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The Childless Mother

Dealing with infertility and finding happiness

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weightloss journey

Reintroduction

As we are approaching the 10k followed mark on the Facebook and blog, I thought I would do another little introduction for those who have just arrived.

👋👋

Hello. Welcome. Pleased you found my little page.

I started to write a journal some years ago, it vented my inner most fears and frustrations in the early stages of us trying for children. I never shared much online because it seemed like it would be wrong, like it was a dirty secret.

As the years passed I was slowly feeling like I was being left behind. As more and more of our friends and family had children, I started to worry this may never happen for us. I don’t think I had ever thought about it to seriously until that time. Then the scary question that all couples struggling to have kids are too scared to out loud. What if this never happens for us. What if we can’t have a baby.

I started to change. Small little withdrawals I think at first and now some 15 and half years in, now I feel like there is a gaping wide hole between me and the rest of the world. I got angry. The break came when we lost a pregnancy at the same time my cousin, who was like my little brother was battling and ultimately died of cancer. My world completely fell apart and what little of the old me I clung on to completely crumbled. I got white hot mad. I was sick of feeling like it was a dirty thing to be discussing, I started by sharing a blog on another one of my projects. I wrote from a place of pure pain and grief and the amount of reaction and support I got was overwhelming. Suddenly I knew what good could come from all this heart ache. The Childless Mother was born.

It proved that while it might be an uncomfortable subject for some to read, the people who need to feel supported are the reason I do this. The ones like me who are the only ones in their “circle” that are childless and feel completely alone. If I make one person feel a little better and less lonely I’m happy.

I have PCOS, my husband is fine. He could have children but he chooses me. He’s never been bothered too much one way or another. In some ways that’s good, but I still feel guilt as I know he would be an amazing dad. It’s so sad.

Well, in summary that’s me. I’m late 30’s now and our only chance is IVF. We are loosing weight and it’s going well but slowly.

I hope this page helps a little. Even if it’s just a place to find others that can truly appreciate the pain.

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Am I a Real Woman?

I read an article today about women who are childless or childfree whatever your preferred term. Some by choice, some like me that can’t have children.

A repeated theme through the article was that they were made to feel like they were defective, less than, not as important even selfish.

Some of the comments on the news feed directed to those who are childless by choice seemed to be as harsh. It really upset me.

Being a mother, while a wonderful thing to be, it does not define you as a woman. I would like to think that if we had children I would still keep my identity, keep some of myself that I would share with my offspring.

It feels like some of the people on the feed suggested that those couples are selfish. REALLY? Why does having a solid belief that you are not meant to be a parent make you selfish? Surely having a child you don’t want, just to fit in with what others think you should be doing is more crazy?!

Others stated that they “felt sorry” for those people missing out on that sort of love, like our lives are so empty without it. Don’t get me wrong. I feel emptiness from the losses of our babies and I can imagine the happy feeling of holding our child but is my life empty? No it’s not.

When you have time to mull over the choice for starting a family you do question why do I want this? Why did I want a baby so badly so young?

You all know from previous blogs I wanted this from a young age. I can’t ever remember not wanting to be a mum. I wanted it so badly. But I look back now and I do wonder how much of that is by suggestion. It’s what people did. They get married. They have kids. That’s just what you do, it’s the plan most follow.

I would have done it young too if I had been able to. Then I reflect on the things we have done over the last 15 years that we would perhaps not been able to do with children and I wonder if that would have been the right choice. I don’t think it would have been. Now as I look back, I am so pleased that we have had time together to build our team and while the heartbreak of the losses I wouldn’t ever want to relive that, I do feel grateful that we didn’t get pregnant within the first two years of our relationship at 23. I feel like now that would have been the wrong choice for us. I wasn’t mentally old enough for that. I would have done it and managed like so many do but I wouldn’t have done it as well as other do.

Like my best friend in the world for example, she has four Beauties and her first when she was 20. She was instantly a wonderful mum, like a switch flipped. She wanted her babies they were planned. Her life has been wonderful in different ways to mine, and I’m blessed that I share with her some of the moments with her kids. I don’t think I would have been as good as her. I love those kids though and my other nieces from my husbands brother very much. They are all perfect.

