Once I was discussing when we would stop trying, and stop throwing money at this, he was surprisingly supportive about continuing. Bear in mind we haven't really started yet, but he is a complete MSE'er, and I was surprised when he said there would be a time to stop, but it wasn't something to think about yet.

In other news, I feel 1000% better today. I'm not sure what happened yesterday, but I really tipped over the edge of not coping. I'm feeling much more myself today.

tea_lover

fluffnutter wrote: »

He knows you're not lying. He's in his man cave. I'm sending you an enormous cyber-cuddle. Have you got it?

Thank you it's like a cross between a hot chocolate and tramadol .

tea_lover

Interesting article on the guardian website about IVF success rates, etc. this week. Hope I don't get told off for posting some of the info here... would put a link but then you all have to see the stupid comments and they're best avoided!

"The void in all this, the void that Zoll's book has tried to fill, is where the voices of those couples whose fertility treatment didn't work should be. If they were louder, or present at all, in culture, and more to the point, prominent in clinics, things might look very different.

One woman told me anonymously about three rounds of egg donorship she had been through. "This treatment cost £8,000 for one shot, and they said I would have to wait two years. How do you think I felt? I was 39, I'd wanted to have a child for seven years. Just by sheer luck a different clinic was able to find me an egg sharer after six months. That failed outright. My sense of failure was so overwhelming. I felt it was my fault – women often do, it's classic. I was driven to the point of suicide. I'm not boasting or trying to impress anybody, but I really was. It's a horrible place to be.

"I decided to have another go. I got two teaching jobs, and I saved up another £8,000, and they got me a donor. She was 25, everything was brilliant according to the textbook, and I got a positive pregnancy test. And then eight days later I started to bleed. It was basically an early miscarriage. This kind of grief is very difficult to put into words, it's so deeply embedded that all you can do is focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

To add insult to injury, we had frozen eggs left over. But they have a 20% chance of success overall. I just walked into that thinking, well, let's just get rid of these eggs. And I went for the pregnancy test, and they said it was negative. I thought, at least if I stay in public, I won't commit suicide, so I didn't get home all day. And there was a message saying, 'it turns out the pregnancy test has turned into a weak positive. It's unlikely to be viable, but keep taking the drugs and we'll scan again.

"So I had a scan, charting the death of this tiny little thing that was cleaving to my uterus. I could tell that this poor little thing had gone up two units when it should have quadrupled. I was witnessing the slow death of this tiny life. By this stage the nurses are terrified because they can see a person suffering this awful grief. You walk out of the clinic trying hard not to cry because you don't want to upset the women sitting there. I've never seen a woman walking out of the clinic in tears. Where's all that grief going? Because a lot of these women are getting terribly bad news.

"But I had to walk past the accounts office, and the woman was adamant about the 90 quid for the pregnancy test. I just thought, can't you give me a break? Could nobody have put their hand on my shoulder and said, 'I'm terribly sorry, this is an awful thing to be going through'."

This is Zoll's core message, that she underlines with determination and precision: "This is the human side that needs to be incorporated, and I believe that patients, when they go to a clinic, they need to have information, meetings with people who've failed as well as succeeded. They have cancer support groups, where they talk about the whole gamut. But infertility is shrouded in shame, and will only talk about success." Bewley refers to a study showing IVF to be as traumatic as chemotherapy, and makes a broader analogy. "It's a kind of death. We have our somatic deaths at the end of our lives, but we also have reproductive deaths."

"It's not a question of the industry selling false hope; but is the industry selling too much hope?" Miriam Zoll concludes."

There's a lot in this that rings very true, particularly the parts about how traumatic it is. That's what I'm finding hard to deal with with OH right now, I feel like we've been through (and are potentially going to again) this huge, difficult, scary thing and he just sees it as one more doctor's appt.

Where does the grief go? It gets packed tighter and tighter inside until there isn't anything else left, just this big, dense wad of hurt. Sometimes I feel like I've turned into a bruise; one that keeps getting knocked and getting that bit more painful all the time.

bigzippy

I have no words, but I feel for you, tea

codemonkey

Aww tea, I really feel for you. Not quite the same thing but my DH wont talk about anything either. As far as he's concerned if we can't have a baby, we can't have a baby and that's it. No discussion, no acknowledgement of grief about that. Just the cold, hard, no baby fact. I think some of them just look at a problem and if they can't fix it, they just shut down and reboot in caveman mode. "This bad. Me ignore." Huge hugs, have some of my chocolate stash (naughty me) and help yourself to my opiates.

Been signed off work for a week to give me time to get used to all the side effects of the drugs. Asked the GP about TTC and she said not to get ahead of myself. Which I assume is GP speak for "I don't freakin know".

Did some googling and they allow people with much worse chronic conditions like MS to have IVF so I'm guessing I'll just have to deal with pain some other way.

Part_Mouse

Tea and code your both having such rotton times, wish there was something I could do, huge hugs to you.

AFM not good today at FS iv'e lost over 50% of my lining and still nowhere near a dominant follie still have no idea what the next step is, I really hope on fri we can have some idea whats going to happen. Still on the menopur for what its worth but no increae since fri and that dose didnt stop the bleeding