DOROTHY – MY SPECIAL GIFT

“The struggle was part of my journey.”

Dorothy means God’s gift. It is the name we chose for our daughter.

You could say that making a baby is a minor matter, nothing difficult. 6 months of trial and boom, my brother’s wife is pregnant. All the women around at once, all pregnant too. And I had 4 years of trials and a wonderful time with my husband and nothing.

Also, I gave up most family events because their questions were killing me:

“What about you, don’t you want a baby?”

“Aren’t you trying?” 

“How old are you?” – This one my the best.

“Don’t you take a vacation? It will help.”

We had a lot of vacation, a lot of relaxation and fun. Only this didn’t affect the conception of the child. After 5 years of trying, my husband and I decided to start visiting infertility clinics.  I have gone through all the important research regarding my infertility and my husband’s sperm tests. Now I was laughing – men only control the sperm and women go through the worst. It turned out that my one ovary is not functioning and, like every woman, I have fertile days, but without the help of new technology, the chance of getting pregnant is minimal.

For the first time, a professional group of doctors didn’t mention that we need a vacation, that stress affects my psyche and blocks the possibility of having a child. For the first time in a specific medical interview, we learned that naturally we are not able to create a cute little person, but with their help, it will be possible. And as they said so it began.

FIRST STAGE OF IVF

With both children, in my case, the IVF process begins with hormonal injections. And here I experienced my first shock.

Injections

What? An injection? And I have to do these myself? And where? In the belly, two centimeters below the belly button.

One person in my head said: Forget it! I won’t do it this. The solution is disgusting and painful, there has to be another way. And another person said: I must do it, I decided to do it myself and I will give myself these injections. I’m a strong woman like we all are.

Loneliness

My biggest problem at the time was that we didn’t talk about IVF with anyone other than the doctors. A difficult process started for me, it was my first time with IVF and it was the first time that I felt weak and lonely. Now it has completely changed, there are more and more couples struggling with infertility, and more and more talk about it. (National Infertility Awareness Week is observed during the last full week of April and takes place from April 23 to 29 this year).

Physical discomfort

I had painful injections in my stomach every day. In addition to the injections, the doctors gave me tablets that I called “superglue”, like a popular glue, because that’s how they were supposed to work. The tablets, when dissolved in the vagina, formed a stopper. The hormonal dose of the injections lasted two weeks, and the “superglue” tablets lasted three months. I still get chills when I think about it.

The worst part happened during the egg collection day. I had to do a completely different injection, exactly 12 hours before the eggs were collected. And in my case, it was a time when we waited at Luton Airport for a flight to Ostrava( our Clinic was there). This time my husband was giving me an injection, his hands were shaking, sweat was dripping from his forehead, and everything was in front of the people at the Airport. Not in the middle of the Airport but still we couldn’t find an empty quiet place to sit and show my belly button. It was a very unpleasant experience, especially as the fluid in this injection was thick, making the injection longer and more painful.

Mental discomfort

And now I should also write about the psychological changes after such hormone doses, but I will give just one example:
I make myself tea in the kitchen, give me honey, cut lemons. When I want to add a lemon slice to my tea, it falls out of my hands and falls to the floor. My husband rushes to the kitchen because he hears me cry: “What happened, did you cut yourself, burn your hand?”
“No, no, nothing like that”– I reply, sobbing.
“So what?”
“A lemon slice fell to the floor.”

THE SECOND STAGE OF IVF

Transfer eggs from my ovaries – the whole procedure I was under anesthesia. Pain only appeared at home, something similar to strong menstruation pain and light spotting. Nothing nice again.

Then there was a meeting with doctors who showed us the next stages of IVF. Included: How many eggs did they take, what quality, how much will they freeze, etc., later they added my husband’s seed, mixed it up, and prepared a perfect elixir of life called “the embryo”.

THE THIRD STAGE OF IVF

Finally, the physical and mental torment after stages 1 and 2 was over, especially the worst stage 1, that I was able to survive. The most peaceful and important one has come – placing the embryo in my uterus.

Completely painless, although when I saw what needle the doctors were using to introduce the embryo into the uterus, I felt a slight panic. The nurse quickly reassured me that the needle was long enough to hit exactly where the doctors could see with an ultrasound, and I saw it too.

Now, in retrospect, I can say that it was a wonderful feeling because the doctors created my baby, I had it inside and I felt like all pregnant women. As in the case of a natural pregnancy, the same in the case of IVF, after 12 weeks we perform a pregnancy test and then an ultrasound.

THE FOURTH STAGE OF IVF

Unfortunately, it is best if 4 stages didn’t exist. At this stage, the first attempt to fertilize has failed. This was the case with my God’s gift-Dorothy.

This feeling cannot be described. There is psychological pain, doubt, hypocrisy, sadness, tears, quiet days, and a lot of thought: what now? what next? 

In addition, menstruation comes like the Niagara waterfall, and I always had painful menstruation, and here the pain came back twice. My body was tired and so was my psyche.

The menstruation was over, and the doctors wanted another check-up, another dose of hormones, and another attempt to fertilize. For me, one week after “losing a child”, that is how I felt it, not as a failed attempt, but as the loss of a loved one in my life.

Also for me a week, was too little time to make a very important decision. The doctors wanted to push me into this process too quickly. Only that it was not their invention, the next embryo must be applied after menstruation and on a specific day. The doctor explained to me in a human, understandable and empathetic way that now my body is still hormonally charged and no injections will be needed. All I can do is make the decision to re-fertilize right away.

And I did it. Thanks to the help of doctors, new technologies, and above all, faith, hope, and a long and tiring struggle – my Dorothy was born.

“Strong women aren’t simply born, there are created by storms they walk through.”