This journey has a nasty and surprising side effect. Bitterness. It eats at you and I have to work really hard to not let it take over my heart. I can imagine it would if I let it. Resentful of anyone that announces a pregnancy. I feel jealousy of cause, I let myself feel that but I try to recount the blessings to keep the bitterness out.

My husband. Our marriage. Our team. Team Phillips. Our travels. Our love.

The worlds full of beautiful different family units now. There is no one size fits all. I don’t need to have carried a child to affirm my womanhood. We aren’t less than. Our opinions matter, we don’t have to have given birth to know right from wrong or to understand parenting. One of the most hurtful things you can say to me would be “you don’t know because you haven’t had kids”

It’s not rocket science. I know myself well enough to know what sort of parent I would be. Do I know how hard it is? Not fully no, how could I? But I’m not clueless. Like many childless couples we probably think we know more than we do until we actually had children and it all goes out the window. But I see all around me how people are with their kids. My opinions still matter.

We feel sometimes out of place, like we don’t quite fit in any box anymore. We are the last couple of our friends that don’t have children. I think sometimes that people can push couples like us away because we don’t fit in anymore. I have come to terms with this over the years of trying to fake the parties and events with kids and other parents, the awkward silence or uncomfortable comments when you say at 38 you don’t have kids.

Sometimes you have to be a little selfish. I hold my hands up to that. But you know what, when you have experienced the losses we have and felt the pain we have, I think you would understand we deserve to be that sometimes. We have often comforted others through our infertility making them feel bad, I don’t do that anymore. That’s not our responsibility just as it isn’t theirs either. It is what it is. People either understand or they don’t.

Fifteen years in and I know for sure. I’m just as much of a woman as any mother, I’m not defective. This is something I’m learning to live with. It’s not what we planned but it’s not all doom and gloom!

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Waking from grief.

If I think too hard back over the last ten years I get an ache in my throat. Tears often threaten. Life’s a wonderful gift, but sometimes it’s an evil bitch.

I have had some of the best moments, marrying my husband, my best friend. Cheesy but very true. New travels, new experiences. But it’s also brought with it some terrible lows. Especially the last three years.

Every miscarriage I have experienced has layered more and more sadness on my heart. It’s chipped away at it’s normally very optimistic exterior. After all, how could I not be optimistic, I found Ben.

When my cousin fell ill and then sadly died I felt a bit of me go with him. Again cliche to say that, but it’s the best way to describe how I felt. I just am not the same person I was before. We dealt with what had to be done at the time as a family then we disappeared back into our own worlds to try and process the loss.

It felt like every day I was screaming in pain silently. My exterior often smiled but then in the quiet places when I was alone, my tears fell freely. It felt like dealing with the loss of my babies and Gavin all together. It twisted and wrapped itself up in one big lump of pain that’s just with me all the time.

They often say times a healer. I don’t find that true. What I do believe is time gives you an opportunity to learn to deal with the pain you are feeling. It becomes the new normal.

I retreated from everything. I barely saw my friends even my family. I was happiest in my house not having to do anything or see anyone.

Then earlier this year I had a car accident. A really bad one and my cheese well and truly slipped off my cracker. All that time to stay still, all those hours alone. It wasn’t pretty. My world literally felt like it fell apart.

I made some big changes. I left my job. I stared my own business an extension of my husbands already successful company. We sell and fit blinds commercially and domestically. We spend A LOT of time together. I love it.

Just recently I have started to notice a change, like a fog lifting. I don’t feel so heavy all the time. I don’t feel the need to hide away as much. My smile is no longer forced, my laugh is genuine.

Don’t get me wrong there are some days the fog slips back and I feel the loss completely again, but it’s less frequent.

I can think of Gavin without feeling the urge to brake something.

I don’t feel like all of a sudden I’m over the losses we have experienced, I know there will be bad moments to come. Like when I see something I desperately want to tell him about and I still go to message him, for those wonderful few moments he’s with us, then I remember he’s gone.

It’s the small steps that are helping. The little glimpses of the old me.

Finding where we fit in a world that the “norm” is having kids is sometimes hard. I discovered this week that those of us many years into trying but still not lost hope completely, apparently we don’t fit in with those who defiantly can’t. The fact we still have hope however small separates us. Was a little upsetting as I have always taken comfort in anyone on this journey. Even if some have had children. We still bare scars from the journey.

