Situational Infertility - a lightbulb moment

In the heady rose-tinted, heart-thumpingly exciting very early days of DH's and my romance (back in 2003), he sent me an e-mail and said that he needed to talk to me about something serious after work that day. So many scenarios ran through my mind about what he was going to tell me. After the cappucino's were ordered, he said (ad libbing here), "Tiger, please don't leave me but I have to tell you something. I know you want children but I must tell you that I had a vasectomy 9 years ago. We will have a child together no matter what it takes."

While I was TTC I was plagued by thinking that I shouldn't ask for support after a failed IVF or a difficult time as I had no right to complain as I was not infertile like by far the majority of people I was interacting with. If you desparately want to raise a child, step one would be to marry a man who had a vasectomy 9 years previously NOT!

Everyone else was facing difficulties and heart-braking failures and losses due to a totally unfair biological inability, whereas I knowingly married a man who had surgery to avoid ever having children and then wanted to complain when it wasn't that easy to conceive a biologically related child.

A couple of days ago I came across Melissa Forde's "Navigating the Land of IF" on my Kindle and had a light-bulb moment. She mentions Biological Infertility and also Situational Infertility. I finally had a group to belong to, a classification where I fitted!

Situational Infertility includes TTC post sterilization and also Advanced Maternal Age. The two types of IF are different. Different emotions, journeys etc but the point she made was that the two were united by the over-whelming desire to raise a child. That is the goal or happy ending for everyone. As different as each person's journey is, the overriding commonality is wanting to raise a child. A community like FC works dispite people differences because everyone's goal is exactly the same.

The Next Big Question

(When) Are You Going to have a 2nd Child?

I always thought we'd have two and until recently, was steeling myself to go back to the clinic in 2013 and climb back on the ole' rollercoaster but now I am not so sure.

Pro's to having a 2nd child:

• A won't be a spoiled only child - not sure that this is actually valid and is probably more to do with how A is parented. He could be a real brat if there were two as well.


• A will have company - I think I fought with my brother as much as I played with him. I do really love my siblings' company now that we're older though.


• To have more of that Mommy Love - to experience a newborn again would be amazing and to have another whole batch of Love to give away.


• Less focus and pressure on A - he will have to absorb the full amount of my over-eager parenting.

Con's:

• Having to go back for IVF and the associated stress (financial, marital & more than likely heart-breaking failures) Also might be harder as I'll be older?


• Financial pressure of private-schooling two


• Marital strain of less adult time together and more child care demands


• Less guilt free time for me


• I only have 3 to 4 hours with A each day, would two mean that time is halved?

Truth is that if we could fall pg naturally, it wouldn't even be a question, so maybe my real concern is going back to the clinic? C and I took HUGE strain as a couple during that time. I don't want to test our marriage that far again.

Guess who's back

Okay so my last post was a real poor sad little me post about 18 months or so ago. Anyway let's cut to the present, the third fresh IVF worked and I enjoyed a fairly uneventful pregnancy and I now have a delicious little 8 month old baby boy. I am back at work full time and am wrestling with trying to be the very best wife, mother, sister, friend, daughter and colleague simultaneously.

Chances are if you're reading this blog you are already up to speed with where I am currently but are probably a little surprised to see me in blogland again. I make no promises to keep up with it this time but I often compose blog posts in my head on the way into work, so maybe it is time to actually put them online.

If I go off on a tangent and then a few weeks later completely change my mind, don't point it out okay :) I don't pretend to have it all figured out so please leave a comment if you can help or have struggled with the same thing or even just to tell me that I am off track.

I've loads of stuff I want to write about in the hope that it'll help me figure things out. I thought I'd start with the Next Big Question...