We have been on this journey for so long now, had so much disappointment and heartbreak somewhere along the way I lost something I thought I never would …. I lost all hope. Along with that, I lost the dream of being a mother.
I’m not sure when this happened, perhaps it slipped away a little at a time. Perhaps is was ripped out in buckets with every silent heartbeat on a scan monitor or with the negative pregnancy test sitting in my lap, anointed with freshly fallen tears. Perhaps that’s where my hope disappeared, slowly down tear tracks etched into my cheeks over 12 years. I don’t know.
All I know is this last couple of weeks, as the weight has slowly started to fall off, I have felt a flutter that has been missing. My hope was returning.
Once I realised this is what I was feeling, I was crushed to know just how lost I had been before now. It upset me to think that I had given up on our dream. I had written myself off as a failure, I had convinced myself I couldn’t do this.
One of the most gut wrenching, heartbreaking things to get your head around when you have fertility issues is that it’s you. You are the reason why. You are defective. You can not perform the one task that should be so natural for a woman to do. You, you ….. YOU! Even with that knowledge I thought I was strong. I thought we had shouldered more than most could bare and retained our sanity.
While it’s true we have shouldered a lot. Cried more tears in the twelve years trying for a child than I could count. I do feel like I have lost a part of me in the process. I was an optimist. I was so sure that even with my PCOS we would get pregnant that every failed pregnancy we lost, every negative test that followed I believed it was taking us closer to what we wanted. That no world could be so cruel to allow us not to get our dream.
Twelve long years, slowly but surely that hope died in me. I didn’t mourn it all at once, or acknowledge it at all really. I didn’t even notice it was gone until I felt a glimmer come back.
I’m 36. The window is closing. Perhaps that is why the motivation is staying with me this time. I need to loose the weight to get treatment and it always felt like a mountain. Now I am 25.5lbs down with another 42lb plus to go, but I actually feel like I can do this!
The more I feel confident that I can lose the weight. The more that the hope I had lost seems to return.
Will we ever realise our dream to be parents. I don’t know. But the fact I have finally found the confidence to keep going, to take control of something for once! That makes me hopeful.
If anyone is reading this with PCOS over weight and wondering how you could possible find the grit to try and loose weight. Give yourself a break, take it one meal at a time and most of all forgive the slips.
I am not a natural gym bunny 🐰 or healthy eater but learning to forgive my slips and getting back to it the next meal has been something that’s new and it’s keeping me on track. Am I perfect!? Hell No! But I want it so badly. I am not thinking so far in the future I am planning one week at a time. Hoping that I can stay strong. We can all do that.
Wish me luck xoxo
The Childless Mother 