So my circle now is even smaller it would seem. I’m 37. I have lost my babies, I am trying to learn how to get my head around the fact we will likely never be parents. Yes I still have a small glimmer of hope, but that is dimming with every passing year.

The grief I feel from the label “Childless”. One day I hope it’s a label I can wear without causing me pain. I feel like it might happen. Now the fogs lifting.

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The DUFF, weight loss for ivf and PCOS

Loosing weight for me is so desperately frustrating. I have all these reasons I should be doing it. Mainly because we want IVF but everything just seems like it’s gone to pot since my car accident in March.

I have always felt like the DUFF in my circle of friend. I don’t say that for cry’s of “no your not!!” It’s just the facts. I have carried a lot of insecurities over the years for the way I look and I spend a lot of time judging what is wrong with my appearance. I can honestly say I have never felt beautiful, no matter how many times my mum or husband tell me I am. They have to right?

What pisses me off is that I am a strong woman. I have faced some of the worst human experiences and am still standing. I have put a brave face on and worked through loosing my pregnancies and continued to try. I have dealt with the knowledge that I would probably never be a mother even though it’s a dream I have had from being a child.

I carried on the day before Gavin my cousin died after spending a night with him, the same night he was told he was going to die. My hearts never been so broken watching him struggle with that information. I loved him so much and cancer ripped him from us. I continued to breath after he actually died even though it hurt to even do that. My grief screams silently everyday. Mostly no one would know. I continue on.

I have it in me to fight. So why do I find it so hard to fight for myself? For my self esteem. Why do we look for the faults? It’s so easy to do that. I know I need to continue with the weight loss but equally I know that I need to find acceptance no matter my size. Find a way to feel like I look good, to ooze confidence. I am beginning to realise no amount of weight loss will do that for me. I have to do that for myself from the inside.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so they say. So I might not have a skinny arse, tiny waist but does that mean I am less than? Why does that make us feel so bad that we don’t always make that standard of beauty around us.

I have been struggling to keep motivated since the accident. I have since changed my job I’m doing more physical work now which means my appetite is insane so it’s been easy to eat off plan.

Things are finally settling down into a routine after a couple of months setting my company up. It’s going so well, actually smashing my targets but I’m worried I’m taking my eye off the weight loss plan.

I want to do it. I need to do it. I’m getting angry at myself for giving in to bad food choices and justifying them because I’m doing so much physical activity. I run much longer ….. my joggers are still as tight. Argghhhg!!!! 😂😂😂.

I need to get a grip!!

Tomorrow is a new day ….. oh my goodness wish me luck. AGAIN 🙈🙈🙈.

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Baby clothes ….a weird hope.

I don’t know if I’m alone in this, I suspect I am not but I’m going to share anyway in case there are others like me feeling the same.

After all these years I have a huge urge to shop for nursery equipment and baby clothes. There! I said it. It’s out there.

I always imagined the months and weeks leading up to a birth, the excitement and preparation of the new arrival would be so wonderful. Part of that imagined scenario is the nursery and baby clothes.

In the early days I would look around these sections when I shopped alone and imagine being able to just buy anything remotely baby related to make up for all the time yearning.

When we did get pregnant and the few occasions that bean was a strong one and made it further into the pregnancy. I even went as far as buying a couple of football related items to give to my husband. They sat in a bottom draw for years until we moved house the last time and I had to let them go for my sanity. The bottom draw became a shrine and that didn’t feel good. I was tormented by them.

It’s hard to let go of these items when you see the moment clearly. A happy moment I would have shared with my husband. Handing him a Newcastle United onesie with Phillips on it. Telling him we finally were going to be parents.

I’m often surprised by the way some things affect me and then others that I would brace myself for turn out to be not too bad. For example the other day we were doing some work on a maternity ward, a couple were signing in to give their baby as I waited to see if we could carry the work out. The ache I carry everyday burned so badly at that moment. I will never experience this. I braced myself for the whole way to the job and actually it wasn’t too bad, once the initial pain passed I was ok.

I was a little jealous looking at all those baby bumps and going into the delivery suite thinking I have no clue what it’s like to be here and I want to be here so badly. The little units with the little knitted hats waiting for a beautiful head to cover. But I left feeling a little sad, but ok.

A few hours later we went to a shopping centre to buy some new clothes for our holiday next week. We are going to Prague 😁😁. The fitting room of cause had to be in the middle of the baby clothes. There was a little tiny pair of skinny jeans. They were for 0-3 months and were the cutest thing I have ever seen. They fit in my hand.

As I waiting for my husband to try his clothes on, I watched as families browsed the clothing and selected items and I felt such a huge wave of grief. Grief for a life I am not getting to live.

It’s like that movie sliding doors, in an alternative world I didn’t loose our babies and my husband and I are going through all these normal life experiences and my heart isn’t broken. We cradled my huge bumps while our little one kicked away and grew safe and strong protected by my body, we argued over furniture and colours for the nursery we spent time creating for them, we were able to buy the beautiful clothes for our children. That version of us doesn’t feel like a fraud for even picking up those little jeans. That version on me might have bought them in the right size for our children. You would feel the overwhelming love in our home. Love of our family.

There is a lot of love anyway. In the real version of our lives I am so happily married. I’m so completely in love with my husband fifteen years on. We get to travel a lot. We have nice things. We are happy. We have a lot to be thankful for. We just have this one part that hurts every day, it’s become part of our lives. Some days it’s just like white noise irritating but I can ignore it. Some days my grief screams so loudly that my chest aches. Those are the days I wish we didn’t have to experience it. I wish I could find a way to let go and be ok with it and that small things didn’t eat away at me , like perfect little jeans for a perfect baby we might never have.

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Plan B ….

For as long as I have been aware, having a family was something I always wanted.

No one really tells you it’s not something you are guaranteed. Growing up I heard a lot of;

“When you get married and have kids of your own”

You don’t question it. It’s life’s plan. It’s what’s done.

Here’s my issue with that. What if it’s not? Why does it have to be? Someone choosing not to have children is no less valuable to society than someone that has had a car full of babies. Yet we are often made to feel less than, I even read an article claiming that professional woman are selfish for this decision.

Are you kidding me?! Apart from the fact you never know why that person hasn’t had a family if by choice or by circumstance or like for us there is an issue. It’s none of anyone else’s business.

Also you say selfish ….Who is it that covers holidays and sickness of those needing the extra days for their children?? I’m not ever bothered about doing this, or wasn’t before I was self employed. In fact I more than once offered to cover holidays etc because I know how important it is to be at home with your kids, but don’t call me selfish for it!! Don’t tell me I’m not contributing to society doing that takes more than reproducing.

One Christmas Eve some years ago when we had a working day as you do in media advertising. They announced they would be letting those with children leave early. Sitting there post failed fertility treatment, already slightly upset about Christmas I was so angry. Did my time with my husband mean less because we didn’t have children? Ironically it took one of my friends with children to point out how unfair and insensitive that was. I know it wasn’t done intentionally to hurt me or others like me, but the fact they didn’t think about that was infuriating.

Another really irritating example is the romantic movie industry. Hard nose business woman who puts her career first realised she should have married that high school boyfriend and had a family instead, because being a business woman is so horrible…. really? It’s a repeated message told over and over. Some people are happy to be single. Not everyone needs to find their prince or princess charming. Some people love their careers – what’s wrong with that?!

I could list a hundred examples of ways in which I was made to feel less than, less important, not in the “know” because I don’t have children, like there’s some secret language you get access to when you have a child.

Having a family is important to me, but it doesn’t define me. I know that’s funny because of the time I dedicate to writing about it but I feel like we need to point this out. I am able to function in society. I just feel like we should talk about plan b a little more.

We are 14 years into the whole trying for a family thing and as times gone on, so with it has grown a feeling of aimlessness. To find out where I fit in. While my friends and family around me are taking kids to nursery’s, school, children’s parties, events for children, we kind of sit on the sidelines not really fitting in. No one really talks about what next if it doesn’t work.

I get that this is such a personal journey so some people are more ok with it sooner than others. For me I never really have given up. I try. Then I will see a baby and I’m right back to yearning desperation.

I feel like certainly the last three years I have plodded along. Just waiting in case. I had renewed hope when I started to loose weight. Here I am 61lbs down and still no baby. I know we are heading for IVF weight but I have lost my focus. It feels like it’s not helped.

As anyone that reads my blogs regularly knows, I had a car accident that sent me into a spiral. I left my job and the industry I have worked in for the last 15 years. I needed a change. I needed a plan B and to find my way without the baby plan.

I’m tired of feeling aimless and less than. This change and starting my own business has given me new purpose. I don’t know if it’s going to work out. I know I have smashed my first months target that I projected for myself. But it’s early days. Maybe my business will be my baby. Who knows.

It’s important to think about what next if it doesn’t happen. I know how hard it is to think about it, but it’s time I did. I have to try to heal. I don’t think I will ever get to a point of giving up completely but having a new focus is helping. There are so many successful women out there killing it child free and happy.

I just want to not feel so upset when I think about our future. I want to enjoy the now instead.

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The Last Stone Blogs : 13 years trying to be a mother.

There is something kind of hopeless, sitting in a doctors office and being told they won’t help you anymore.

Back in 2010, we had a follow up appointment after the last of the Chlomid (a drug that stimulates your ovaries and helps ovulation) hadn’t worked, or should I say it had a little but we sadly lost the pregnancy early on.

I have spoken many times of the desperate ache to be a mother, that feeling of being slightly incomplete. That something is missing. It’s always with you no matter what the outside world may think. So when I was told that my weight would stop any further treatment, I felt like I was at rock bottom looking up at a mountain. They handed me a sheet of GI pointed foods and told me to eat from the bottom end of the scale and then sent me away.

I remember smiling and telling my husband I would do it. I would get the weight off. But in side ….. my heart was breaking.

Unless you have been in my shoes, unless you know the complete desperation of wanting something so bad but feeling like it just would be impossible. You can’t know. Especially when the nurses were telling me,

“You need to loose this weight but it’s going to seem impossible because you have PCOS”

Thanks for that. If I didn’t already feel like I had a mountain to climb that just made it worse. How could I ever do this?

For those reading who aren’t the person needing to loose weight. You need to know. YES it’s a great incentive, YES ITS A great reason but knowing that only makes the pressure so much worse. Especially when you try so hard and the weight doesn’t move.

I already felt like a failure as a woman. I couldn’t do the one thing that should be easy, that some people are trying to prevent. That I have actually been trying to prevent until meeting my now husband. Adding my weight to the problem I just felt so low, so useless. Also the issue of it actually being so difficult with having PCOS I just felt lost.

Then I felt angry, WHY ME? WHY US?? Why is it I have to do all of this when I see beautiful big women pregnant around me. Is it not enough that we have been through what we already have. It’s the first time in my life, I wanted to give up!! I needed a break. I needed to not feel like I was letting everyone down.

A couple of years passed but the ache for children didn’t go. I knew it was time. I started with small changes at first. More water, less processed foods. The weight to my surprise started to go.

I was 20st 13lbs the first time I stepped on the scales in Derby Hospital. Within a couple of years I was three stone down.

We decided to move areas, back to my home town in the North East of England, a fresh start. So my weight loss was put on the back burner. We went on some amazing holidays. I love to travel.

Then came more heartbreak when I lost my cousin in 2016. We had often talked about loosing weight when he was better. So when he was taken from us I felt like I needed to do it for both of us. It took a little while to get there but in 2017 I went back to Slimming World after a beach holiday where I just felt huge.

I was 18st 7.5lbs less than the fertility doc weight but still bad. Even sitting in my first class I had already thought about probably failing. It was half hearted because I didn’t trust myself. But I was wrong. I underrated how strong I could be. In my first week I lost 11lbs!! I simply followed the plan.

I wish I had the magic wand to share with you why it’s worked this time. The truth is I really wanted it, I didn’t look too far ahead and just took it meal by meal to start with. One of the biggest changes this time is that I am kind to myself. If I have a slip, as I still do all the time, I get back on plan from my next meal. I don’t wait. I just get right back up!! Keep going. Keep fighting!!

I’m 61lbs down now, I am into the last stone to hit that IVF weight. That miserable woman sat in that doctors office in 2010 wouldn’t ever believe this. I owe it to her to keep going.

I am going to diary the last stone however long that takes. I hope that it helps others out there no matter where you are on your journey.

Be kind to yourself. Plan and prepare for your weeks ahead I do a meal plan each week which I will share over the blogs coming up. But mainly. NEVER GIVE UP FIGHTING.

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PCOS Girl vs Her Weight Loss Mountain.

About six years into our journey to becoming parents, I knew my weight would be a problem. It might even prevent us from being able to move forward with treatment.

When the Chlomid didn’t work and the other options were drying up. I had to face the fact it was time that I did something.

For years my weight had acted as a comforter, a layer of protection against the hurt I was feeling. With each baby lost, ripped from my body I took comfort in what I always had, food. As I did this layer upon layer went onto my body, like a physical badge of the pain I was feeling.

As I have written before, I was always a chubby kid. I was teased for it when I was young and in truth I did learn to toughen up about it. One day on my way back from college, I was probably 17 and not wearing very flattering jeans when a young boy asked if I would like his seat in my condition. He thought I was pregnant. I was so embarrassed I took the seat and thanked him. How do I tell someone. “No I’m just fat.” 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

I then met my now husband and our happiness turned to contentment and with that came eating, a lot of eating. The weight crept up and up but I didn’t see it. It was only standing in the fertility doctors office on those scales that would dictate what treatment I could have, as I stood there and the nurse told me I weighed iover 20st. I wanted the ground to swallow me whole.

The doctor then told me to get any further treatment. I would need to be below 30 bmi that’s 13st 3lbs for me. It felt like a mountain. When he added that it would prove to be difficult with the severity of my PCOS, I just felt like he told me I would almost certainly fail and that little voice that is often there telling me I can’t do something. Well she all out laughed at the idea of me trying to diet.

I made a good start but as promised it got difficult. Very difficult. I started to convince myself that it just wasn’t meant to be. I would find myself finding comfort in food and on went the cycle. On and on and on.

I wish I could bottle what’s been different this time. I would share it for free with anyone that needs it. I still remember the suffocating desperation, the urge to lose the weight but feeling like I couldn’t do it. My food cravings would always get the better of me. I could never imagine living without certain foods and if I tried I would think none stop of all the things I couldn’t have.

I heard so many times,

“Well if you really want it you will loose the weight”

The fact is if my body worked as others did that’s true but it’s soul destroying to give it your all, to deny yourself things you love to achieve that goal and then to lose nothing or even gain. The eyes in group on you like “she must be cheating!” I wasn’t.

I gave up frustrated. Resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t get the weight off. That no one wanted to help me.

In May 2017 my husband and I went on another amazing holiday to New York (my favourite place) and then on to Dominican Republic (I also love it there). I felt frumpy and unattractive. I hated being by the pool. I decided when I got back….enough was enough. It was time to change.

I went to see my doctor and let it all out. I cried so much that I was hiccuping by the end of the appointment. She was the first doctor that really listened. I felt she was with me and really wanted to help, she herself had lost weight recently and she understood how hard it was for me. She also offered me Olistat. I knew about the drug and it’s side effects …. google them they aren’t pleasant. But I was desperate. The drug stopped my body absorbing some of the fats in the food.

With prescription in hand and a renewed motivation I stepped into my Slimming World class, it’s not the first or even second time I had joined and even a small bit of me thought;

“Oh here we go again!” 🙄🙄

The first week I lost 11lbs. I was amazed. I followed the plan perfectly. Trusted in it and it provided a truly awesome loss. That motivated me into the second week and on. Between the plan and the tablets I have lost 49.5lbs and 24lbs away from my ivf goal. I had lost all hope of ever getting here, it made me feel so terribly guilty and sad that it was me standing in my own way. Now I feel hope again.

I don’t have a magic wand, the tablets aren’t miracle workers you can still gain but I feel they have me at a even chance like anyone else now. It’s still hard, so hard on days when I still want to comfort eat.

The amazing thing for me is that as time is going on, food is becoming less important. Where before I would be thinking about food most of my day, now I just think about what will take the hunger away quickly and what will help towards my next weeks loss.

Do I still have bad meals/ days. OF CAUSE!! I’m still that chubby girl inside and I still love food. The biggest change for me this time is that I forgive and forget the slips right away, from the next meal. I don’t let it drag on or punish myself by trying to skip meals, that ultimately would lead to more bad choices because I was so hungry.

I’m a little kinder to myself now. It’s ok not to be perfect and I try to not compare myself to other people.

I guess there are a lot of weight loss stories out there much more inspirational than mine, but I wanted to share this. To talk to the person out there crippled by grief, desperate for a family but feeling like they will never loose the weight they need to.

You can do it. Take small steps. Take it one meal at a time. Be kind to yourself. Find support either a group or maybe even some friends that may want to loose some with you.

If you have PCOS and probably find yourself explaining this when the scales don’t reflect the hard work you are putting in. I understand that. It might not show this week but it will show eventually don’t loose hope. Keep fighting.

I hope soon I will be writing a post at target. Ready to start the scary chapter that is IVF. The question mark that has loomed over us for years. Will it work. Part of me thinks I was scared to loose the weight because if it doesn’t work than that is the last of my hope gone. That prospect is heartbreaking.

For now however I will remain focused and keep fighting every day to get there. I feel like we are warriors and I say that a lot. What we go through and then still function, it takes strength. I feel that even more so since battling every day to loose this weight. I imagine every day I kick its arse….. in the hopes one day soon, I will have achieved my dream. It will all be worth it then.

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It’s OK not to be OK….

***IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A SUNSHINE MOTIVATIONAL BLOG … perhaps skip this one 😁😁***

Christmas was a little tough. I’m struggling. Mentally I struggle a little anyway over such a family focused moment in time, because of cause I do wonder what it would be like if our babies had made it. But this time it was the other side to infertility that spoilt it for me. The physical side effects, and the last two months it’s been the worst! No break from the pain.

I am so tired of brave facing it.

I am on the whole a glass half full sort of person but recently my glass is most definitely empty.

I personally have never suffered from depression. I have a few people in my life that do, so I don’t feel embarrassed to share that I am struggling. It’s important to talk about, I my case I turn to what’s always helped me process things, my writing (however bad it is lol).

How do you pick yourself up when you are so low that even getting up and getting dressed is a struggle? The pain I’m in at the moment is constant and I am so fed up with it that it IS effecting me mental health. I would be happy if I could live in a bubble of Netflix, a good book and my duvet! I can’t obviously.

I’m not sharing this with you guys so that I get the “ahh poor you’s” I don’t need that, but because I know that I’m not alone and I feel like I need to let it out. There are so many off us suffering through the side effects of having these long term fertility issues and I know a lot of you like me find themselves having to justify and explain how bad it is and why you are struggling, that it’s more than just a normal monthly. Those social events missed or going out doing anything. The guilt of letting people down again. But now, I am more than just feeling guilty. I’m actually angry.

I just feel pissed off that not only is it preventing me from giving my husband a family, but it effects every area of my life!! I never know how I will be able to cope with going out, shopping, meals, traveling, etc because of the pain or if I can leave the bathroom floor!! I always have to check dates and hope for the best.

The pain this time started mid November and it’s still going thanks to some complications that I won’t bore you with and a lovely new cyst!!

This weekend for example I spent on the couch because anytime I stood up right I had incredible shooting pains from the tops of my legs to my jaw, every time I moved it had to be a calculated cautious one, timidly feeling how bad the pain was going to be when I did straighten up to then just get to the toilet or kitchen etc.

There are so many horrible and worse illnesses out there I know and when I am feeling moany I try to give myself a shake and then generally feel guilty for being a wuss.

Some times it’s easier to get back up and continue at 100% effort. Other times I just can’t and the pain is relentless, for the last two months especially there has not been a day passed that I haven’t had to stop what I am doing hold my breath and try not to cry out in pain. I so fucking sick of it. The last two months have been bad but this isn’t the first bad stint, ever since my very first AF (Aunt Flow) at 10 years old the pain some months has floored me.

Currently I’m at “well I’m awake and dressed what more do you want” level of effort. 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

What makes this worse for me is that I continue regularly to go thru this pain, a regular cycle that should have brought us a baby and still my arms are empty and feels like it’s punishing me further by making them so hard to deal with. The crushing disappointment of another failed month followed by terrible pain and sickness. It makes me so resentful I could scream!!

After all these years we are so close to the final phase of treatment. I have 27lbs to loose to have IVF. But I have never felt so fed up with it all. I’m slowing rolling back round to the “why us” way of thinking. WHY US?! Why do we have to go thru this. Isn’t 13 years enough already of this!?

Yes. I realise this is like a blog tantrum. And no I do not care. 😁

If anyone needs me I am under the covers with chocolate ….. oh no wait…. I have to work and I’m loosing weight….. FML!!

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